Ghosts and Hauntings

The Worst Paranormal Investigators : A Cautionary Tale

The “paranormal” community, like any other loosely-knit community, has its unique difficulties. One of the biggest obstacles researchers face is information/data which is poorly researched, lazily investigated, and or sometimes outright faked.

If something is seen which is unarguably fake it is of the utmost importance that it be exposed. Allowing fakery to continue not only lowers the credibility of everyone in the community but it leads to an obfuscated road, the end of which fades into the distance leading back to itself, a never-ending circle of confusion where progression becomes regression.
Allow me an important real-world example

Almost seven years ago a new paranormal team showed up on the scene. Obviously, paranormal teams and investigators come and go but this team, three members, seemed to come out of nowhere and they did so with all the bells and whistles. They had shirts, stickers, a well-designed website, a YouTube channel, Twitter accounts, Facebook page, etc. and all of it pretty much appeared overnight.

People I knew started following them, interacting with them. This group went to conventions and meetups with other teams; they investigated well-known allegedly haunted places and even during Halloween this new team showed up on local news programs doing those interviews that paranormal teams sometimes do.

It took me about 3 hours to figure out they were fake.

They were actors

The whole thing was a gimmick. A covert promotion for an augmented reality game and possible television show/movie.

I confronted the members of the team privately on Twitter.
They blocked me.
So, I started telling my friends.
They blocked my friends.

I called the local news channels to ask if the news anchors and segment producers had been aware that the people they showed on the news, to thousands of viewers, as real paranormal investigators were actually just actors.

That was about it.
The team went dark. They stopped updating their website and social media accounts. They had been caught.

Yet, although they stopped posting new content, their Facebook page and website are still around, as is their YouTube account.
Why does this matter?

Because now, seven years later they are being referenced in books….well at least one for now.

And, the book they are referenced in isn’t a self-published, small print, vanity press, independent publisher…this is a book published by Penguin Books, a division of Random House! It is published by one of the “Big Five”, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. This book has been consistently in Amazon’s Top 30 since it was released. The author of the book is not to be blamed. The team and the producer/creator of the LARP, (Susan Bell) are the ones who should be blamed.

Who knows how many people have spread this hoax around believing it to be something real? As the years go by will people waste precious time researching a fake group and their fake information? Probably.

This is just one example of why real research, honesty, and integrity is important. There are enough hoaxes, fakes, and misinformation to deal with without completely manufactured tomfoolery.

This is only one example of a terrible paranormal team but… LAGP aren’t the worst paranormal investigators.
The people in that team knew they were fakes.
They knew they were tricking people.
They knew they were making stuff up.
So even though it’s terrible and it screws somethings up it still does not make them the worst.

The Worst Team Ever

The worst paranormal investigators make things up then convince others to believe it. They fake “evidence” and then purposefully spread it around to make themselves look important. They copy unique ideas from other researchers and teams and claim them as their own or they just don’t mention where the idea came from. They care more about having the best EVPS, and the best videos, and the best photos than they actually care about trying to figure out what “paranormal” experiences might be.

Those people are the worst paranormal investigators.

I hope you’re not one of them.

Side note: The group was called Los Angeles Ghost Patrol
Here is the IMDB page for the three investigators who are actually actors