By Russell White
P.I.T.T. / Paranormal Investigation Team of Tulsa

This article originally appeared in the May, 2005 online issue of Ghost Magazine in the Spirited Science: Mainstream Science Meets Paranormal Studies column. Posted with permission of Russell White.

The man and woman walked slowly down the hall, pausing every now and then to look around and survey their surroundings. Walking stealthily they paused near the end of the hall at a blank wall. They looked behind them and then stepped into the wall, seeming to disappear from view in a split second. A slight vibration shook the immediate area. The air all around seemed to shimmer or shift for a split second, like heat waves rising through the air in the summertime. Then all was still.

“HOLY #*%!!!” exclaimed one of the people standing at the other end of the hall. “Did you see that?”

Not getting an answer, he turned to his partner, or at least where his partner had been standing about 2 seconds ago. His partner was now gone, and had been replaced with a flashlight that had been dropped on the floor and was still rolling around. Further down the hall he could just make out his partner bursting through the front door at an amazing speed. Looking around wildly with the hair on the back of his neck standing up, the man suddenly realized he was alone. Equipment clattered onto the floor as the man dropped everything in his hands and moved faster than an Olympic sprinter towards the front door and safety.

In the Fall issue of Ghost!, we discussed the sporadic and elusive nature of paranormal phenomena. We laid groundwork for various reasons why, to date, this phenomena remains unsubstantiated. I let it be known that I believe I have hit on a way to validate haunting phenomena.

The scientific method states that the first step in proving/disproving a hypothesis is to observe some aspect of the universe. In the short time I have been actively researching the paranormal I have noticed most alleged incidences have one thing in common. It isn't EVP, it isn't pictures of orbs, and it isn't EMF spikes. What it is …is the human biological response to these occurrences.

Quickened respirations, increased heart rate, skin tingling. All these things are part of the body’s biological response to a possible perceived danger. This response is known as “fight or flight”. Basically the body responds by increasing the metabolism and preparing to run away or fight the danger. Now it became apparent to me after some time that the only constant with any type of alleged paranormal occurrence is this biological state. Most paranormal researchers refer to it as being “creeped out” or “feeling like someone else is here”.

What we need to discern is whether or not the “perceived danger” that is triggering this response is occurring physically within the environment, or is a product of our imagination. The human emotional/biological response is indeed a measurable thing, unlike the rest of the paranormal world. If we can pinpoint areas within a structure that cause a certain type of response in individuals and validate that blindly with other individuals, then we could prove that whatever it is that is causing this is coming from an outside source.

I got the idea for this study from two main things that have occurred recently. For one, I am running numbers (statistical analysis) for someone who is doing a study on psychic impressions vs. historical validation. This person is going in blind to locations and writing down the impressions and handing them off to a third party. Yet another individual is in charge of historical documentation. The impressions and historical data are then sent to me and I put numbers on them. You can't argue with history and numbers.

Another occurrence, and the one that really got me thinking about this, happened when a video production crew and my team went with to an allegedly haunted location. During one point of the evening a crew member became EXTREMELY uncomfortable. He was in a group of about 10 people and the only one that felt this way. I was videotaping at this time and decided to follow him around. He had a Geiger counter in his hand, which was continually pegging out. Now when I say he was uncomfortable, I mean that the distress was plain on his face and in his body language, and only through extreme self control did he manage to stay with us. At one point I picked up the counter and walked around with it and got nothing. He picked it back up and it started pegging again. Now this led me to wonder two things: What the heck does the Geiger counter pegging out mean? And why was he the only one to feel anything?