As a group, Kentucky Paranormal Investigators, have had to endure several elements. We are currently establishing ourselves as a paranormal group that have maintained our professional and enthusiastic attitudes that define our group. Chad and I have been able to successfully form a group that are devoted to our clients. We are always willing to expand our group to those with the same interests and devotion to the field. We are always willing to accept new ideas for investigations and to assist in training new investigators to open the eyes of many to the scientific approach.
- Kirk Berry
The Slow days
As we were on our last investigation and nothing was happening I got the idea to write about something that affects every investigator at one time or another. That is boredom. It happens to all of us even the most seasoned investigators. It can be caused by a combination of many things, mostly just a lot of nothing happening. When it hits it can cause your mind to start to wonder while it looks for a way to occupy the passing time. This can lead to a couple of different things. One being a lot of chatter between investigators and the other being over reacting to things trying to find something to get excited about. The first one is not so bad. I have actually gotten evp's before during one of these rambling sessions talking about sports, or new equipment or the next investigation. The second one is not so good. Trying to trick yourself into thinking that noise you heard or that shadow you seen is activity. It's easy to try to drum up activity to excite yourself, but it's not the right thing to do. This leads to a lot of false positives and uninformed personal experiences. As a group you have to acknowledge that boredom will come, and you will have to deal with it. We have a couple of things we do that really helps us out. The first starts during training new investigators. We stress over and over to trainees that the slow days will come and things aren't always going to be fast paced. We provide them alternative ways to investigate so that it doesn't become repetitive. We also switch the teams up while we are investigating and send each team out with different equipment each time. We encourage breaks to be taken and we also have team meetings where we discuss different ideas or methods that we can apply. This keeps everyone involved and up to speed. It is important to me that all of our investigators stay focused and attentive during our investigations. As a team leader that is part of my job. A lot of the most important evidence you catch comes in the form of evp's and they are not known at the time of the recording. So if you give up and lose focus you could be passing up the opurtunity to catch something that may never be caught again. Maybe you or your team could try some of these techniques and see if they help you. Good luck and stay focused!
- Chad Mckenzie
Just wanted to hit on something since it seems like everyone is trying to be a ghost hunter. I want to explain how a team like ours gathers evidence and the amount of work that is involved.
Before we even begin an investigation we can have as much as 4 to 5 hours of getting equipment ready, packing and planning. You have to take your time at this since you don't want to be hours from home and realize you forgot something important. Then you have to drive to the location. Maybe and hour could be 6 hours. After we get there we spend about an hour on touring the location and getting ideas. We then spend 1 to 2 hours getting equipment in place. We use 4 sony night shot camcorders, 8 IR dvr cameras with 2 dvrs, wireless audio, motion sensors, IR trail cams, and up to 6 static audio recorders. This does not include the recorders, emf detectors, temp guns, cameras and other thing each investigators carry with them. after an investigation of 5 to 8 hours we then pack it all up and drive back home. For this example lets say we do an 8 hour investigation. It would break down like this.
Video - 12 cameras x 8 hours footage each = 96 hours. That is 96 hours of realtime video that has to be watched.
Audio - 2 wireless audio, 6 static recorders and 4 recorders with investigators = 96 hours of audio that has to be listened to.
On top of this, when we get evp's we go back and compare to video footage for confirmation, along with logging the evp's you can expect another 2 hours of work.
So we are now at almost 200 hours of work put in to one nights investigation. This is split between 4-6 people. So with jobs, kids and such it can take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to complete an investigation. A lot of work.
We use more equipment than most teams and this is our choice. We capture a lot of evidence because of the amount we use. Not every team is willing to put this much effort and time into it but it's the only way we like to do it. We complete around 10 to 15 investigations per year. As you can see, they are real investigation with a lot of hard work and time put into them. I hope by reading this that a wannabe ghost hunter can see the committment it takes. To be a part of KPI is hard work but rewarding. Not one team member complains and we always have a great time. I think we are the best. I may be biased but it is my honest opinion. Have a great day and happy hunting!
Chad Mckenzie
