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Introduction:

I have so far at the time of writing watched the 1st 2 parts of Most Haunted Live: Halloween 2009 where they are running an 8 night investigation named, “the eight faces of evil”. I am an experienced paranormal investigator who started in 1996 when I first visited Chingle Hall in Lancashire which was then known to many as allegedly the most haunted house in Great Britain until it finally closed it’s doors to paranormal investigators after the very sad death of the joint owner, Judy. This was well before Most Haunted appeared on our TV screens, when Yvette Fielding was known to no-one in the paranormal field. With my experience which leans more towards scientific investigation techniques than psychic techniques, I can certainly advise that in my opinion the recent Most Haunted Live paranormal investigations were conducted in a very unprofessional manner, this can probably be said for most of the main series although one sees little behind the scenes as only the live events have webcams and you only see the best edited bits unless it’s live.

Some reasons why Most Haunted Live: Halloween 2009 is unprofessional in my opinion:

1…The name of the show could insults spirits:

They call the live show “the eight faces of evil”, this is extremely insulting to spirits in the first place. On a professional paranormal investigation, one should always show compassion and forgiveness to spirits who are in fact people with feelings who have lost their physical body.

2…Too many people on set, many wandering about aimlessly:

From looking at their live webcams, people are left to wander the location and they don’t keep track of where everyone is. This is very bad as other people could make noises that could easily be misinterpreted by the investigation team. Also there’s too many people in the audience to conduct an investigation nearby where quiet is required as it only takes one person to whistle or make noises to make a mockery of it. Some noises may not even be purposeful, E.g. stomachs rumbling, coughing, shuffling, knocking, heavy breathing, wheezing, sniffing Etc. Because of all this it’s virtually impossible to eliminate explainable sounds and therefore it’s almost impossible to admit any sound evidence as certainly paranormal in cause. People should be locked off and they need to constantly know exactly where everyone is near any investigation. Also the people wandering around have torches, which could also interfere with the investigation if they don’t know where everyone is.

3…Suspicious activity around their webcams:

I have seen real people that have acted suspiciously around the webcams and I’ve already heard some of these mistaken and read out on air as possible paranormal activity. These cameras should ideally be locked off in empty rooms. E.g. a) On the 1st night I saw a member of the team turn his torch off and then hang around in the darkness at the top of the stairs in the distance of the camera, he stayed their for a few minutes and you could hardly see him, he then moved back out. I know it was a real person and NOT a ghost or spirit apparition from my experience. b) On the 2nd night I saw a member of the team flash his flash-light behind a door in the distance of the camera, to me with my experience I know it was certainly a torch light, but many people will be mistaken reporting it as light anomalies. Incidentally, the webcams appear a few minutes behind the actual live show on the TV, is this so they can cut out bits if they see them inappropriate or perhaps if it exposes something the public shouldn’t know? I’m now wondering how live the TV show itself really is too?

4….Screaming instead of examining crucial evidence:

Sometimes when suspected paranormal activity does occur, some members of the team scream and have to be attended to. Surely with years experience investigating the paranormal, the team should be immune to screaming and if not, they shouldn’t be on a team of professional paranormal investigators as this is extremely unprofessional in every way. Screaming completely ruins any serious paranormal investigation. When something unusual happens, it’s very important to ascertain the facts as quickly as possible in a calm and rational manner, instead with screaming, this completely destroys any chance of studying the evidence properly. I’m unsure if the members of the team are really this unprofessional and scared, or if they’re doing it artificially to entertain people watching the show.

5…They rarely investigate explainable causes of alleged activity:

When something happens that initially the team can’t explain, it’s rare that the team thoroughly investigate it for all possible explainable explanations. If for instance, they hear a knock, one should try to ascertain exactly where the knock has come from, one should then try to duplicate the knock and study anything that could have possibly caused it no matter how unlikely, until everything is investigated thoroughly, the knock isn’t unexplained phenomenon, yet Most Haunted usually jump to the obvious paranormal explanation very quickly.

