An activities log is strongly recommended if, in the course of a private in-home investigation, you or your team follow a structured set of tasks such as set-up, interviews, baseline sweeps, vigils, etc. Who was on surveillance duty? Which activity was done when, and how long did it take? Where in the venue did it occur? Who participated, and who didn’t participate? The answers to these and similar questions are useful to document for a number of reasons....

AVP. Audible Voice Phenomena. Are they really from beyond the grave? Regardless of how you value them, a little knowledge about the most common varieties of them and the issues that should be addressed with them will go a long way to making your account of your investigation something others can depend on....

While other groups may choose to honor a more metaphysically based approach to the subject, for PPI paranormal phenomena are first and foremost an exercise in careful environmental monitoring. Establishing a baseline of readings is fundamental to conducting our investigations according to the scientific method....

The American originator of EVP Classification system, Sarah Estep, describes the Class A event of interest as a "clear and distinct voice or sound that is universally accepted and undisputed, because it must be understood by anyone with normal hearing and without being told or prompted to what is being said or heard. It can be heard without the use of headphones.” Estep here is talking about the consensus that forms around what’s clear and trustworthy....

Class B EVPs suffer from an identity crisis, fraught with credibility issues and doubt.  As such, they're easy to misclassify.  In fact, the uncertainty about so many Class B EVPs has raised many a debate as to whether or not another system for classification should be used....

Why are Class C EVPs the most common, you may ask? Probably because they're the least likely to be paranormal. Some could be paranormal, certainly, but they're usually too obscured to say with any certainty that they're not caused by some other normal acoustic source in the environment, much less interpret what exactly they're saying....

EVP are probably the most prolific results produced by paranormal investigations.  There are good things about this, and there are bad things.  The bad news is that, working under the assumption evidence of the paranormal is a rarity, with so many examples of EVP populating the internet, the likelihood any of it being genuinely "paranormal" is pretty low.

Although the purpose of any “ghost hunting” vigil is varied, its primary objective is to transcommunicate: to make “contact” with putative spirits and carry on an exchange. Audio-visual recording is the preferred technique because it, both, documents a session and yields the most intriguing findings in the recorded audio: electronic voice phenomena....

PPI Investigator Debra Page, a specialist in world religions, discusses one of the rarer forms paranormal phenomena in "Elemental Haunting: An Overview for the Paranormal Researcher." 

If you’re an amateur paranormal researcher, and you’re sharing your media and data files with others, then you are obligated to name your files with data that catagorically identifies its content and assigns it a unique address in your database. Furthermore, an investigative group trying to build its own paranormal library of evidence must, out of necessity, use a system of file naming protocols to make cataloguing possible, and, in the case of client outreach, protect the privacy of your client....

The technical side to paranormal investigating can be confusing, and different philosophies about the paranormal can lead to radically different approaches in the field....

Of the three most commonly reported types of haunting phenomena, the intelligent haunt is by far the most intriguing. Reports of intelligent haunts have been recorded for thousands of years by every culture around the world. Are there common threads of truth that bind these reports together?

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 andincludes sample journal entries....

Even in the earliest days at PPI, I was heavily involved in the report-writing side of things. In fact, I created the report system PPI continues to use today. Consequently, other team members submitted to me their “evidence”— which is what we were still calling it back then. They provided me with short narratives about their data and experiences, and even if they'd summarily say, "Found nothin'," they’d still burn their digital audio and photos onto writable CDs, which I then documented piecemeal and added to the report as fussily word-processed charts....

A paranormal investigation is theater—the good ol’ fashioned kind that comes out of rituals. When the rituals are collaborative, as they often are in, say, an EVP vigil, the theater is participatory as well, and everyone participates even when they have no lines. Participants want to compare notes, corroborate one another’s claims, and get in on social camaraderie of swapping anecdotes....

For our debut podcast, we join three members of Pacific Paranormal Investigations during a fireside chat on Halloween Night. Brian Miller, Brian Johnson and Tim Mountain discuss all things paranormal in a casual and spontaneous manner.

Recorded October 31, 2008.

Length: 00:13:25

Part 3 of our presentation: Science & Beyond - A Look at the Science Behind 21st Century Paranomrmal Investigation -is entitled Evidence Analysis - Wrong Thinking, Seeing Ain't Believing and Can You Hear Me Now? Presented by PPI President Karl Sherlock.

Recorded October 11, 2011

Length: 00:35:48

Travel back in time through the PPI audio archives for the second of a series of a special interviews with June Reading, Director and Curator of the Whaley House Museum in Old Town San Diego, CA. June shares her personal experiences at the Whaley House with PPI Investigator Brian Miller during a busy winter afternoon at the museum.

