PARADIMENSIONS ARTICLE :.

HAUNTED BY THE PRESS

  Posted Nov 05.03

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but I personally like dealing with the media about as much as I enjoy passing kidney stones.

In the past, we've been abused, misquoted, and belittled on a regular basis by TV, radio, and newspapers. In all, I'd say out of every four interviews and articles we've done, maybe one is a "winner".

It seems, to increase the "giggle factor" on paranormal research, reporters and media personalities will take those of us who do hard work in the field and try to present excellent data and working hypotheses on the subject of the paranormal and toss us into a "GhostBusters" mentality... You know... "Ooooo! Aren't you SCARY little ghost-busters! Here now, talk into the microphone and say something silly!"... Anything to sell soap.

When it comes to the ourselves (and I'm sure many, many, others...), do the reporters and media types ask us about the work we've done and are currently doing with several universities across North America? Do they ask us about current work, cases, and hypotheses being looked into? Heck, do they even ask about how some witnesses handle and deal with sightings and experiences?

Nope. Apparently not.

They're only interested in "Be scary for us!"

One major media corporation (a large TV network) contacted us about doing a TV show for them. We negotiated how it would be done... They were only interested in having myself on and one other person. I said no. I wanted a team. I openly told them that the place they wanted to venture into had been excellent to gather data in and, had they wanted, we would perform and actual investigation and share our findings and I would relent and give a full interview to them about the site and our past experiences.

All seemed well and they agreed... Then, after a few meetings, they asked "Can you guys play it more dramatically? You know, scream and run around and such?"

I gave them a VERY simple answer... "No."

"Hey!" they said, and I must paraphrase, "Do you know who we are? We're 'X' Large U.S. Media Corp. and this means business for you!"

Business for us? We're non-profit! We don't make money for our work and, as is true in most media requests, we weren't getting paid for even our work with them!

I told them that we would ONLY do respectable work and be HONEST and they backed down... once again and the show seemed to be a go.

Four days before the investigation, I was on a conference call with the GHRS and ParaResearcher's team that had assembled for the investigation and people from 'X' Large Media Corp. and we were working out the details of times and dates... The producer then dropped the bomb...

"We've decided that we only want Matthew and one other person for the show. No one else can come."

"Excuse me?" I said a tad indignantly, "What about our agreements? I wouldn't be doing the show if it wasn't a chance to get back into [the site that we wanted to go into] so it's the team or no one!"

"If you don't do this," the producer said, "you want get nationwide media exposure!"

"I don't want that!" I told her and explained that we don't want exposure like that as it's not really conducive to our work and we are based in Ontario, Canada anyway.

"So you'd turn down an offer to work in New York City?" she asked.

"Yes." I said. "I can't afford to fly to New York!" (This was before there was a Western New York Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society, mind you... Not that I'd be able to go now, but the team there might be able to.)

"DO YOU KNOW WHO *WE* ARE!?!?" the producer blasted at me?

"Yes, you're 'X' Large Media Corporation who brought us..." and I reminded them of one of their more embarrassing and "lowest common denominator" shows they had aired.

Oddly enough, they dropped the project and never called me back.

I have been asked, by various media outlets, to (stealing a recent term from the BBC) "sex up" investigations with blatant lies, use "fog machines", and once, I was even asked if I could "dance" to the "Ghostbusters" theme for a camera.

On all those occasions, I said "NO!" and walked away.

Call me odd but I see "Paranormal Research and Investigation" as a legitimate study and yes, a legitimate science. I will always try VERY hard not to sell out ideals and thoughts for a moment of shakey fame so some twit can get a good "Ookey-Spookey" story for their paper or company.

I want to see the phenomena studied. I want to see historic sites and whatnot accept and embrace their "ghostly heritage" and let people ask questions and learn about the phenomenon and, in the process, probably a little about their own history and themselves as human beings.

If I wanted "fame", I would have leapt over Niagara Falls and attempted to survive... Not sold out to a media frenzy at Halloween.

Okay, sure we've been lucky a couple of times and some of the media we've had has been decent... but, like I said, most has been just awful.