6…Explainable webcam evidence presumed to be paranormal evidence:

The public are watching the web-cams, but most come out with all sorts of unbelievable phenomenon that they’re supposed to have witnessed, usually I have seen absolutely no evidence of what they claim, but usually there is an obvious explainable explanation, but Most Haunted don’t even consider this. Much of what is seen is in my opinion is camera noise or in some cases interference as the quality via the Internet is awful and certainly not good enough for studying paranormal evidence, yet Most Haunted haven’t even explained to people what camera noise is and that you can see random ‘movement’ sometimes because of this, instead they’re just reading out all these fantastic visions people are supposed to be seeing in the webcams as supposed paranormal evidence. One person for instance said they saw a yellow mist which came and went, well yes, it was certainly camera interference that was intermittent on one camera as I witnessed this on numerous occasions. Most Haunted still didn’t explain this and ignored my attempts to advise reason despite sending them various messages.

7…There’s massive amounts of auto-suggestion:

There’s a massive amount of auto-suggestion which means people are all hyped up expecting and wanting something to happen, when this is the case, they can often believe something is happening that isn’t, this is psychological and is amplified in groups, E.g. in the audience. The ‘psychic mediums’ also know everything about the location before they visit, so there’s no evidence that they are really picking up what they claim. I have mediated between 2 members of BirminghamIU to see if they’re really picking up information from spirit. They got exactly the same very specific information that each of the 2 members couldn’t have possibly known about spirit people they certainly knew nothing of and I ensured they were kept apart throughout. Why couldn’t Most Haunted do an experiment like this using unbiased external experts? I doubt if they’d have the nerve for fear of failure.

I WILL CONTINUE TO COMMENT AS THE LIVE SHOW CONTINUES!

The Most Haunted paranormal craze & it’s impact on serious paranormal investigators:

Most Haunted is the main cause of a British craze for the paranormal and the want to attend haunted locations, but sadly it hasn’t in my opinion taught professionalism and instead it’s created a new breed of people who only want to investigate the paranormal for the thrill of being scared, instead of to perform a genuine and professional investigation. It’s a real shame that since Most Haunted there’s been a massive influx of paranormal groups that unfortunately want to copy the show including everything that’s unprofessional about a serious paranormal investigation. I’ve even seen some groups holding paid events totally mimicking Most Haunted, like, “Nearly Haunted Live” instead of Most Haunted Live. Because of the Most Haunted demand, these events are sadly often mainly for thrill seekers, instead of serious paranormal investigators and these type of investigations now completely outnumber professional ones.

Before Most Haunted, paranormal groups where few and far between, but the ones that existed were a lot more professional and involved very serious enthusiasts. Also because of the massive increased demand for haunted locations which is almost entirely thanks to Most Haunted, they have become tourist attractions and big money spinners. Before Most Haunted, it was a lot easier to get indoor locations for free, now these locations charge and often they charge ridiculous amounts as they can now get away with it. Because of this it’s harder for non profit serious paranormal groups to get locations and although there’s a lot more groups out there, it’s harder for people to choose a professional paranormal group if they decide they need their home investigated. Numerous owners of potentially haunted locations are also trying to jump on the band wagon whether they are genuinely haunted or in some situations, not in my opinion. If people go in search of spirits anywhere, before long spirits will usually come. It’s currently impossible to prove in a British court of law whether a location is haunted or not, so it’s virtually impossible to accuse anyone of deception when advertising a paid ghost hunt at any location even if people suspect it was never haunted in the first place.

Please remember that spirits are in fact people with feelings, they are NOT there for thrills or as a tourist attraction, they should be treated with the great of respect and compassion where possible, they’re NOT a circus act.

On a good point, Most Haunted Live is quite entertaining as long as serious investigators don’t take it too seriously. It’s a shame in some ways that Derek Acorah has left, even though I know his trance episodes where totally fake (well in my opinion) as I’ve seen genuine trance medium experiments on numerous occasions myself, he was certainly very entertaining indeed. Unfortunately Derek was set-up and was proved fake when he came out with the name, “Kreed Kafer” which was set-up beforehand as an anagram of “Derek Faker” by their parapsychologist, Dr Ciaran O’ Keeffe who was simply doing his job to discover the real truth in my opinion. Unfortunately now the parapsychologist’s scepticism seems to take an even smaller part of the show. I strongly suspect that a team of totally unbiased parapsychologists would challenge the show, probably bringing it to it’s knees, but they should have the nerve to do this and take the flack to have any chance of earning the respect of genuine professional paranormal investigators in the future.

