The Beyond: Paranormal Articles & Editorials

~ Written By Pattyhap1863 ~

When I first came across Ardis Stembridge, it was through an article he had written on FATE Magazine, one of my favorite magazines of all time. His article completely blew me away. Forever critical of orbs, motion blurs and pareidolia, I had set up Ghostsamongus in order to start serious analysis of all these anomalies. The truth was out there, but apparently it was being fabricated and glossed over by thrill seekers. So, naturally, after I had read his article titled “The Paranormal Paradigm Shift”, I was so relieved! Here was a person who stood up for what I could summarize as “common sense”. Here was a person who stood up against the ‘dust chasers’ as he so aptly named them and finally someone who could put forth arguments in favor of knowledge and the truth.

Of course, everyone could argue that finally, after the success of paranormal TV shows, paranormal investigators are now recognized and given the attention they deserve. What these shows have done is show us a side to the paranormal that is full of thrills and ‘glitter’. It is exciting to watch these shows, and it does take us to the haunted locations we wish to visit, but the truth be told, full-bodied apparitions are not so common, nor EVPs are so readily captured. In true life, the endless hours of investigating a place can stretch out for weeks and even months or years.

Ardis Stembridge is a paranormal researcher who seeks knowledge and the truth of the after life. He started to investigate very young, but soon was dismayed to discover that the so-called ‘experts’ were wrong, and in many cases, fabricating evidence. He founded Credible Paranormal Investigations in order to take a stand in the paranormal world and offer honest and serious help to others as well as to one day finally satisfy his quest for irrefutable evidence of life after death.

How long have you been in the field?

I got interested in the field of paranormal research when I was fifteen years old. It wasn’t a profound paranormal experience that led me to study the paranormal. In a far less glamorous fashion, my interest sparked when I found a book called the Amityville Horror written by Jay Anson. It was the supposedly true story of a family who had moved into a home that had been the site of a set of grizzly murders perpetrated by a man named Ronald DeFeo. In court he claimed that demonic forces in the home had compelled him to commit the crimes. The family who later bought the home fled just after a handful of days residing in the home, claiming to have encountered the evil forces.

The case was investigated by famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren who validated the home to be haunted. I was completely intrigued by the couple and soon began to study their work. I was so impressed with what they were doing that my interests in investigating such phenomena grew, and before long, I found myself walking the rows of cemeteries and the halls of abandoned buildings in hopes of catching something paranormal with my 35mm camera. I later discovered the Amityville case to be a hoax and became disillusioned, felt betrayed, and to be honest, felt a bit silly. I realized everything I thought I knew about the paranormal was based on the lies of charlatans such as the Warrens and I began to doubt that ghosts existed at all. My small-scale investigations tapered off to a once in a while thing, though those brief moments spanned the years.

In 2006, my interests in the paranormal began to resurface so I had a lot of catching up to do. I discovered that things had not changed in the least and found that the field of paranormal research was being dominated by charlatan and hobby ghost hunters who used questionable tools and tactics to collect and produce readily available and naturally occurring phenomena as proof of the paranormal. Not to mention that Ed and Lorraine were still going strong just prior to Ed’s death. I decided that it was time to take a stand against the dust chasers and start investigating the paranormal objectively while leaving all the hocus pocus, mysticism, and failing paradigms behind. I formed Credible Paranormal with the hopes of bringing the era of the Dust Chasers to an end while finally bridging the gap between the paranormal investigator and main-stream science. So I guess it’s safe to say that I had been a naïve ghost hunter for seventeen years and a paranormal researcher for two.

What are your accomplishments?

This! This interview is an accomplishment! It shows that our brand of research is striking a chord with people such as yourself and your site-viewers. People are getting tired of the failing paradigms in paranormal research and they are searching for something more than what they are being offered by the era of televised ghost hunting, psychic intuition, and photographs of dust.

Quite honestly, I imagine that people are started to feel a little bit insulted by the evidential garbage that is being presented to them these days. Thousands of investigative groups have sprung up around the world who claim to be experts in a field that has produced absolutely no evidence of the paranormal. They claim to investigate objectively, yet they pursue phenomena that have absolutely nothing to do with the claims of activity they are supposedly investigating in the first place.

Many people out there are coming to terms with their mortality and they are seeking answers. They may not have the opportunity to look for these answers themselves so many of them turn to the web to see what the “professionals” are discovering. Once the appeal of the big names in ghost hunting wears thin, people start digging deeper and some of them eventually come across our humble group of Paranormal Researchers who seem to be on a different mission than the likes of Ryan Buell, Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Chip Coffey, and Lorraine Warren. Credible Paranormal gives people hope that is hard to find elsewhere.

So as far as accomplishments go, I’d have to say that the reality that our message is spreading is the greatest accomplishment that we have experienced. We get messages from all around the world from people who wish to express their gratitude that we are holding paranormal research to a higher standard. No sentiment has hit home for us more than the letters we get from people a thousand miles away who request to work with Credible Paranormal over all other groups they could hook up with in their own locales. Simply remarkable…Who could ask for more?

Which investigation do you remember most and why?

