I don't know the answer to this, Chad. Everything I have read says that people are typically attuned to one or a few. Some all. I don't know if it is a matter of focus and attention or something else.

Maybe it is like learning – you know how some people learn best by reading about something, others by hearing about it and others by manipulating and interacting? Maybe psychic powers are the same type of thing? Don't know for sure – just floating a hypothesis.

_____________________Rapid Subject Change_______________________

So something Carolyn said sparked a conversation Jim and I were having. She was talking about how the battery drain is often a temporary condition. I thought about that all day yesterday as I worked at my "real" job – freelancing (fortunately it didn't worm its way into any articles).

Anyway – Jim and I were talking about that as he was getting a fishbowl sized margarita under his belt (the kids are away for the week, and he'd had a really rough day at work). Jim suggested that maybe we only THINK it is battery drain, but really what it is is an entity acting on the instrument with the battery in it. The effect is so transient that when we change the battery it is gone.

If, as was suggested by Loyd Auerbach, the way that entities interact with instruments like cameras and digital voice recorders is by having a psychokinetic effect on them, then perhaps what we see and interpret as battery drain is merely either a) a temporary drawing of power associated with psychokinesis or b ) a temporary effect on the instrument that shows as battery drain (because when I've had battery drain, I get the flashing low battery sign).

How could we differentiate and test these things? I guess first by ruling out that a battery is actually draining?

One of the things that would be really interesting is to see how many instruments have recorded something unusual – like an EVP, a strange image, a spike, etc., either immediately prior to or immediately after a "battery drain" incident.

There are just too many incidents where it happens to people, as Carolyn suggested, in order to dismiss that there is something happening.

Maybe the faulty assumption is that the batteries are draining. Maybe something else is happening that just looks like battery drain.

Thoughts?

Karen,

This is a very thoughtful post and the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree. Perhaps you are correct in the fact that we are assuming (and you know what happens when we do that) that, in the case of "apparent" battery drain when the item (camera or flashlight) appears to be drained by its non-functioning and then inexplicably returns to functioning order is actually a spirit or entity manipulating the equipment rather than an outright battery draining.

When I was in Triangular Field and my camera stopped working, it was also happening to another person. As I previously noted, I left the area, verbalized my discontent with the situation, and the camera started working perfectly again. When I went back into that field and told the other person what happened, they proceeded to do the same and their camera worked once again. If the batteries were indeed drained, I wouldn't think that the spirit or entity would "recharge" the batteries when they consistently appear to do just the opposite – take the energy. The same could be said in the incidents involving my flashlight. I think, in these cases, manipulation of the equipment makes sense.

Of course, I have seen and experienced total battery drain (where the equipment never returns to functioning with that battery) and the battery in question is, indeed, totally devoid of power until recharged again.

Now, how would you test that? That's the hard part. Since we are at the whim of spirits/entities and what they do, the only way I can see is to always have one or possibly two people constantly monitoring/videotaping every movement of the others in the group. Tedious but necessary in order to document it. Equipment, of course, can be set up in advance every time as a routine part of the group's investigation. We never know what they are going to do and when they are going to do it. The only thing we can do is go into it every time prepared and believing it will happen this time. Then, if we are lucky, we can document it.

(Note: You see how I always interact with my spirit friends. Ninety percent of the time, when I verbalize to them, there is an immediate response of some sort. I realize that this is a high percentage, but it is true nonetheless. Remember, I have had 9 years of several trips a week spending significant time with the Civil War spirit soldiers on that 25 square mile battlefield. In addition, I have worked for the last 3-1/2 years in a hotel located on the battlefield where there is tremendous activity. Studying what those men and boys did there in battle, respecting that and then visiting them regularly, I believe, contributes to the frequency and numerous different experiences I have had there. They know me, are comfortable with me and interact with me. It is an experience I am very much looking forward to sharing with Chad, Cheryl, Karen, Jim and any other members who have an opportunity to visit this special place.)