Most Haunted Live Night 4: Was this really the most significant paranormal evidence EVER?

On the 4th night of Most Haunted Live 2009 at Ashton Hall in Lancashire, the presenter repeated that this investigation was the most significant ever achieved because of alleged paranormal evidence they captured through an experiment conducted by Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe and the team. Have they really obtained such ground breaking and significant evidence as they claim?

Well unfortunately, in my opinion, I most certainly don’t think so. Most Haunted apparently played back 5 names using a speaker system that was inaudible to the human ear as the speech was converted to ultrasound. According to Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe, only he knew these names as he clearly informed viewers. The team then sat during a ouija board seance and quite quickly the glass moved to point out all 5 names. According to Most Haunted, this proved without doubt that spirits could in fact hear the ultrasound and then they communicated the words via the ouija board to the team.

Firstly, why is it when Most Haunted conduct seances, they virtually always get a response within just a few minutes or seconds, even when transmitting live? I have sat in genuine attempted seances and more often than not, one has to be very patient to get a response if any and I’m still quite sceptical about seances as paranormal evidence for various reasons. Secondly, the 5 names were printed on the screen for viewers to see very shortly after Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe assured viewers that only he knew the secret words, for it to be displayed on-screen members of the production crew must have known the words as otherwise the controller wouldn’t know what to print on-screen. Later they corrected themselves to say that hardly anyone knew the words and the team didn’t, this could have been after people challenged them via the Internet. Thirdly, throughout the evening, the team were supposed to be dealing with another ‘face of evil’, yet all of a sudden when it suited them, a spirit allegedly became very reasonable and decided to work with the team, relaying this information via the ouija board. Where was the so called evil spirit then? I’m very sorry, but it far too difficult for me to believe and extremely convenient how easily the information came across with the ultrasound experiment going so perfectly. Don’t they think experiments have been conducted like this before, yet there’s been no real evidence of any previous success.

Earlier on the live show on day 4, the team performed another seance and as usual they also got responses almost immediately, this time it was done using just a table where they all apparently heard scratching sounds from the table before it kept vibrating knocking a torch over which they kept standing on it’s end. The scratching was heard for a couple of minutes and was also heard by viewers. I watched the team and one member slipped and his hand moved quite a bit to his left even when the table wasn’t moving much, why would he slip so much if he wasn’t putting a fair bit of force onto the table? From my experience, paranormal activity usually only occurs for a short period of time when it does happen, so I’m also sceptical how long the scratching went on for if it was really unexplained. After this seance the teamed checked under the table to see a hand print that could be seen using what I thought was ultraviolet light, but this wasn’t good evidence as they had no footage of underneath the table before the seance. This hand print could easily have been there before as people may for instance move the table, yet the team continued to go on how interesting and significant it was.

I apologise again, but I’m simply not taken in my these experiments and I’m extremely sceptical to say the least. I would want to see the experiments repeated with totally independent parapsychologists conducting it under very controlled conditions, then the results would be very interesting, but Most Haunted won’t actually do this as I know they would be ripped to shreds by totally unbiased parapsychologists who aren’t on their pay roll. An unbiased independent parapsychologist would be for instance very sceptical of seances as he/she would certainly consider that it’s very possible the glass or table could be pushed either consciously or unconsciously a member or members of the team.

Also during the night, Yvette Fielding tried to conduct a lone vigil and was apparently so scared out of her wits that she had tears in her eyes, repeatedly going on about how frightened she was. How can one conduct a professional investigation when there’s so much irrational fear? It’s extremely unprofessional and I would expect much better from someone so experienced. Later Yvette was finally calling for her husband to rescue her instead of investigating the location and possible phenomenon properly. This is the same Yvette Fielding who is supposed to be one of the best paranormal investigators in the UK. Well if I’d have been in that room, I would have been as calm as anything, carefully observing and recording anything unusual. From experience, you normally learn not to be scared and to deal with very haunted locations as just a walk in the park.

