Feature Articles

An interview with David Taylor of Parasearch - a paranormal research and investigation organisation based in the
English Midlands.

How did you become interested in the paranormal?

I suppose like people who are actively involved in the investigation of the paranormal my interest began as a child. I always had an interest, like most young boys, in monsters and science fiction. I can remember secretly staying up late on a Saturday night to watch the late night horror movie - old black and white classics like Dracula and Frankenstein. Fantastic! What is probably more unusual is that I became actively involved at a young age, thanks to my uncle. Following his own UFO sighting, he joined the British UFO Society (now sadly no more!) and before long he had become Chairman and my father had become Vice-Chairman. So Saturday evenings for me were spent round at my uncle?s house sitting in on committee meetings. For me this was fascinating. We were discussing real reports from real people. My eyes must have been as wide as saucers, sitting there munching biscuits and listening to reports of UFOs and their occupants!

From there I devoured everything I could read on the paranormal. I eventually became a member of the Society for Psychical Research, The Ghost Club, and the Unitarian Society for Psychical Studies and the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena of which I am an Accredited Investigator.

How did you come to start Parasearch?

In 1986, while at Stourbridge Art College I co-founded a group called Parasearch with two other friends, Lynn Smith and Matthew Yeo. For the other two it was more to do with having their own Ghostbusters (they were great fans of the film), but for me it was far more serious. With the end of college the group carried on with just me. A few years later when, thanks to the help of Pauline Smith, whose haunted house I had been investigating, Parasearch started to organise public meetings and lectures. Ghosts, UFOs, earth mysteries, paganism, parapsychology, cryptozoology, spiritualism - you name it - we organised a lecture on it! Through all the inevitable publicity for this, I met up with fellow ASSAP (Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) member, Chris Wright. It wasn?t too long before we had a group together to investigate ghosts, hauntings and poltergeists. I can never quite work out how it happened, but people began to find out about Parasearch and were soon contacting us to investigate their experiences. Pubs, factories, houses - all kinds of places. 

As the years have passed our numbers have grown. Although we are mainly a Midlands based group, we also have members in the south of England. We are lucky to have a wide range of professions as members - college and university staff, police, biochemists, business managers, care workers, a psychologist and psychiatrist and even a nuclear physicist! We are also fortunate to have local author Anne Bradford as a member. She has produced a prolific amount of books on Worcestershire ghosts. I have co-author a book entitled ?Haunted Holidays? with Anne.

What sort of cases have you investigated?

I suppose the most famous cases we have been involved with are Wem and Belgrave Hall. Wem, a small village in Shropshire, hit the national (and international) headlines in 1995 when the Town Hall burnt down. Nothing too unusual there you may think. But not long after this, builders working in the ruins of the building soon began to report strange happenings, like white misty figures and unexplainable footprints. All of this generated a little local media interest, which persuaded a local man to come forward with a photograph he had taken on the night of the fire. 

The photograph (left) is truly amazing. It?s nothing like the so-called ?spirit? photographs you come across on the Internet today. Most of those are easily explainable. What this photograph shows is a definite figure standing on the fire escape of the burning building. It looks like it may be a little girl. The Fire Brigade and photographic experts all agree, that due to the intense heat of the fire, it is impossible for any human being to be standing on the fire escape so close to the fire. As to what the figure is? Who can say with any certainty? I am fairly sure it is not a hoax. The photographic expert (a past president of the Royal Photographic Society) who we had examine the negative could find no evidence of fraud. At the end of the day, Parasearch were the only group to conduct a thorough scientific investigation of the case, and we still regard it as unexplained.

Another case, again involving an image caught on film, came to our attention in 1999. In December 1998 the security camera at Belgrave Hall Museum, Leicester, captured an unusual white image. As the Hall already had a reputation of being haunted, it was suggested that the image may have been the ghost of the Hall. Thanks to the lightning fast reactions of our Secretary, Carolyn Adey we were the first group on the case. Along with fellow investigators from ASSAP, we were the only group to conduct a series of scientific based investigations at the Museum. The image on the security video was our first concern. One of our team, Andrew Homer, volunteered to climb to the top of an extremely tall ladder to throw a variety of objects in front of the security camera. We eventually identified the ?ghostly? image as an oak leaf! The rest of the Museum?s ghosts have so far proved a little harder to explain away!

How often do you carry out investigations and how do you organise them?

We basically get involved in two types of investigations. The first type of case we get come mainly from people who believe that their house is haunted. They are usually very down to earth people with little previous interest in the paranormal. Quite understandably they are scared and concerned by what is going on in their home. In many instances we find that there is a natural explanation for what they report. These natural explanations themselves broadly fall into two categories. The first are incidents involving central heating pipes, birds/mice in the attic, house subsidence etc. Recognised natural explanations. The second category involves electromagnetic and other energy fields. I use the term ?energy field? (and not so-called ?spirit energy?) in its broadest sense. This may include geomagnetic and infra-sound. These ?fields? are not yet fully understood or recognised, but we have found instances where people who believe that their house is haunted also have high levels of electromagnetic/geomagnetic fields in their homes. A good example of this is a case we had a few years ago

What?s the most convincing case you?ve studied? What has been the most unnerving?

