A Short Essay On The Value Of Youth In Paranormal Investigations
By Sean Feeney
(3/21/2007) - While browsing the web today I stumbled across Paraex, a ghost investigation team in Central Ohio. The Field Investigator candidate requirements reminded me of why I founded NKYPYG:To qualify, all candidates:
Must be at least 21 years of age.
NKYPYG was born after I located the closest ghost investigation group to Covington, KY - a group located in Xenia, OH (which doesn't appear to be around anymore, btw) - and their investigator requirements required you to be at least 18. Shortly after that I took the MUFON Field Investigator Test and learned that although I could turn it in, they would hold it until I was 18. I was classified as an "Associate Member" and I could be nothing more since I was under 18.
Of the few things bridging the gap between UFO and ghost organizations, this annoying restriction appears to be one of them. For legal purposes, it's perfectly understandable that a non-profit would not want field investigators - who could get injured - to be under the age of 18. However, in the field of the paranormal - a field looked down upon by many mainstream scientists - there are many reasons why we should be including youth in our investigations.
First and foremost, the youth are our future. You hear this touted in many places and fields, but it is of the utmost importance in Ufology. There have been essays by the "old guard" (see Friedman's "Perceptions" column in the June 2003 MUFON UFO Journal, to which I have previously written a response to) where they acknowledge the need to get youth more involved, to take the place of past Ufologists who are passing away more and more each decade (see UFO group membership numbers, 1960's vs. 1990's). But their recommendations on how to get the youth involved in these organizations is simply too out of touch with today's generation. Example in point: Friedman's article suggested that youth could get involved in MUFON by going to their local libraries and searching through newspaper microfilm for past UFO reports. Trust me, while this is an important step in investigating historical UFO sightings, you're not going to get the youth to care about UFO's this way. Simply put, top UFO organizations will die out (as they have been doing for years) if they do not appeal to generation after generation.
Today's youth are hands-on. While there are still a select few who benefit from lectures, the vast majority prefer getting out there and doing what they're learning. This presents a unique opportunity to paranormal groups because today's field technology is substantially cheaper than it was in previous years. For under 100, a team of three could easily be outfitted with enough equipment to perform a good, standard preliminary investigation of a site and report back to headquarters about whether or not the site warrants further investigation. In Ufology, the same could be said about interviewing witnesses rather than investigating a site. When it comes down to it, there simply aren't enough good investigators out there. See last month's MUFON CMS Ranking Report, for example, in which 16 states weren't even able to assign cases to investigators - two of those states being Ohio and Kentucky - simply because there aren't enough available investigators to tackle them. It is ridiculous that MUFON would deny the under 18 crowd (the upper age bracket of which can drive cars, btw) the right to investigate these cases simply because of their age.
In other scientific fields youth are encouraged to participate, not only in lectures and classrooms but by getting in the laboratory and conducting experiments. Even in the field of parapsychology, I was able to carry out a round of d'ej`a vu experiments being put on by Cornell University while in a psychology class my junior year of high school. There are also summer camps as early as elementary and middle school where participants get to use the same equipment as professionals in locations where they might also get injured (I can recall my Astronomy class during Duke TIP at KU traveling with telescopes to a private field outside of Lawrence, KS and spending much of the night there: a scenario similar to any UFO field investigation). It appears that "real scientists" have solved the problem of how to let minors get involved: it's called a waiver. We used to use these for my NKYPYG group. You simply have the students' parent or guardian sign that it's ok for their son or daughter to participate in your organization, including field work. Add some legal "fine print" that prevents them from suing your organization and you're free to allow the students to participate.
So now that the legal barriers are aside, what else could youth offer to a paranormal investigation? Seeing as how much EVP research involves audio at strange frequencies, youth could be helpful in identifying the source of a noise that appears to only play back on audio tape to adults. It is simple science that the younger you are, the greater your range of audible frequencies. Just think about the new "mosquito" ring tones and The Mosquito, a device that attempts to keep youth from loitering in a location by playing an annoying sound at a frequency that only they can hear. In addition to better hearing, youth also tend to have better eyesight, which can be very helpful if an anomaly manifests at a distance during an investigation.
The greatest asset that youth have to offer such investigations are fewer investigator biases. As paranormal investigators age, they carry with them beliefs and values that can affect their research. Youth are still forming these beliefs and values which make it less likely that they will apply them to their research. As I was quoted as saying in a recent newspaper article, "Young people can see things with new eyes... They can keep an open mind to things that adults may explain away."
Ultimately, it will be the youth who carry on your organization. With popular shows like Sci-Fi's "Ghost Hunters" capturing youth's attention and teaching them incorrect investigation methods and techniques (which could be as much Sci-Fi's fault as TAPS's), it will be up to paranormal organizations to re-train them at the age of 18 or 21, and we all know that it's easier to learn the right way the first time than it is to change your way of thinking later on in life. Why not properly train youth as soon as they are interested in being a field investigator, and why not tap that already readily available resource to increase your case assignment and completion ratios? Even if your group only allows youth to investigate a case under the direction of an adult field investigator, that's a step in the right direction for the paranormal field. To be respected by "established" scientists, our best bet is to let tomorrow's scientists know just how professional our investigative standards are.
Sean Feeney is the Director of The Anomaly Response Network, a group dedicated to the objective study of all forms of unusual phenomena that encourages youth participation.
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