As usual the location wasn’t locked down at all and people were wondering all over the place as seen on the webcams. The webcams were again plagued with lots of interference and camera noise, often one would even see torch lights, sometimes even shining by which would confuse some inexperienced people to believe it could be paranormal in cause. I wrote numerous comments daring the team to speak them on air, but as normal they only read out comments that either praised Most Haunted or about apparent anomalies or apparitions that frankly I didn’t see. I did see a couple of possible light anomalies, but with the terrible interference and camera noise, plus with torches and people all over the place, it was impossible to prove it was unexplained.

Most Haunted Live Night 6: Was it really “the most dangerous experiment ever”?

I missed night 5 of Most Haunted Live as I was called out to an emergency private paranormal investigation which for the purposes of confidentiality I cannot disclose information, but I can tell my readers that it was conducted in a very professional manner without any screams or fear like on Most Haunted and the problems were dealt with very well. In fact a professional paranormal investigation isn’t anything like Most Haunted and I’ve certainly been on plenty over the years.

On night six the Most Haunted Live team set-up a large Tesla coil and made out the experiment was extremely dangerous indeed, Yvette Fielding even went as far as to say her emotional goodbyes to her husband who was taking part in the experiment, saying, “I love you”. Fear showed on everyone’s faces, especially the 3 team members who took part.

The Tesla Coil produces a high electrical charge that sends sparks outwards towards earthed objects which on the show were large metal cages containing 3 members of the team that were allegedly chosen by a ouija board on the previous seance. The sparks can hardly be seen in bright light, but in dimly lit rooms, the sparks can look quite spectacular and could appear to be dangerous to the average uninformed onlooker.

Despite what was said on the show, the experiment on the show wasn’t dangerous, in fact even directly touching the sparks without a cage cannot kill you, at worst even this could only mildly burn in unusual unlucky circumstances. The ONLY real danger is directly touching the capacitor itself as this could in fact be lethal, but the crew obviously had no intention of going anywhere near this. In the metal cages, the sparks harmlessly discharge every time as the cages are strongly earthed. The crew inside the cages also took off metal objects as a further precaution, so nothing could possibly go wrong. When the sparks started, the team in my opinion looked way too far into which way the sparks went, claiming that spirits were effecting them (I doubt it).

The reason the experiment is NOT dangerous is even though it might technically produce 3/4 Million Volts of electricity as the host kept repeating, there’s almost no Ampage and it’s therefore nothing like for instance the power going through an electric pylon cable. One could technically say that a spark of static from a CRT monitor screen is thousands of Volts, but it certainly won’t harm you as again the Ampage is negligible. Most Haunted didn’t explain about the low harmless Ampage, but instead they blatantly described the experiment as, “The Most Dangerous Experiment Ever” and later, “I’m amazed they made it back..”, this is complete and utter rubbish and therefore in my opinion the show was purposely misleading people. This proves in my opinion just how much the show is prepared to exaggerate just to make the show more exciting to viewers, so with this in mind, how could one now actually trust any of the evidence? The experiment certainly ‘appeared’ very spectacular never-the-less and was in my opinion very dramatically played out.

What amazed me the most was Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe extreme reluctance to go into the cage apparently showing fright and apprehension. As part of parapsychology, he would surely have studied basic physics, so he would be the first person to know that the experiment isn’t dangerous at all. I would have been happy to stay in the cage with the Tesla Coil on for hours. I really wish they’d invite an unbiased totally independent team of parapsychologists who aren’t on the payroll onto the show, but they wouldn’t in my opinion dare do this as they’d in my opinion be ripped to shreds.

The night also included lots of pointless screams that stopped the team carrying out any reasonable paranormal investigation, the worst member of the team for this was Kath who appeared constantly scared and even had to be led away at one point as she clearly couldn’t cope. If a team member cannot cope in an allegedly haunted location, then they’re not in my opinion fit to be a paranormal investigator at all, especially with so much experience. Unfortunately Yvette Fielding is the 2nd worst for pointless screaming.