In some cases, I should learn... The Toronto Sun did an article on ParaResearchers of Ontario a couple of years ago. The reporter spoke to the team (and ourselves as we're a sister site) and some witnesses at a "ghost event".

The reporter gave a "witness account" and, instead of using the actual witnesses name, he got cute and said "Let's just call them Not Sue". Did this twit realise that the director of the organisation was NAMED SUE? Most people assumed, incorrectly, that "Not Sue" was "Sue" being 'cute'!

Well, I should have learned, but I didn't... After openly saying last year that I was avoiding the media, I relented this year and let a Toronto Sun reporter interview me... It was a different reporter, but I did let it happen. As usual, I wish I hadn't.

Here's some notes about the article...

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http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2003/10/31/242368.html
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TORONTO SUN ARTICLE TITLE:
This job is plain spooky - Researcher tries, but can't debunk all tales

Matthew: Hunh? I'm a "debunker"? I told them I read, research, and investigate all reports... Debunking is part, sure, but it's not the only thing and I did make that abundantly clear.

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ARTICLE: His ghostly experiences started when he was 14, living in Leaside. Aside from poltergeist activity, the house saw three healthy 50-year-olds die of massive heart attacks, his father one of them.
It was too much of a coincidence.

Matthew: This wasn't the catalyst... In fact, it was something we found out much later... There was "stuff" happening before my father passed and after. It was the "manifestations" much more than the coincidence or ??? about the deaths at the home that spurred my studies.

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ARTICLE: It first started with photos -- balls of light that people said were ghosts, or a rainstorm where people saw a ghost -- but it was never a ghost. It was a ball of light, or a raindrop.

Matthew: The reporter asked me about photos and I told her how I never put much stock in orbs and worked towards an answer that was acceptable to myself about them... How it ended up as the quote above, you got me as I didn't come close to saying the above!

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ARTICLE: So Didier set out to find natural causes for the so-called paranormal phenomena. He launched www.torontoghosts.org on the Web in 1997 and it soon became an international information site.

Matthew: I don't know where the above came from. I did say that we try to look for natural causation to rule it out before stating the event or phenomena is anomalous. Also, pure investigation was not how our site got started. The reporter was told the whole story but I guess it wasn't too interesting for her.

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ARTICLE: Didier and his group investigate with an infrared night-vision camera, a camcorder and a thermometer.

Matthew: Well, that's about less than 20% of the answer! We use many different tools (and the reporter was told all this) of which, the most important are "pad and pencil"... and human eyes, ears, and common sense. Again, I guess this answer "doesn't sell soap". Actually, when she asked this, I spoke at length about our Electro-Magnetic findings and that we are still using EMF Detectors and how the "truth" about EMF is very interesting... She ignored it. (See http://www.torontoghosts.org/emfmyth.htm)

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ARTICLE: Sometimes it's more. In those cases, he said, "the first course of action, if you're religious, is to go to your church. If you're religious, it's the clerical duty to bless your home. It's a freebie."

Matthew: This is the worst of the lot. The reporter was pushing me for "exorcism information" (and pushing very, very, hard and I did bring her "pushing" to her attention asking "What is this article on? Do you want to talk to someone about house clearings?") and I told her, repeatedly, that we (the GHRS) does not 'clear homes', but if someone needed help and wanted to do this, we'd offer them the following ideas... I started with the one above (getting a cleric to bless your home) and I cautioned folks not to spend money on a "clearing" when most respectable groups, be they religious or psychical, will usually not "charge" for the services to help you. To say this is a "first course of action" is absolute nonsense and, to be honest, I never said it this way! Not everyone believes in clearing, not everyone thinks it's a good idea to clear, and in some cases, not everyone wants things to be cleared.

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ARTICLE: How do people react to unexplained phenomena? "Usually with the first experience, people are terrified. The second, they're scared. The third, however, they are so cheesed off because the ghost hasn't hurt them and they're waiting to see another. Basically, the fear turns into fascination."

Matthew: Misquoted again... I said that most researchers and investigators I know, if indeed they've had an experience (not all have) it frightens or startles them at first, but with more experiences, interest and fascination grows and that leads them to actively look for or into the phenomena.

