What to expect when you're expecting......

......a paranormal investigation!

So, you took the leap of faith and made the call to the Case Manager of Vegas Valley Paranormal (a.k.a ME). I have gone through a preliminary list of questions and by the end of it I have a pretty detailed idea of what is going on in your home. I also asked you about your religious preferences because this is a very important tool in how we investigate. I have also asked some questions that might appear a bit intrusive or personal, but they are very important in performing the investigation (you can't go to a doctor and only tell him a tiny bit about what is wrong and expect him to fix you, right?) I will end with the all important question: when do you want us to come over to investigate? If children are involved we will ask you to find accomodations for them for that evening for safety reasons.

Flash forward to the night of the investigation: you get a knock at your door and a team of investigators greets you. Normally we will be wearing our team shirts to identify us, however if you didn't want us to because you do not want the entire neighboorhood knowing that we are there, especially the nosy lady across the street, we will not have them on. Before we enter in to your home we will do a team prayer and get ourselves individually grounded in our chosen manner.

Depending on the size of your home the size of the team will vary. We might have three investigators or we might need to bring the entire crew. We will have an array of equipment to haul in, so get comfy while we get set up. We will have night vision cameras, a four to eight channel DVR system, audio recorders, motions sensors, digital cameras, a plasma ball, KII meters, EMF detectors.....all the stuff you have probably seen on the shows. We may or may not have you involved in the investigation and we will ask you to refrain from sitting behind the video monitor at center command. This is because we need to do our job and we can't if you are sitting there watching the monitor and commenting on every piece of dust flying across the screen because you KNOW it's an orb. Please. Leave that to the professionals.

Depending on what the claims are the investigation can range from three to six hours. When the investigation is over we will have a team prayer and you are usually welcome to join us in that. We will cleanse ourselves with sage before we leave and again, you are welcome to participate, but it is not mandatory. In an emergency case we will review the evidence and get back with you as quickly as possible, but please keep in mind that, depending on how long the investigation lasted, there is a LOT of evidence to look through. If there are four cameras then we review the video from each camera. It may take up to a week to get everything completed. We will sit down with you and review the evidence, if there was any.

This is a very generalized idea of what happens when we come over to your home. The purpose of this post is to really delve in to what our role is AFTER we have presented the evidence to you. I know it didn't start out that way and I would probably be slaughtered for it in a writing class, but I'm okay with that.

We make it VERY clear up front to our clients that we do NOT perform cleansings, banishings or exorcisms. We can provide you with counseling to help you deal with the activity in your home, but we CANNOT get "rid" of what is there. Yes, we come in and may or may not find activity, but at the end of the day the team goes home to our relatively quiet homes (although sometimes there is the risk of bringing home your "friends" with us if we are not careful). YOU are the one still living there.

We can point you in the direction of working with your clergy if you have any or getting your home life straightened out since entities feed off of negative energy. That is why we ask such personal questions. Alot of times we will pick up on things when we meet you that you have not even disclosed to us in the interview. If you as a client are dealing with marriage and family issues, job stress, mental illness, drug or alcohol abuse....ALL of those things have to be fixed by YOU, the client, before WE can truly help.

There have been some cases we have been involved in where the client has been upset with the team because they feel we "won't help them". That cannot be further from the truth. We help in the capacity in which we are able. I will say it again: we do NOT perform cleansings, banishings or exorcisms. Our job is to come in and investigate and bring you the findings, good, bad, or otherwise. Sometimes cases are considered "on-going or open", meaning you have given us an invitation to return at any time.

We help in the capacity that we are able to, professionally and personally. We are NOT licensed mental health experts and there are situations where we have to legally and ethically step away simply due to liability issues. This is not implying that you do not deserve help, but we cannot place ourselves in a situation where there is potential for a lawsuit if you do not like the results you get or you emotionally/mentally cannot handle it. We may insist you get a full psychological evaluation before we will return. We have to take into consideration EVERYTHING that is disclosed to us before we decide what our level of involvement will be.

Our team takes what we do and our reputation VERY seriously. I cannot sit aside and let unhappy or bitter clients run my teams name through the mud to other teams or organizations because they feel we "won't help" them. We will come to do the job you asked us to do. We will give you tips and counseling where we are ABLE to. Other than that, we have to place our findings in YOUR hands. It is up to you, as the client and the person living in your home, to do something with the knowledge and tools we have given you. YOU have to take control of your life, the situations around you, and take ownership if there are things you must change. We cannot help you if you continue to abuse your medications, you choose to remain in an abusive relationship, and you decide to drink yourself into a stupor by 11:00 am (and then you can't understand why the activity in your home isn't easing up).

I hope that does not come across offensively or too harsh. But there needs to be an understanding before we walk into your home that we cannot be expected to fix everything going on under your roof. We honestly DO care and that's why it is so upsetting to me when I hear about unhappy clients accusing us of something that is simply not true. We care to the point where we will drop what we are doing to run and help you. We will stay up late, all night when necessary after working a full shift at our regular jobs, and we do it free of charge (thanks to all of you who have provided us with coffee and energy drinks, by the way!!). We care to the point of putting ourselves out there on a spiritual battlefront....for YOU and we ask for nothing in return except for your happiness and for you to have a peaceful home. We have even been robbed of all of our equipment by a client and lost EVERYTHING worth thousands of dollars, but that hasn't deterred us. No way. We still gear up and come to your aid when you call. Why? Because we have all been in your shoes and we want to help you.

So PLEASE: call us if you need help. We do not care what time of day or night it is. But understand that YOU are an important part of the team as well. You need to do your part so WE can be successful at OURS.

     How Bruce McCormick got started in the paranormal investigation bizz.

Well the curiosity of it started when I was just a kid, I would hear of paranormal events taking place around my family all the time. Events to note would be a ghost stopping a refrigerator from falling on my Aunt. And at a family function a well know ghost that lives in the home was baby sitting us small kids. Crazy right?

     When I was in my early thirties I did a little research to see how some one could “Ghost hunt” Well at that time it appeared that I could only afford a voice recorder and another tip I got was to use a compass. In theory the compass works like an EMF detector. It would spin uncontrollably when a spirit was close to it.

     I asked my cousin if he wanted to check out the barn to see if it was haunted. This barn is on my Aunts property, every one in the family says they have seen something in there at one time or another or people passing through would say “That barn creeps me out.” My cousin said “Cool let’s give it a try.”

     We entered the barn about an hour after dusk; we set the compass up on a small table and placed the voice recorder next to it. A few hours had passed with no activity at all so we decided to take a little break. We left the compass and the voice recorder inside the barn just in case. When we went back into the barn the compass was laying about five feet from the table. My cousin and I just stared at it for a minute then looked at each other. We attempted to make the compass move that far by bumping the table and jumping on the ground next to the table, but we could not get the same effect. We listened to the voice recorder and we could hear it hit the ground, we did not hear it leave the table but could clearly hear it hit the ground.

     That was my first paranormal investigation and my launch into bigger and better things.

Written by: Bruce McCormick

Member of Vegas Valley Paranormal (VVP)