I said it wasn’t possible, they said it was! Meet your spirit guide in thirty minutes they said and begin a new life of total open-mindedness! In the usually beautiful region of Berkshire in England comes a relatively new paranormal investigation team that displays both confusion to the core and downright outrageous claims.

Having spent a few weeks with the Thames Valley Paranormal Group, based in Berkshire, talking with them on their forums and live chat (often resulting in heated discussion between me and their famous fairy believing Druid) they kindly directed me toward a collection of spiritual courses that they offer and you can take to improve your openness to spirituality.


By "Crashcat"



www.tvpg.co.uk

They called it ’Paranormal School’ . It claims to attempt to connect you spiritually but also give you a comprehensive guide into ’ghost hunting’. A cringe worthy term if ever I heard one. They claim to have the facts of 'ghost hunting' and [I] spiritual energy[/i] and also employ them on investigation. Now of course hearing that this investigation team had 'facts' of paranormal energies shocked me. Kind of like when we all first heard that Vader was Lukes father in Starwars, it was exactly that kind of shock!

I was dumbstruck and needed to read these facts right away. I followed the link and it took me to a page called 'a guide to ghost hunting' and came with the phrase 'for the serious ghost hunter'. I read on with great anticipation of these 'facts'.
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Oh dear.

Firstly, having spent a while researching myself now I’m still yet to see any conclusive proof that spirit energy even exists. For them to state it as 'fact' in a guide is terrible. What’s worse is currently they are the most well established group in Berkshire (there only being currently 2 that we know of) and whomever is looking up Berkshire paranormal teams will come across them right away which in my eyes puts then in a wrongly influential position. Already they seem to be throwing around the word fact without any evidence to support their claims, but as you will see this is a feat this team uses regularly.

I continued on grudgingly and came across a 'free video' that gave tips on investigation techniques. Again i was happy to watch it. I was expecting a visual guide for technology, established methods, rational thought and theories etc. I should have known that what i was expected would never come, but i wanted to give benefit of the doubt. This is the video presented:



Having walked away after the first minute because i went to get a cup of tea, i came back knowing i had to watch it again. I came out the other side of that video failing to recognize any guidance what-so-ever. The only part about it that interested me, and i would suspect most viewers was the Camille Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre theme tune they used (which i love every time i hear it). I'm unsure how they would define that as an educating video at all. I sat there for a few moments trying to figure out if this was a wind up, a pitch at satire or a serious presentation. I came to the conclusion it was satire, but surely a poorly placed video in a guide, it displays little or not valuible infomation what-so-ever.

I continued on, each sentence bearing down on my sentient being. The next paragraph in their guide to 'serious ghost hunting' baffled the life out of me. I was now questioning their seriousness at all

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Now you know that kind of face that you do when half you're face is kind of scrunched up, one eye closed and your mouth wide open in both confusion and shock? That is what face i had when reading that above. Why i hear you ask? I'm sure that they used the phrase 'facts' and 'serious ghost hunting' a few times now and I'm yet to see such things. Where is the fact or proof to support it in both the light or spirit energy? Where is the evidence to back up this claimed mediumship? And yet they claim themselves to be 'A skeptical team' yet they all believe themselves ether to be wizards, druids, mediums or wiccans. I'm confused. That is like stating that your a devoted Catholic priest that is skeptical if the Virgin Mary actually ever existed. In conversation to me he claimed:

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There’s an official licence to study magic? Hogwarts finally open for business i see. But as we continued what i failed to understand is with all this. Their team being primarily made of people that claim to have witnessed fairies, elementals (half man half goat from one of their accounts) that he claimed to have seen in his ' minds eye' . I just could not understand how they presented themselves as a skeptical, educational group. When asked why they investigated claims of faeries he stated:

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And i quote from their founder, the very same person:
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A contradiction of terms surely?

And what experts are they? The Druid or the Medium? Rather than a rational, skeptical approach i would rather say a biased approach with the confusing twist of apparently being skeptic. How is this an educated guide at all? Educating and presenting guidance to potential investigators should be informing them of the rational approach, scientific advances in the field, the method of debunking certain experiences etc. But they seem to shave over that lightly.

The final quote from their 'Ghost Hunting Guide' was this, which was laughable considering the above:

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So i take it serious investigation involves magic, mediumship, druids, fairy spotting and using your minds eye to find half man half goat elementals? When asked for proof to support these sightings their resident druid simply used the all to cheap back door and said (with other BP members in the chat room for support) she said:

Quote: going on to say that our behaviours towards her were nasty and that was another reason why she would not, when all we asked nicely was to show her evidence in her claims. A convenient back door? I think so.

Their ghost guide is seriously biased, a presentation of belief and not fact as they claim. With all the beliefs they claim to be fact on their website they are willing to provide no support or evidence of their claims. When challenged they get extremely aggressive, delete relevant challenging posts on their forums as they did several times to our other BP member here and even though they claim to be skeptical, they are about as far away from that as possible.

If you continue on with this guide they also claim that you can make contact with your spirit guide in 30 minutes. A quote from their spirit guide..er..guide.

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So it takes 30 minutes but also it could take years? Good start, good start. Lets continue on.

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Just to let you know, i did try this. I followed the guide to the letter as i really was genuinely intrigued to meet my alleged spirit guide. I did as i was asked, though i felt a little stupid and i asked aloud. "Do i have a spirit guide, can you please talk to me?" Of course i received nothing in return as i expected. Being open-minded though not expecting anything i carried on reading the guide:

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The voice may sound like mine? I've noticed that when i think, the voice always sounds like mine so surely that’s simply an excuse to explain you speaking with yourself rather than your apparent spirit guide? Aside from that, if i had if heard a voice out load, im more likely to jump out of my skin and panic rather than continue the 'connection'.

The guide, if you look for yourself talks on, most of it being largely ether power of suggestion or impossible to prove. For instance the guide says that when the spirit guide is with you, you feel a warm pressure on your right shoulder. Inevitably I’m sitting here now with a warm right shoulder. Power of suggestion i would put fourth.

The site in general, i'm hard done to sum up. Their team seem to have a whole host of contradictions, back doors and escape routes when challenged by skeptics, yet they claim to be skeptics themselves. Not only are the majority of their team wiccans, druids, wizards or mediums but they present guides on ghost hunting that use pseudo-science and unproven theories claiming they are fact. The video being confusing and incoherent provides nothing educational at all, and in my opinion are abusing the word 'fact' beyond recognition and misguiding people that come across their site.

I'm still trying to figure out if their guide to contacting your spirit guide is a wind up or not as it seems to totally contradict their apparently self confessed skeptical approach. On top of this, they have a truly huge online shop for selling new age products such as dowsing rods, crystals and Ouija boards. Which totally blows their claims of rationality from the water.

I don't often get annoyed about investigation groups methods but this one really gets to me. This is the type of group that gives truly skeptical organizations a bad name. It is also the type of group that misleads people and uses the word fact in far to many situations and subjects where there is no fact at all. They have people that get very nasty when challenged and they contradict themselves consistently.

From now on i would like to coin the phrase 'super-woo' as I’m sure you will agree, hopefully, this lot aren’t any normal kind of woo. Super-Woo they certainly are.