Top Tips For Psychics Who Want To Get Into The Paranormal Field

It usually creates grumbles in psychic circles when I say that you need some specialised skills to be efficient as a psychic/medium in the paranormal. I wouldn’t say it if it weren't for the years of experience I have working in the field. And by that I mean actual field. I am not someone who does one on one readings or stage mediumship, for good reasons that belong into a whole other blog article. From very early on in my run as a medium, I knew that those things weren't for me. I enjoyed the challenge of investigations too much, the questioning of the investigators, participating in experiments and even designing them. The more something or someone challenges me, the more I like it. I revel in seeing the paranormal field develop and grow year on year, something that really cannot be said for the spiritual field in general.

There are many distinct attributes that set aside a paranormal medium from stage mediums and those attributes will decide whether a medium will be efficient and effective in a paranormal investigation setting or not. I get asked a lot what those attributes are, how people can gain skills as mediums to be useful in the paranormal and what they need to do start working as a useful part of a team.

Here I am sharing some of my top tips regarding how you, as a psychic or medium can gain entry into the paranormal field and become an integral part of a team or even work as an independent medium investigator.

1              Just because you make claims that you're a psychic/medium it doesn't mean that anyone will employ your services as one.

You can write all the emails you want to teams out there. Chances are that if they even work with a medium they already have one. Someone who is tried and tested and with an established rapport with the other team members. Don't be disappointed if you get rejected. Many teams look for someone with some demonstrated experience in the paranormal field. The less training they have to give you on how an investigation works, the more time they can spend on investigating.

2              Make a name for yourself in the field.       

                                  

The paranormal community, anywhere in the world pretty much, is a pretty tight knit community with teams knowing eachother, independent investigators consulting with teams and eachother so when a name pop ups that they don't know, there is a degree of avoidance. Trust is imperative whether you're a solo investigator or a team so the best way to get started is to get involved in the community. If you just insert yourself from nowhere in the community and demand attention, I can tell you, all you will get are cold shoulders. People work extremely hard to establish themselves in this fringe field and they will expect, rightfully so, that newcomers will pay their dues so to speak. Go to events where those people hang out, there are plenty of them and the offerings are growing every year, talk to them, find out what they do, ask them lots of questions and make it known that you're looking at entering the field yourself. Investigators are social people, well most of them anyway, and they will be happy to introduce you to even more people in the field.

3              Learn about psychic research and paranormal research in general.

The paranormal scene has changed a lot in the last 5 years or so and teams are increasingly critical of mediumship and emphasis is now on using electronic devices to gather evidence. A medium's word is no longer taken at face value. And that is how it should be. The more familiar you are with investigative procedures, experimentation and what goes on during an investigation in general, the more useful you are going to be in the field. Forget about TV shows as a benchmark for good investigative practices and look at the work of reputable researchers. The field is diverse and there are plenty of great brains out there publishing about paranormal research. Seek them out and be an informed psychic/medium.

4              Have an impeccable record of integrity and professionalism.

Many a team has been brought down by an unscrupulous medium and their credibility lost due to shady conduct. It takes a long time to recover trust lost, not only with the clients but for the team as well. Same applies if you're a solo medium investigator. How you conduct yourself publicly, and that includes any sort of social media, will impact on your standing in the paranormal field as well as your ability to gain entry to a team.

5              Be prepared to be challenged in your skills and abilities.

This is a growing field and those who can't grow with it will be left behind. Growth happens when you are challenged, pushed to the very boundaries of your abilities and your beliefs. You have to have the strength to get up and keep going, the humility to say that you are wrong or don't know the answer to a question and the ability to recognise that you are not the centre of the universe at the investigation. A willingness to go anywhere you need to go and deal with whatever is at hand at a moment's notice is also a desirable skill that will stand you in good stead with investigators. I have climbed sand dunes and river banks in searing heat as well as spent nights in derelict buildings in the middle of the woods with no running water many a time to support an investigation. If you're not the type of person to do something like that, reconsider whether you really want to get into the field.

If after all the above you feel like you want to take the leap, I suggest you jump in with both feet or not at all. This field requires a high level of personal commitment and the diversity means that you never know what you'll get when you go out investigating so you'll have to think on your feet. If you like being challenged and to push yourself then don't hesitate. The rewards are well worth it!