Numerous serious points were missed again during the investigation which made any paranormal evidence virtually inadmissible. For instance, when a seance was being conducted in the small pub, 2 members of the team were shouting and banging, investigating the toilet, also they had the toilet door open. Toilets are often colder and sometimes the windows are left open to disperse smell, opening the door could cause drafts and one seance member, Kath apparently reported a cold breeze at this time, but then as usual started screaming instead of investigating the source, forcing the rest of the team to attend to her instead of any possible evidence. Also outside the locations wasn’t locked off and it’s obvious people will interfere making noises outside the locations as it’s live, we did hear someone mucking about outside in the 2nd location and at least this was brought to the attention of the viewers then, but I suspect many more noises heard could also be this accounted for by this or similar.

I was again very sceptical at all the various seances as every one went perfectly and started working within seconds which isn’t what would really happen every time. When was the last time a seance actually didn’t work at all on Most Haunted or when did an experiment last go completely wrong? Also they were supposed to be again dealing with an ‘evil’ spirit from hundreds of years ago (a face of evil), yet during the seances and the Tesla Coil experiment the spirit was allegedly extremely co-operative which is contradictory for a so called ‘evil’ spirit. Also it’s absolutely incredible how someone from hundreds of years ago had an understanding of electricity and the Tesla Coil even though it was invented hundreds of years after they allegedly lived!

Most Haunted Live Night 7: Team members collapse!

I was attending a training course this evening at my local spiritualist church, however I did just catch the incident where 2 team members allegedly collapsed during a seance.

Firstly the team, mainly Yvette were purposely trying to wind the place up in a negative way which in itself isn’t professional, showing absolutely no compassion or understanding for any spirits that might be present good or bad, in fact doing this could drag the wrong kind of spirits in from outside. They even played a ridiculous soundtrack that was supposed to sound frightening to attempt to get the place going even more, but instead it was impossible for the team to hear any genuine paranormal activity because of it and for this reason they did eventually turn the stupid recording off when they struggled to hear something possibly unexplained nearby.

2 team members appeared to collapse, Matt the cameraman was first, followed very shortly afterwards by Karl Beattie. The cameraman ‘appeared’ genuine and could well have been simply ill, perhaps partly or entirely through fear, but instead of the rest of the team dealing with the incident in a calm and collective manner, most of the team were running around like headless chickens panicking and Kath as usual kept screaming instead of helping. In fact it was so bad and unprofessional that they had to call a commercial break. I was more sceptical of Karl Beattie’s collapse shortly afterwards as to whether it was genuine or whether it was a pathetic attempt to make the show even more exciting to viewers, although if any team are genuinely frightened in an apparently haunted location, it’s a medical fact that when one person is adversely affected, other team member will be severely psychologically effected which can cause them to subconsciously follow suit unless they are of-course very professional, experienced and trained to stay calm, unlike in my opinion most of the Most Haunted team. Unfortunately there’s no hard evidence that either of the collapses where actually caused by paranormal activity in my opinion.

REPLACE KATH PLEASE:

The team often ask for things to happen, but when anything does, many of the team simply scream, especially Kath who runs in fear at the very slightest thing whether paranormal or otherwise, even if someone as much as clears their throat for instance. In fact if you watch Kath, all she ever does is jump, scream, pull faces and constantly moan complaining she is frightened, often refusing to do important parts of the investigation. Why is Kath on the main team as after attending hundreds of paranormal investigations, if she isn’t able to stay calm in an alleged haunted location by now, it’s obvious she never will! Sorry, but in my opinion, Kath is complete and utter liability and does absolutely nothing to help the team, but instead hinders them by requiring constant attention to try and keep her calm, SHE JUST ISN’T SUITABLE! Yvette Fielding is sadly only slightly better and I really don’t know how she’s managed to gain respect as one of the best paranormal investigators in the UK, it’s certainly very worrying and in my opinion it shows up genuine professional investigators who I can assure you from first hand experience don’t operate like Most Haunted at all.

Most Haunted Live Night 8: Another experiment that just wasn’t dangerous!

