Lately, I came across a couple of articles about mixing money with the paranormal research fields. While I am impressed with the manner in which the authors articulated themselves and I applaud their protective attitude against the field’s hucksters, I find myself questioning some points they made.

The specific articles are:

Money and the Paranormal – Watch Your Wallets at MinnesotaGhosts.com

And

Paranormal Business by Sandra Heglund, Western New York Paranormal Directing Committee, Photography

The warning is “Here come the capitalists.” Are we really surprised? What endeavor in global history hasn’t been marked by the natural desire to find a way to use it to financially support oneself?

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The first point the MinnesotaGhosts.com article makes is that some webmasters set up sites so that they can collect money-based clicks from advertisements that produce results from either downloading the graphic while normally viewing the site or by the visitor actually following a link.

Is this annoying? Most of the time, yes. The amount of crap Internet traffic advertising links generate is phenomenal. Just by visiting one of these sites, you send demographics to scores of Internet marketing companies such as pointclick.com, hitbox.com, and doubleclick.net. The company I work for at my “day job” is implementing a quarter million dollar security solution to combat this assault on our bandwidth costs. (Business broadband bandwidth plans are typically packaged at different levels while residential is usually a flat rates. So unless you’re a business owner, this practice doesn’t actually cost you anything.)

Is it a scam? Possibly… if the links you’re clicking are being misrepresented for other content, I supposed you could call it a scam.

Does it cost you money? No. No danger to your wallet, whatsoever.

Merchandise

The MinnesotaGhosts.com article next warns us against sites that require us to pay something before they’ll share their pictures, stories, etc. The author suggests that if the funds go to something that benefits the group to further their research, the sales are fine. The implication that I take from this is that if the group profits from the sales or they make you pay to enjoy content, it’s not right.

First, I want to point out that there is no such thing as pure profit. Costs and expenses for any product or service can be greatly marginalized, but there are always costs. Those costs may be soft in the form of labor, etc, but they’re there. So even if someone is making a profit, it still cost them to offer you their goods.

I also want to voice the fact that I am in charge of my wallet and I’ll purchase where and when I want. No one forces me to do that and this alone puts the responsibility of checking a potential purchase out on me… just me. I’m not going to send someone twenty dollars and start crying because the product wasn’t what I expected. They’ll just get a bad review from me. Everyone I know who cares will hear about it. I’m on a lot of discussion boards. Freedom of speech, baby…

Services

There is a great deal with which I agree with in this portion of the MinnesotaGhosts.com article. I don’t believe that there are experts in the paranormal field either. I recently engaged in an online debate with someone about the use of the term “professional” in regard to paranormal research. I don’t know of any existing independent paranormal standards body. I don’t know how, without widespread agreement, anyone can declare themselves an expert or professional without being able to reproduce results under ideal or near-ideal conditions at will. So I don’t know how someone could claim to be an expert and guarantee results in a paranormal investigation unless they include negative results, which unless explicitly stated, should be seen as misleading.

I don’t have a problem with someone charging for anything related to paranormal investigation unless the charges are hidden or the result is misrepresented. Actually that's one of the actual definitions of the word "professional"... making money for one's services. Charge for the investigation, charge for the resulting report, charge for t-shirts, charge for website access, charge for whatever you want as long as you’re honest about what the customer will receive in exchange for their hard-earned money. Again, more on this in a minute…

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