Recorded 1982

Length: 00:36:33

Join Pacific Paranormal Investigations and Savannah Sincoff,LCSW, for a lively discussion following the Intrepid Shakespeare Company's production of The Turn of the Screw, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the novella by Henry James. PPI and Savannah Sincoff disect the story and characters of The Turn of the Screw as if it were a modern day paranormal investigation. Moderated by Tom Hall.

Recorded April 15, 2012 at the Performing Arts Center of theSan Dieguito Academy, Encinitas, CA

Length: 00:45:18

We join members of Pacific Paranormal Investigations during their fifth annual fireside chat on Halloween Night. Karl Sherlock, Brian Miller, Tim Mountain, Debra Page, Larry Page and Tracy Evans discuss children and the paranormal and the nature of EVP in a spontaneous conversation.

Recorded October 31, 2012

Length: 01:08:35

Part 1 of PPI's presentation: Science and Beyond- An Educated Look at Ghost Hunting, is entitled Investigative Techniques. Presented by PPI Investigator and Case Manager Jason Sieckman.

Recorded March 21, 2009 at Grossmont College, El Cajon, CA

Length: 00:17:12

Part 2 of PPI's presentation: Science and Beyond- An Educated Look at Ghost Hunting, is entitled Tools of the Trade. Presented by PPI Tech Manager and Co-Director Brian Miller.

Recorded March 21, 2009 at Grossmont College, El Cajon, CA

Length: 00:14:23

Part 3 of PPI's presentation: Science and Beyond - An Educated Look at Ghost Hunting, is entitled Critical Thinking and Logic. Presented by PPI President and Co-Director Karl Sherlock.

Recorded March 21, 2009 at Grossmont College, El Cajon, California

Length: 00:17:04

We join members of Pacific Paranormal Investigations during a fireside chat on Halloween Night. Brian Miller, Brian Johnson, Tim Mountain and TAPS West Coast Case Manager Tracy Evans discuss all things paranormal in a casual and spontaneous manner.

Recorded October 31, 2009.

Length: 00:32:51

Travel back in time through the PPI audio archives for the first of a series of a special interviews with June Reading, Director and Curator of the Whaley House Museum in Old Town San Diego. June Reading and Anita Kerwin share their personal experiences at the Whaley House with PPI Investigator Brian Miller during a busy winter afternoon at the museum.

Recorded January 7, 1982

Length: 00:25:34

We join members of Pacific Paranormal Investigations during a fireside chat on Halloween Night. Karl Sherlock, Brian Miller, Tim Mountain, Lillie Chase, Gary Eidsmoe, Debra Page, Larry Page and Alexis Miller discuss all things paranormal in a casual and spontaneous manner.

Recorded October 31, 2010

Length: 00:49:03

Part 1 of our presentation: Science & Beyond - A Look at the Science Behind 21st Century Paranomrmal Investigation -is entitled Investigative Techniques.

presented by PPI Investigator Jason Sieckman. Introduction by PPI Investigator Tim Mountain.

Recorded October 11, 2011

Length: 00:17:32

Part 2 of our presentation: Science & Beyond - A Look at the Science Behind 21st Century Paranomrmal Investigation -is entitled Tools of the Trade. Presented by PPI Tech Manager Brian Miller.

Recorded October 11, 2011

Length: 00:19:25

A list of recommended books, with links to available on-line booksellers

In "Residual Haunts: Why Is This Happening Again & Again?" Tim Mountain reviews the basics of a certain classification of paranormal activity: the recurrent haint, also known as a residual haunting, 

While it can sometimes become as tedious as any other component of the post-investigation process, audio review is among the most rewarding phases of an investigation. Not only does it tend to produce proportionally more results than any other data set, it generally offers the most intriguing findings. In fact, most investigators will cite their best EVP as their most persuasive "evidence" of paranormal activity. This is because the voices that emerge from out of that an unseen realm, so fallibly human and familiar to us, invariably appeal to our pathos in ways cold spots and orb photos could never hope to....

In "Spooking Yourself: Confirmation Bias, Consensus Building, and Household Myth-Making," Karl Sherlock explains one of the most frequent pitfalls in claiming to witness paranormal activity, and warns against two of the most common behaviors that result from it, manufacturing consensus and collaborating on household myths.

For many reasons, establishing and following a clear set of surveillance protocols during investigations is crucial. For starters, anyone claiming to honor the scientific method in paranormal investigating understands the importance of controls. By “controls,” we mean those precautions taken to contain how data is collected, to limit contamination of that data, and to identify potential misinterpretations and false positives....