Presearch? When To Do Research

by: Angela Pippinger

You got the call. A family needs help. They have strange activity and they are scared. To make matters worse, they have heard rumors about possible murder or suicides in the home. So when do you do the research on the property?

Most teams do some sort of research on a site. Sometimes the research takes longer than others; it really depends on if you’re looking over recent history or if you are searching for something specific. But when to do the research is often questioned.

Let’s begin with presearching. Basically, research before actually doing the investigation on site. One of the benefits of doing it first is you can debunk rumors. It can be great to be able to tell someone that someone wasn’t murdered in their home or that suicides did not happen. At the same time it can cause problems. Paranormal Investigators and Psychics are humans and can be influenced by knowing too much. So sometimes knowing information on a property before hand can skew the outcome of your investigation. Perhaps the previous female owner of the home did die in the home, any EVP could sound like a female.From the psychic perspective you lose credibility at being able to pass on information that is already known. David Acorah became a household name once he was accused of knowing information prior to an investigation. So from my perspective, although presearching can have a benefit it still would be best to wait until later to do the research.

Upon discussing this upcoming article with a fellow investigator, he raised the possibility of researching during an investigation. Now I personally have not heard of a team doing this but it’s certainly not impossible. Assuming an investigation is done at night this would more or less leave research only online. Most libraries are just not open at night (at least not in our town!). As vast as the internet is, you can’t always find the information on the site. Sometimes you can, it all depends on what is available and if someone has the knowledge on knowing where to find it. Now if an investigation is done during the day, sure you can send someone to county courthouse and library to find info. I think it would make the investigation that much more interesting because the investigators are still not going to know until after they are finished.

Most typically research is done post investigation. I find this to be most typical with groups that are not large enough to send someone out during a day time investigation. I prefer this method because it insures that there are no biases involved with the examination of evidence. It insures that in the event you’re using a psychic, they haven’t been compromised and keep their credibility. It also insures that the research can take as long as necessary in the event you run into dead ends. You won’t feel like you are under some sort of time constraint like you might with presearch or research during. So ultimatley, I vote for research post investigation!