Top Tips For Handling Kids' Paranormal Experiences

Children are a lot more open to the world of the unseen and if my own two (not so) little cherubs are anything to go by, there are plenty they experience. Because they have no framework at a young age to put the experiences in, they often get missed in the babble of talking about imaginary friends and storytelling games. Is there anything you can do to have those conversations with your child where they tell you about their unusual experiences? Of course there is.

1              Take your child seriously when they talk to you about their imaginary friends. Some of them may not be so imaginary. When our daughter spoke of seeing her grandmother in her bedroom a few days after she died, she was too young to understand the concept of death. She was perplexed by the fact that as far as she was concerned, her grandmother was living in a different country. Until one night she visited her granddaughter wearing her trademark polka dot blouse she loved so much. Michelle was adamant in the morning that she spoke with grandma in the night and the description she gave was a perfect likeness to what she looked like before she died.  The visit was a comfort not only to her but the rest of the family and we wouldn’t have known about it had we not taken the time and care to listen to her story.

2              Some spirits in your house or around your children may not come from your family tree. As it was the case with the house we live in. It's an old farmhouse and there are plenty of spirit shenanigans going on on a daily basis. As it turned out, the gentleman who built it was still around in his corporeal form after we have taken ownership of it and he took his cranky self to the kids room at night on occasion. Having not the heart to dispatch the old man from the house he built, we still wanted to take some steps to make the kids more comfortable sleeping in their own beds at night. We have put a sign on the door of their room that said loud and clear, "NO SPIRITS ARE ALLOWED!". That took care of that problem. They felt they have exerted their authority over their own room and who is allowed in and peace at night has returned once again. The old man was never felt or seen in that room again.

3              Sometimes it's hard for children to put into words what they see, especially if they have no concept of it, such as someone walking through a wall or hovering on the ceiling. In that case asking them to draw what they experienced will make it easier for them to recall the experience and getting them to talk about it. It also helps in getting the scale of what they experienced and some clues on how they feel about it.

4              Sometimes siblings will have shared experiences. Depending on their age and the age gap in between them, they might express their experiences differently. It's important to be supportive and listen to what they have to say and give them a platform that promotes trust and a feeling of not being alone with their experiences. Kids are naturally mediumistic and some will grow up keeping their ability and growing it, however some will push it into the background only for it to come out later in life in a higher intensity but with much less control.

5              Introducing concepts such as angels and spirit guides is all and well. However I would very much caution against labelling any sort of spirit or other paranormal experiences as evil. Apart from causing unnecessary stress for children, as they have no understanding of what it is other than it's bad, it can cause severe anxiety that will last for years and other disorders.

6              If you're concerned and you feel that you need to discuss your child's experiences,  I suggest that you do that away from your child. Children are very perceptive and will pick up on your beliefs about their experiences. They will need you to be the one they look to for comfort and as a confidant that won't laugh at them. You might not be of the opinion that what they experiences was real but to them it was.

In any case, the most important to remember is that if you are concerned about the mental or physical wellbeing of your child, you need to see an appropriate health professional without delay. 

Basic Starting Guide To Paranormal Photos

Spirit photography has been popular almost since the dawn of spiritualism and coincided with the dawn of photography as well. Some savvy photographers worked out how to use double exposure to fudge photographs for the unsuspecting public. And the public lapped it up. Fake spirit photos are not a modern age thing only done by someone cluey enough to use Photoshop. Ghost apps by the dozen are available to download for free for smartphones and are unashamedly uploaded to social media. Surprisingly there are still people who fall for them. 

The story of the photo usually starts with something like, "a mate of mine took this photo and sent it to me and swears it's genuine". Even investigators are not immune to this folly. On more than once occasion, I have been shown photos on smartphones with the above story and was expected to be in awe. Of course it didn’t go down well with the owner of the photo when I revealed that I was an investigator and a photographer myself and what they were looking at was a fake. Some tried to convince me it wasn't as they took the photo themselves. It makes me a little sad.

I would like to share with you some very simple and easy to follow tips you can use to take great photos even with a compact camera while on ghost tours, investigations or just on a rogue Saturday midnight cemetery dash.