The great philosopher William James once said ? In order to disprove the law that all crows are black it is enough to find one white crow?. This is highly applicable to the paranormal. There isn?t one single case that I would say is wholly convincing. Each case has its elements that we investigators call ?Acceptance Levels?. Over the years we have had several experiences that amount to being fairly impressive. At a poltergeist case we investigated in 2002 we were fortunate enough to actually hear the ?bumps? described by the witnesses coming from under the floor on the ground floor. At a haunted pub one of our investigators saw a very realistic apparition of a man. She could even describe the period clothes he was wearing. It was only a little later that we found out that the figure had appeared where a door used to be when the building was a medieval manor house. And at a theatre in Shropshire two of our investigators were fortunate enough to witness a while ?pillar? of light appear momentarily in mid air before it vanished. Luckily a video recorder was pointing in the same direction, so the event was captured on film (see picture on the left). It is incidents like these that, while not over dramatic or spectacular by themselves, together they amount to some interesting evidence. As the great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant wrote: ?I do not come wholly to deny all truth to the various ghost stories, but with the curious reservation that I doubt each one of them singly, yet have some belief in them all taken together?

Does the geographical area you study have its own peculiarities as far as paranormal phenomena go?

Not really. We have found that ghosts are such a universal phenomena that they are not confined to any one particular regional characteristic. There is some evidence, however, that ghosts (along with a lot of other paranormal activity) can be centred on specific areas. In UFOlogy these are called ?Window Areas?. For example we found a high percentage of ghosts reports in and around Dudley in the West Midlands. 

They seemed to centre around the area where, in 2002, the Dudley earthquake had its epicentre! Similarly, other researchers around the world have noticed that reports of strange phenomena seem to ?cluster?. Examples of this can be found in ?The Mothman Prophesies? by John Keel.

Do you think the scientific community will ever accept the evidence, such as that collected by yourselves, for unexplained phenomena and study it seriously?

That?s a tricky one to answer. When it comes to the paranormal, there are few scientists today who are willing to put their neck on the block and risk professional suicide. This attitude probably originates for two sources. First, the modern Western world?s attitude to science. The philosophy of the scientific method states that experimentation and observation, properly understood and applied, can avoid the influence of cultural and social values and so build up a picture of a reality independent of the observer. This reliance on empiricism, the belief that all knowledge is ultimately derived from sense experience, has become the cornerstone of modern Western thought.

Empiricism developed in the 17th/18th centuries through the work of Locke, Berkely and Hume. It displaced the Cartesian world view, based on the theories/philosophy of Descartes, who believed that that the Universe could be explained solely by means of deduction. So, Western science is solely based on objective observation. Scientists are clinical objective observers. Wrong.

American historian of science and philosopher Thomas Kuhn showed that social and cultural conditions affect the directions of science. He argued that even scientific knowledge is relative, dependent on the paradigm that dominates a scientific field at the time. Such paradigms are so dominant that they are uncritically accepted as true until another 'scientific revolution' creates a new orthodoxy.  And secondly money. Research grants are becoming harder and harder to obtain. I think it is also important to remember that our approach to the paranormal should not be solely via the physical sciences. Social sciences, such as anthropology, have more to offer in our understanding of the paranormal. Anthropologists, for example integrate themselves and study and monitor, which is closer to what we as paranormal investigators do. Also, on an academic side, ghosts are gaining a certain level of respectability. A researcher at Coventry University, Vic Tandy, has been doing some very interesting research into infra-sound and the perception of apparitions. Parasearch are fortunate enough to be the only group in the country assisting with this research in the ?field?. With Vic?s assistance, we have developed and built infra-sound monitoring devices. Also, at Durham University in 2002, they held a conference on the historical aspect of ghosts in Early Modern Europe.

How can someone who lives in the Midlands find out more about Parasearch and how can they join or take part in investigations?

One of the easiest ways is via the Internet. People can find out more about us by visiting our website (details below). This will give them a good idea exactly what we do and how we approach the subject. We are primarily an active investigation group covering the areas of Worcestershire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and the West Midlands, so bear that in mind (sorry, but no membership applications from overseas!!). We are looking for people who live in these areas and who want to become actively involved in the serious investigation of the paranormal. This involves attending regular monthly committee meetings in Worcestershire, regular all night vigils, meetings and investigating witnesses claims, research in libraries and archives and the occasional social evening (it?s not all work you know!). We also run regular research projects. We have several of these on the go at the same time. These include Remote Viewing and Dream Experiments, with a lot more planned for the future under the watchful eye of our Research Officer George Gregg. 

So if anyone in the Midlands is interested in getting involved the serious, objective, investigation of the paranormal they can visit our website:  Email me, or phone on: 0776 1184837

Thanks to David for taking the time to do this interview.