I only watched part of the final night, but I did see the experiment where they had positioned a gallows at the suspected position where hundreds of people would have been hung hundreds of years ago. Karl then pretended to be hung in an attempt to kick off paranormal activity by repeating a past event. I’m very sceptical that doing this will genuinely kick off paranormal activity any more than for instance, ‘asking out’, but it would certainly be good for entertainment value.

The show tried to say how dangerous the experiment was and mentioned beforehand that things could go wrong, well it certainly couldn’t. Firstly Karl had a strong harness attached which prevented the loose tugging on his neck, but secondly we discovered after the experiment that the loose was designed to fall apart should there be any tension (E.g. if the harness broke), so it was literally impossible to really hang Karl and he wasn’t in the slightest bit of danger.

Final Conclusion & Summary:

This show was in my opinion a disappointing 8 nights of unprofessionalism where every single night they apparently found one of 8 ‘faces of evil’ as planned, how very convenient. The locations chosen weren’t even in my opinion the greatest, except perhaps for the final location where they rigged up the gallows.

None of the experiments were in my opinion truly dangerous like they claimed, yet they were all dramatically played out as if they were, making the very most out of them for viewing figures. They even initially advertised the show saying that they would conduct the most dangerous experiments EVER, well they in my opinion certainly didn’t. If one wanted to conduct a truly dangerous experiment, then they would attempt to conduct various full trance experiments without much security until a person become very violent (I don’t recommend it).

If any spirits were in fact present, the team would have insulted them, they showed no compassion or understanding throughout.

The webcams were the worst sham in my opinion, people often were seen wandering around shining torches all over the place and they certainly weren’t locked off. The quality on the webcams was also terrible with masses of camera noise, far too poor to conclude you’ve possibly seen any genuine evidence. What was even worse was the numerous viewers who all allegedly witnessed amazing apparitions that simply weren’t there, often with words of warning for the team. There was absolutely no evidence shown on air that went with any of the viewers claims. I suspect most reports were simply made up to get mentioned on the show, while most or all of the rest were camera noise (there was a lot of it), torch light reflections or in fact real people. There were some viewer reports that I even knew were explained as I actually witnessed them, yet they still read them out as probably paranormal. I noticed that what they read out on air was extremely one sided too, for instance, they didn’t read out any constructive criticisms what-so-ever or even when I tried to explain to the team the logical reason for what they’d passed as probably paranormal in cause. There worst I saw was a real person hiding on one webcam as if he was trying to make people believe he was an apparition.

There was so many flaws in the investigation it was ridiculous and whenever there was a possible serious opportunity to discover genuine paranormal evidence, at least one member of the team would start screaming instead of investigating properly every time. Extremely unprofessional screaming started after every slightest occurrence whether possibly paranormal or often not, Kath was the worst for this followed by Yvette herself. One can’t investigate properly when scared and certainly not when screaming. Numerous so called unexplained occurrences could possibly be explained, but the show didn’t consider them. There was in my opinion no hard evidence that they really actually found any of the ‘faces of evil’ they claim and there was no certain proof of the existence of spirits as foul play couldn’t be ruled out. I say this as an experienced paranormal investigator myself who has come across some amazing evidence in my time since I started in 1996 (well before Most Haunted), but I’m still very sceptical of Most Haunted. Please remember that a genuine professional paranormal investigation IS NOTHING LIKE Most Haunted and the show is in my opinion more of a light hearted entertainment show than a serious paranormal investigation. No truly independent parapsychologist who isn’t on their payroll would praise Most Haunted and their evidence would be ripped to shreds.

PLEASE ALSO SEE MY COMMENT INCLUDING A VIDEO!

Legal Disclaimer:

The above document is entirely my own personal opinion and cannot be declared as definite fact. It’s without prejudice to Most Haunted, Derak Acorah, Yvette Fielding, Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe, anyone else in the crew or anyone other persons or organisations. The intention of this article is to do no harm. The TV programme, Most Haunted is the property and copyright of Living TV, all rights reserved! My full legal disclaimer applies to this article, it’s comments and all other articles on this website.

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