WARNING: You have no idea what you’re messing with! Do not provoke without a partner, and do this at your own risk.

Before getting involved in provoking an entity, you want to make ABSOLUTELY sure that both you AND your partner are prepared for the possible consequences. NEVER provoke without your partners consent. There are a lot of stories of angry spirits physically attacking investigators who engage in the act of provoking. Weather you believe those stories, or not is irrelevant. Consider yourself warned.

 

What Is Provoking?

In case you don’t know, provoking is taunting or saying mean things to a spirit in an attempt to make it angry to ‘provoke’ a response. Start a fight with it! It’s a technique used by many investigators, and ghost hunters to possibly encourage the entity to manifest itself either physically, or audibly in a negative way.

 

The Controversy

The idea of provoking spirits remains a controversial one. There are investigators that consider it a valuable tool in gathering evidence, while there are others who disagree with its practice, and feel that it’s a bad idea all around. They feel that those that provoke are, reckless, unethical, amoral, and a lot of other judgmental things.

The act of ‘Provoking’ is treated in a very similar manor as the use of a Ouija Board, albeit the hatred and closed mindedness regarding the practice is not as universal, or as widespread.

 

My Rules For Provoking

For me to use provoking, certain rules, and guidelines must be met. If they aren’t met, I’m not going to use provoking. It’s that simple. You’re welcome to use them as well, or throw them away entirely. You’re not going to be judged by me, and regardless of what other holier-than-thou, closed-minded investigators think, you’re not bound to my, or anyone else’s belief structure. It’s your choice, and ultimately your ass.

  • I NEVER provoke when children are involved. If they live in the house I’m investigating, or even if the alleged ghost is a child, I won’t provoke it.
  • I ONLY use provoking if through interviews, and research, I find out that the alleged entity is, in fact a hostile one.
  • I ONLY provoke if I have permission from the client/homeowner.
  • I NEVER provoke alone. Having a partner is a must, not only for safety, but also as a witness should something go down.

 

My Version of Provoking

The conversational technique that I had explained on our “Beyond Method Page” also works with provoking. This is how I prefer to do it.  Again, if it’s not your cup of tea, then don’t use it.

As with my conversational method, put yourself in the spirits shoes. If a couple people that you don’t know start verbally attacking, or insulting you to make you angry, what do you do? If you’re anything like me, you shake your head, and walk away ignoring the idiots. I can tell when somebody is trying to piss me off, and it ain’t gonna work!

I suggest that you DON’T directly insult them. Start off as you normally would using ‘The Beyond Method’, introduce yourself as normal, start the conversation as mentioned before. Slowly move into a more negative topic of conversation. Again, don’t forget to pause so that the entity can speak. As you go, come to a point in the conversation where you begin to openly doubt the existence of the entity. I mean if it really were there it would have the guts to say something. What kind of cowardly person would terrorize a family? Well obviously a big one because it doesn’t have the balls to mess with us. Yeah right!

Get the point? You and your partner should talk behind it’s back right in front of it, and be really mean. Swear. Use profanity. Be negative. DON’T BE OBVIOUS. People know when you’re trying to piss them off. You gotta learn how to act a bit. Maybe try playing ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’. Argue back and forth with your partner to create negativity.

Maybe after you’ve reviewed your audio, you’ll find out that you got through to them. It’s a good reason to go back and apologize.