Well that investigation is still ongoing. Credible Paranormal’s mission is different than most. We do not believe that any group of paranormal investigators will ever prove the existence of ghosts. If it ever happens, it will only be accomplished through the hard work and research of main-stream science. Our job is to convince the scientific community that the paranormal, as it pertains to ghostly phenomena, is worth pursuing. It has always been our mission to find an investigation site that displays genuine, documentable, and most importantly, repeating phenomena, then secure that location to serve as a laboratory for the bigger brains that may come in to document and scrutinize what is occurring.

We are investigating a 158 year old Antebellum home in east Texas that is bringing us closer to that goal than we had ever expected to achieve. We have been investigating this anonymous home since August and have encountered repeating phenomena with each visit. From a repeating segment of a tune being played on a piano, to unexplainable voices, to intelligent interaction with us by something unseen, this house is proving to be a paranormal gem that we have exclusive investigation access to.

On our last visit in October, two investigators and I were in the attic of the home. As a test of intelligence, I requested that if anyone other than us were present, could they copy a knocking sound I made on the rafter. I tried the ole Shave and a Haircut tune. Immediately, something tapped the tune back to us and even included the last two taps (two bits) that I intentionally left off. This not only shows intelligence, but it also helped us narrow down the historical search. The Shave and a Haircut tune was a customary ending to most piano pieces played here in the states in the early part of the 1900’s. It was first used in 1899 which means that if it was a ghost that produced this sound for us, then they had to have passed away after that year. When you consider that we are also getting the sounds of a particular segment of a particular piano tune on our audio each time we visit, this new piece of evidence has us wondering if the potential ghost we are dealing with was a musician. This is something we can possibly validate through historical record. It’s all very exciting.

The worst part of investigating a location is:

Not having adequate access to the site. Due to the current trends in televised Ghost Hunting, people are under the false assumption that only a few hours are needed to validate whether or not a location is the site of something paranormal. This is an entirely unrealistic scenario. This sort of thing could take weeks, months, or even years to achieve, if at all. Having only a few hours to investigate a location is practically worthless to us. We need the necessary time to document phenomena and collect data. Unless we get extremely lucky, this will never happen in one night.

The best part of investigating a location is:

For me personally, it is the history of the location. We have had the opportunity to investigate places that are rich in history, many of which have never been investigated before. As an example, we investigated the Old Red Courthouse in downtown Dallas, just across the grassy knoll from the school book depository from which Oswald killed Kennedy. There is over a hundred years of history involved with that building and we wound up with free run of the place for a night. Late into the night, we climbed up into the attic and made our way to one of the turrets that overlooks the grassy knoll. On the old plaster walls, we found hundred of dates and names of people who found themselves up there. Some dated as far back as 1918. To our surprise, we found the name of Lee Harvey Oswald scratched into the plaster with the date 1962.

Why do you do this?

Like so many others, I am coming to terms with my own mortality. I’d like to have some sort of epiphany about my existence before I reach the twilight of my life.

What is you favorite tool when investigating and why?

I like my thermal cameras. They serve a far better purpose than documenting something paranormal. They help us eliminate the variables. Recording a voice on an audio recorder in an empty building is one thing, but when you have six different cameras covering the building that show no one was in it, or even remotely near it, then you have something far more valuable as far as evidence is concerned.

When did you first encounter something paranormal in your life?

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce myself as the only paranormal investigator on the planet who has never had an encounter with something I believe to be, without a doubt, paranormal. I have had a few strange things happen during our investigations, but nothing I’d dare step out on a limb and claim to be truly paranormal.

Have you ever had an unpleasant encounter with either an inhuman entity or evil spirit? If so, what was it?

The previous answer should suffice. I have had an experience where something seemingly kicked a bed I was sleeping in at a supposedly haunted location, but I can’t validate the experience with any evidence.

As far as the whole inhuman or evil spirit question goes… we do not accept those classifications within our research. To label something as being inhuman or demonic comes with the false assumption that someone has enough knowledge about the paranormal to place it in categories as different entities. Furthermore, we do not accept classifications such as poltergeists, elementals, incubi, succubae, and such. We simply classify phenomena by type- audible, visual, kinetic, intelligent, and unintelligent, etc…

What advice would you give newcomers in the field?

Forget everything you think you know about the paranormal. Start in a reset mode, and base your own understanding of it on the evidence that you, and you alone collect.

What would you do to improve the paranormal field and why?

I think the paranormal research community- the serious researchers of this phenomena, should unite into one solid organization that will hold accountable the types of investigators who take advantage of clients who genuinely feel they are experiencing something paranormal, by producing fake phenomena to validate the clients claims. If we do not establish a clear distinction between the honest researchers and the Dust Chasers, we will forever be lumped into the same category with them and the field will be doomed to failure because of it. Clients should have a way of validating an investigative team’s methods and motivations before inviting them into their personal space. Currently, they do not have that type of resource.

What do you do in your spare time?

This.

Visit Ardis Stembridge’s website: http://www.credibleparanormal.com/index.html

Please make sure to visit Patyhap1863’s website by clicking the banner below!