Carolyn

Yep – I would agree that the recall and reporting of personal experience can be unreliable.

As Chad alluded to in another post somewhere else on the boards (you'll have to play where's Waldo to figure out where!), Loyd Auerbach (watch for the podcast in early July)may have provided us with a reason for some of the unreliability of reporting when it comes to personal experience.

Setting aside the foibles of human perception and memory for a moment….according to Loyd, the experience of an entity is purely a psychic experience because entities are pure consciousness. So depending on if you are open to such experiences and how you process them, your experience of an entity may be different from someone who is standing right next to you.

There are several ways that people process psychic information – and different people process it differently. I think they are clairaudience (hearing), clairvoyance (seeing), empathy (emotional feeling), mind to mind contact and one other that I can't remember what it is called – but essentially it is related to the sense of touch and feeling. So – if that is the case and an experience with an apparition happens – if you are clairaudient and I am clairvoyant – I may see something, while you hear it. If the third guy with us is none of those things, then he may experience nothing.

Following this theory, then, the manipulation of objects – like draining a battery, recording an EVP, spiking an EMF, etc., would be accomplished by psychokinesis involving the actual manipulation of the instrument by the consciousness that is the apparition. So – I wonder if somewhere in here, you could take the theory suggested above by Loyd Auerbach and then posit why, as Carolyn suggested, a battery could possibly drain temporarily and then restore itself.

Yes, people process and perceive psychic information and/or personal experiences differently. I am extremely cognizant of this important fact. That is why I am always very careful and and do not verbalize aloud what I have seen in the presence of others until I hear exactly their impressions of what they have experienced. I do not want to influence their perceptions at all. When the facts of their experience, in my presence, correlate exactly with my experience, do I believe a true experience has occurred. Mass hysteria? No. I can't give credence to that in the numerous experiences I have had both on the battlefield in the presence of others (with no suggestions on my part) or in the years of investigations I did in L.A. before I moved to Gettysburg. Of course, these are specific incidents, normally involving visual and audio phenomenon. (Actually seeing apparitions and hearing gunshots or cannon fire.)

I can also give you examples where I heard cannon fire throughout the night at the hotel, and no one else has heard it. With the exception of that incident which I documented for the magazine several weeks ago where 6 guests, independent of each other, approached me in the morning asking if there were fireworks and what was that small arms fire they heard all night long. That was the very first time I heard cannon fire from 11:00 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. and the guests also heard it in that same time period.

When I am relating my personal experiences and, indeed, while experiencing them, I am fully aware of many things while the event is happening and take careful note of a myriad of things at the time. I am not just a visitor to an area who happens to experience an event. I am always looking at it with an experienced eye and question, sometimes ruthlessly, the events. Whether it is something that I have experienced on the battlefield or at the hotel, I'm always looking for an explanation. I only document in the magazine those events which I cannot explain or relate those experiences here for which there are no explanation. My personal experiences, which are considerable, I am happy to share and, hopefully, will only add to the discussions here on this board.

Carolyn

Maybe we need to compile a list of people who have recorded something immediately before or after a battery has "died".

It would definitely be interesting to see if there is an increase in activity immediately after battery draining, as in are they using that energy in manifesting, moving items, speaking via digital recorders, etc.

Carolyn

Thanks Carolyn. Good thoughts. You know, I had one piece of equipment totally die never to recover. Granted – it was about five years old – but it was working fine leading up to and during most of the investigation. It was only towards the end when my batteries drained on both cameras and my video camera (and I also lost audio on my digital voice recorder) all around the same time that the small camera died forever and ever. Could be coincidence. Or it could be whatever this phenomenon is that we are discussing.

Update. I got it to work again, but I had to charge the battery several times and reinitialize the processor. I'll probably have to replace the battery, since whatever Karen ran into sucked every single free electron out of that thing.

Right, I definitely think that's possible.

Are there natural occurrences that were present when the camera died that could be an explanation?

OOOhhh, I so held back an ex-wife joke just then! /laugh.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />