Just Got Back From My First Paranormal Meetup Meeting!

This wasn't an investigation, mind you, so I haven't seen dead people, lol. But I got to meet a very cool group of smart, like-minded people, many of whom have had some really cool (depending upon one's perspective, naturally) experiences!

And DUDE! You would not believe the cross-section of folks involved! I sat next to a nurse who is currently in hospice care, I sat across from an ex police officer, one young lady is a creative copywrighter, just a smorgazbord of bright folks who want to better understand some of the stuff that mainstream science isn't interested in even acknowledging.

Side Bar: Speaking of mainstream science and the paranormal, that book I'm reading -- Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death by Deborah Blum -- is amazing!!! It's a history of the Society for Psychical Research and, as I had hoped, it provides a wide-ranging overview of the history of the Spiritualist movement, mediums and the scientific study of what we now call the paranormal, BUT... It's also an entertaining and compelling read!

I should explain that I adore acquiring knowledge, but I am a slow and largely disinterested reader. I always do audiobooks if they're available to me, because it takes me 3x longer to read than it does to listen.

There are few authors that I can read read (and then re-read). One of them is the late Michael Crichton, whose novels always blast past me like I'm watching a movie rather than reading a book. But even Mr. Crichton killed me with Eaters of the Dead: He chose to re-tell the Beowolf story as though it were an historical account, and to make it feel authentic he wrote it as though it were a historical document -- with footnotes and everything! It read like a friggin' text book!

Now, that's the effect he was going for: He wants to lull you into a sense of the security of reading a stuffy old historical text, then shock you with the increasingly exciting supernatural events of the story. And it works quite well!

But I'll never read that thing again, lol!

By contrast, Blum's book actually is a non-fiction historical account, but it reads like a really good novel. :) Similar to Crichton's work, some readers might get bored with the scientific theory throughout the story, but it's conveyed in such a way (again, like Crichton) as to be accessible to anyone.

And I'm just speculating here, but I think the over-long title might be a bit of an in-joke: The scientists who started the S. P. R. -- the "heroes" of the story -- all wrote books, and the titles are as awkward and lengthy as this book's title. (Except the original S. P. R. members wouldn't have utilized any phrase as sensationalistic as "Ghost Hunters" in one of their titles, lol.)

So if you have any interest in where all this ghost-hunting stuff that seems to be so popular now came from, I SO recommend Blum's book! :)

...End of Side Bar.

So the meetup group I met up with tonight...

The founder of the group is the director of Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigation, Austin's local TAPS Family Member group! Which means that if you live here and you thought your place might be haunted and you were really concerned about your safety and the safety of your family, and you went to the TAPS website and looked up the TAPS Family Member group nearest you, you would find a link to TSPI! And in addition to the director of the group, 2 of the other TSPI members were there tonight!

Very cool! You know... in a fan-boy kind of way, lol. ;P

I was talking to and interacting with the Austin branch of TAPS and I didn't even realize it until I came home and looked at the website (in preparation to write this blog entry).

So when I do go on my first investigations, I'll be learning from, like, "Austin TAPS", if you will! :D

A nerd just couldn't be any happier!

And they're looking for new members... so... There is a possibility that...

One step at a time, of course. I'm beginning to realize that I have a really weird schedule, as far as actually interacting with other people. In the past I kept myself hunkered down in the apartment, writing when I wasn't at work (and, naturally, was supposed to be a rich and famous writer by now, setting his own schedule), and so it's only this last month or more that I've been confronted with how truly inconvenient my schedule actually is.

So I'll take it investigation by investigation, see how helpful I can be, and see where this path leads me.

Oh! And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I'm not the only person who hasn't had a personal experience with the paranormal in the meetup group! In fact, at least one of the members of TSPI says she's still waiting for her first personal experience.

(An interesting fact: Jason & Grant state often -- in the TV shoe, on their radio show and in their book -- that 80% of their cases don't yield paranormal evidence. So it's, apparently, not unusual to go to a "haunted" location and discover it's not haunted -- or, if it is, not capture evidence of paranormal activity while you're there. What is unusual is that TAPS can capture enough evidence to keep Ghost Hunters on the air. ...but they've been at it for a decade or two...)

Also, to clarify, TSPI is a separate organization from the meetup group I'm a member of. The meetup group is an informal "recreational" paranormal investigation group. It's folks who simply want to explore. That group is called Texas Spirits Research Team and I joined them through Meetup.com, if you're interested. I just wanted to emphasize that TSRT (recreational) and TSPI (TAPS Family Member) aren't the same entity, and I'm not really a "ghost hunter". (Yet, lol.)

Just want to be clear. I was a little confused when I first started looking into investigating here in Austin.

Blah.

Okay, so I'm starting to come down off the excitement, and I think I'll go enjoy the rest of my night off.

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! xoxoxo :D

And I hope you have a magnificent day/evening/night/ whatever-time-it-is-when-you-read-this!!!

:D