Journaling Paranormal Activity

: Written by PPI Managment

For our clients' benefit, a journaling resource (to log witnessed occurrences of paranormal activity prior to an investigation) is available as a free-of-charge PDF download and includes sample journal entries....

Client_Resources--Journaling_Paranormal_Activity.pdf

One of the best things you can do to prepare for an upcoming investigation is to keep a journal over a period of four weeks or longer that logs occurrences and experiences you think might be paranormal. Should you and your household choose to share your journals with PPI, they can offer a cohort study that will assist our team in tailoring their investigation to the needs of the case. In fact, journaling has sometimes yielded enough conclusive evidence to make a full investigation superfluous. In most cases, though, a good journal is simply a research tool that helps uncover patterns such as when activity is likely to occur, increase, decrease, or coincide with other activities and circumstances

It can also serve to chronicle your own progress and keep behaviors like confirmation bias in check. (To learn more about these, see “Spooking Yourself: Confirmation Bias, Consensus Building, and Household Myth-Making”).

Finally, a journal can be a personal diary for details you may be unwilling to share with other household members. For those reasons, we encourage thorough and honest logging into your journal, but we naturally understand any request to submit a redacted version of your journal, or to withhold it altogether.

Below is an overview of the content most frequently recorded in an average journal entry:

PRIMARY INFO

Record the essential data.

your name
today’s date
the date of the occurrence (if different from today’s date)
time of occurrence (as precise as you can make it), in hh:mm
room or location where the event happened

SECONDARY INFO

Record secondary info about environmental conditions, if known.

Weather conditions
Solar activity
HVAC on/off
Outside noises (street noise, dogs barking, helicopters, etc.)
Inside noises (blaring tv/music, children at play, appliance noise, etc.)

WITNESSES

Note all witnesses

Who, besides you, also witnessed the event?
Who was present but did not witness the event?
Who was not present?
Don’t ask anyone else what they witnessed; work alone when you journal.

DETAILS

In your journal entries, reference and detail any of the sensory perceptions at right that are applicable, and describe what efforts you made, if any, to understand the anomalous occurrence.