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Okay, enough personal "media bashing", but on one last note...

Most ghost enthusiasts have heard of "The Myrtles Plantation" in Louisiana. Ghost story enthusiasts have heard of (or seen the TV shows that feature) the stories of the slave Chloe who has an affair with the plantations owner and then ends up poisoning the plantation's owner, wife, and children? Proof positive is a picture of what seems to be a "shadowy" Chloe and two kids on a roof? Then there's a mirror that seemingly ghostly hand prints won't wash off from?

Guess what?

It's all bunk. The media has mislead us and, for the record, I bought the stories too before some boffo work from our group in Virginia.

To quote the Virginia Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society's website...
http://www.virginiaghosts.com/myrtles_hoax.php - - - - - -

The Myrtles wasn't known to be haunted until the 1970s - all of the ghost stories originate around this time period. One of the ladies I talked to her family lived there from the time the Stirlings sold it in the late 1880 till 1955 and she never heard and stories of ghosts. Today she still lives on part of the original Myrtles property she inherited.

A copy of all the slave holdings David Bradford and Clark Woodrooff (which I got at the courthouse) have no mention of a slave named Chloe

The courthouse records also indicate that Sarah and the two children did die but not from poison but from yellow fever all within a years time. Sarah dying first

The only murder to ever take place at the Myrtles was that of William Winter - The true account can be found in a local paper of the day. William was called out onto the side gallery and when he got out there he was hit by a single shotgun blast to the chest and he fell dead right there. Never did he make his way back up the stairs and die at his wife's feet.

The famous mirror - that mirror was never in the house until it was remodeled in the late 1970's.

Nothing in the home today is original except one small piece in the dinning room that was sent back years latter from the Woodrooff family

The reason none of the tour guides wanted to talk about the ghosts is because the Louisiana Historical Society has gotten on them (reprimanded them) several times about talking about the ghost on day tours. If they get caught they can loose their statues with the state. That is why they do the weekend mystery tours.
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It'd be nice if all those "ghost shows" that featured The Myrtles showed the "legend" and the truth... I doubt it would "ruin the story" and it doesn't discount the possibility of ghostly phenomena existing at the site... in fact, if there's a lot of recent witness testimony, it opens up a whole new thought about what's happening at The Myrtles... "Tulpas" of a sort maybe?

People that read this might also be interested in ParaResearcher's article about "The Most Haunted House in Canada", Mackenzie House in Toronto at
http://www.pararesearchers.org/Ghosts/mack/mack.html

THE LONG (yes, I know... too long an article) and the short of it is, you, as a paranormal enthusiast should be aware and if you, like me, would like to see the studies taken seriously, do your best to let people know...

As weird as it sounds, as unusual as it may seem...sometimes, the media embellishes things... Gotta sell soap! Gotta sell papers! Gotta get the ratings up! ...and all at the low expense of a studies credibility and your's and my own... the general public's... intelligence. Gotta keep that "giggle factor" shored up so no one, outside enthusiasts, investigators, researchers, and witnesses take it all seriously!

I guess in 2004, like 2002, I'll be avoiding the media like the black death.

Maybe one day they'll present better things and present us enthusiasts, investigators, and researchers in a much better light.

Until then... Media paranormal coverage is a case of caveat emptor.

Thanks for reading me rant...

Matthew James Didier

Addendum and Shameless Plug: Actually, one of our best "media forums" and one we're proud of is the monthly "gig" we have on Errol Bruce-Knapp's radio program, Mind/Shift on Toronto's CFRB on Sundays between 10pm and 1am EST. Errol has always let us complete thoughts, finish sentences, and has always allowed us to stay focused on topics without "jazzing" up the content of our comments and notes. Errol has been doing paranormal radio shows for a very long time starting with the UFOlogical based "Strange Days Indeed..." (Saturday nights) and more recently with Mind/Shift which is it's "coverall paranormal" sister show. EBK has a very good rapport with most researchers in the field. Information on these shows are available below...

Strange Days Indeed... http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/sdi/program/
Mind/Shift - http://www.virtuallystrange.net/mindshift/

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