The way I see it, those ghost hunting shows on television are doing it all wrong. They run about supposedly haunted places in total darkness looking for ghosts. I'm no stranger to ghosts. I've had about five experiences of my own. I am a believer. I just have issues with their "scientific method" of paranormal investigation.

Usually, when you are observing something to learn more about it, you try to do so under normal circumstances. Here is a totally off-point but very clear analogy: If you want to learn more about how bees harvest plant nectar in June, you set up your observation schedule to occur in June. The ghost shows totally ignore this concept. They always start the show telling some history of the show. They talk to people who say things like, "Just as I was leading the tour down this hall, we saw the ghost of a confederate soldier walking directly in front of us." Or, they say things like this, "I went down in the cellar to hook up a fresh keg. When I turned around, something touched the back of my neck." These things are happening during business hours with the lights on. How then, are the paranormal investigators being scientific when they do their observations under totally different circumstances, such as total darkness with all the power turned off?

Some times they talk about how the ghostly events are like videos from times before replaying themselves. Well. maybe the videos only play at the time the original people saw them. Why investigate in the middle of the night.

There are two other things that kind of ruin it for me. One, is the addition of a spooky soundtrack. I am trying to experience the event through my television screen. It is hard enough for me to get a real sense of it when I'm sitting comfortably in my Lazy Boy sipping my favorite Bourbon. The addition of those crazy sound effects, which in a horror movie would add to the tension of a scene, are just annoying. The second thing for me is when the "investigators" hear a noise or see something and start screaming and yelling about it. They can do all that later when they do their analysis.

I have one last comment. If you want me to take you seriously as an educated scientist, please use better English. As an example, I really enjoy watching Ghost Adventures with Zak Bagans. However, on every episode he says something like, "Billy will be on the first floor, while Aaron and myself go down into the basement." That drives me crazy. Why can't he learn to say, "...Aaron and I go down into the basement?" He seems to be a smart guy. What's up with that?

The way I see it, these shows would be more realistic, if they tried to match their investigations to the experiences they are trying to investigate. What do the rest of you think?