No handheld devices

Forget your smart phones and tablets. While most of them take pictures with excellent resolution, there is precious little you can do photographic settings wise to adjust to your environment. Not to mention that any self-respecting investigator worth their salt will just plain and simple refuse to give you an opinion on your image, should you decide to send it to them. Simple and fairly inexpensive compact and SLR digital cameras are perfectly fine for taking snaps. Some even have really good low light functions and that means you won't have to use your flash all the time. We all know that one person on a tour or an investigation who just can't help themselves but take hundreds of flash photos, ensuring that participants are all but completely blind by the conclusion of the event. Not cool.

Have the right equipment

A tripod is a must have staple in your spirit photography arsenal. It doesn't have to be super-duper, weight balanced titanium with an inbuilt spirit level, you're not photographing for National Geographics. Inexpensive ones can be acquired online and are lightweight aluminium and will easily fit into a small backpack alongside your rations for the night, your torches, spare batteries and holy water. When you take pictures in the dark, whether your camera is set to auto or you adjust the settings yourself a longer exposure will required if you don’t want the images to turn out completely black, if your camera even picks up objects at all. Most camera sensors need something to hook onto when focussing or measuring for autosettings. Longer exposure means that even if the camera moves the slightest, you will have a ghosting effect on your image. This may even be caused if you breathe while the lens is open or the subject in the frame moves. Yes, even if the movement is the slightest.

Common misidentifications

Moving lightsources, dust, insects, cigarette smoke, breath or condensation are often misidentified as spirits on photos. The great orb debate has raged for a long as digital cameras have been around. Even longer if you take into account sunflares and lens reflections. At least now, in the digital age, where images are no longer captured on film negatives, aberrations on the images caused by incorrect distribution of developing chemicals or a faulty film strip can be excluded. There are steps you can take to avoid the above listed artefacts from appearing on your images. Trailing can be avoided by making sure that there are no prominent light sources in your shot. Someone holding a torch, a candle, even street lights can be misleading once you manage to put your images on your computer days later. It's unlikely you will remember every single details about your environment on the night you took your photos. Insects are hard to avoid but they will be pretty obvious once you get the hang of spotting them in your photos. Exhaled breath and cigarette smoke will not necessarily be visible when you take your picture, but will produce a distinctive signature on the image. Condensation in or on the lens will occur if you move between areas of varying temperatures like getting out of a warm car where you kept your camera and start taking photos outdoors on a cold day or night.

5 Easy Ways to Practice Your Paranormal Mediumship In the Field

Paranormal Investigators Series

 

How does paranormal mediumship differ from stage mediumship? What special skills and experience would someone need if they want to get into paranormal investigations? Allow me to share with you some of my experience of working in the field as a paranormal medium.



 

1.       Get someone else to pick a spot on a map for you. Preferably not a well known location but not in the middle of a desert or a jungle either. Somewhere where there are recognisable structures or landscape that can be verified. Can even use a different state or country. Meditate on the location and take note of any features (sights, sounds, smells etc) that you experience. Visit the location after this exercise if you can and take your notes along to compare. Take photos if you can, bearing in mind any privacy issues with private property and individuals. If you are not able to visit the place, just hop on Google Maps and check it out. This exercise will help with your remote viewing skills.

 

2.       While at investigations, can be indoors or outdoors, spend some time absorbing the location. Here is a little exercise you may find useful. Pick a place where you can connect with the location by yourself.  Make sure you are safe, of course. Centre and ground before you continue. Use some music from your mp3 player if you like. Imagine that you project hundreds of little strands of energy tentacles from your body. They stroke the floor, the walls, the objects around you. Let them feed any information back to you. You can do this with just one room or a whole building or only with individual objects where touching is them is not possible for whatever reason. This exercise will help with your extra-sensory perception.

3.       Some locations, by their purpose built nature will give away their nature. Popular places for paranormal investigators are asylums, hospitals, prisons etc. There are very obvious types of information that can be derived just by knowing the purpose of the building that do not require any special psychic or mediumistic skills. While we do pick up on these types of information, we, as field investigators cannot stop at just that. You don't have to be psychic to feel a criminal personality while investigating dank cells of prison blocks. It would be easy to just stop at that level. However as field mediums you want to strive for a lot more. Locations have many levels of activity, let's not limit yourself to describing and only connecting with the purpose of a structure. There are many many human stories to be derived and told. To help achieve that, you should write down your physical observations before you start your spirit connection, just to get that out of the way. It will also help deciphering later on what was actual psychic/spirit information and what was obvious observation.  This will help with strengthening your ability to be critical of your own work and make a distinction between intellectually received information and psychic information

 

4.       Get someone to film you (cheap handycams are easily accessible nowadays) or if that's not possible, take a voice recorder with you and record your findings. Talk about what you experience, not just psychically but physically as well. Look back on the recording after your investigation as you may find information you received that didn't seem relevant beforehand but gained importance and relevance after and in light of the investigation. This will help you to see where your strengths are as well as allow you to make observation on your accuracy. Who doesn't want to give themselves little brownie points for good information produced psychically?

 

5.       There is no need to have your medium hat on for hours on end during an investigation or even if you are out and about alone, doing field work. Make sure you give yourself a break and ground every once in a while. Mix with the team of people you're with, have something to eat, listen to some music, participate in other experiments and activities that don't require your psychic skills. This will give you an opportunity to learn more about team work and how investigations work from a non-psychic point of view. Being a more integral part of a team and learning other skills means that, just like other participants, you can utilise multiple skills and learn how to better incorporate your mediumship with other areas of research.

These are only some basic tips but will highlight the differences between stage mediumship and field mediumship. If your passion is to work as a paranormal medium and want to know how to make the switch, the above is a good way to start. Enjoy and grow! Oh and always have latex gloves and hand sanitiser handy in your kit! Trust me on that one.

No Fluff Paranormal Mediumship

There are many types of spirits I have encountered during my years of being in the paranormal field. From the cheeky to the sad, the impostor to the flaky. I found that to get the most out of a communication it's best to match the energy of the spirit that I am interacting with. Similarly, if I want to make contact with a particular entity, I adjust my approach to the vibration of the one I want to connect with.

It was the case last Saturday when the plan was to contact an entity at a location that we have been investigating since 2007. I knew its energy and I knew its tactic so the communication and language I used was commensurate to that. This is something primordial, something dense and heavy, and in my mediumship experience barely human . A collection of lingering energies perhaps, it has amazed us time and time again before with its intensity and uncanning ability to connect with and draw out the darkness from within those it chooses to encounter.

I raised my voice while attempting to awaken it and we could feel the energy rising and the atmosphere changing. Our chosen primary instrument for communication this time was a talking board, a tool we have  used many times before. I was leading the séance, so to adhere to protocol I didn't have my hand on the planchette but was standing by. Without debating the pros and cons or the validity of this method in this article I'd like to write about what had happened.

After some general information being conveyed via the board, the tone changed and became threatening. Phrases of "heathen go to hell", "burn in hell heathen" and "get f&*#ed" were thrown around, we knew we weren't dealing with the elemental type entity we were aiming for. This was human. We let the tirade continue for a short time while I was assessing the situation and where to go next with this session. There were a number of people in the team that were working with us at the time that are pagan and follow the Old Ways of Witchcraft, including myself so the remark of "heathen" was not a surprise. We decided to play the religion card, as it were, and went back with equal force. We questioned the state and belief of the one who was communicating with us through the board and we did that aggressively. It was spewing hate at us and we were not going to just take it with love and light. If it was a living person we would have done the same, so didn't see why we would have to treat this one any different.

Now, in a decent paranormal movie, this is the point where objects start to fly and someone starts talking with the voice of the Devil while talking board catches fire and people fall to the ground in fits. You will be able to see in one of the episodes of In Tenebris what happened. Let me just say that the "throw some love at it" approach is the weakest argument and doesn't stand up as it doesn't stand up real life either. I don't believe in turning the other cheek. I don't believe in worshipping the dead as if they had some sort of magickal power. I believe that there are those who are decent human beings and they remain so once they pass to the Other Side. At the same time though I believe that there are bigots and egotists that remain that way even after death. I don't believe in sending spirits to the light with force and I don't believe people change into enlightened and almighty holy beings as soon as they die. I do, however believe in personal responsibility and accountability on this side as well as the Other Side and if anyone from the spiritworld is as judgemental as the one we have encountered as above they should be met with an equal force of reckoning and accountability from me and my team. "Calling out" I believe the term is. There are enough wishy washy people around who preach love to all on the surface but deep down are hateful and false. Dealing with them is the same as dealing with those types of spirits in the spiritworld. Facing them head on and with equal force to expose their hate and falseness. I found that with this approach either one of two things happen. One, they pull their heads in and realise that at the soul level we are all equal or two, they continue with their hate even more. Why that is, I don't know. One things is for sure though, I haven't encountered any fire and brimstones yet.