Trying to explain the unexplained

1:30pm Sunday 10th August 2008

Comments (8)   Have your say »

DON’T bother with the merry quips about Ghostbusters when you meet the people from Paranormal Site Investigators.

It’s not that the members of the Swindon organisation lack a sense of humour; they’ve just heard it all before.

And besides, an unusual phenomenon would have to be very unusual indeed before PSI would acknowledge it as supernatural.

Sceptical yet not cynical, PSI has a firm science-based standpoint, and so far none of the many things investigated has made the cut as officially ghostly.

Currently recruiting more investigators, the organisation was founded in 2004 by partners Dave Wood, 27, who is a trainer with a charity, and Nicky Sewell, also 27, a civil servant.

Dave said: “Nicky and I met when we were studying psychology at university in Plymouth.”

Both were members of a paranormal investigation group there. Nicky had always been interested in the subject, while for Dave the interest grew after he began his studies.

PSI was founded after the two moved here and realised Swindon had no such organisation.

There are currently 11 active investigators, while online membership stands at about 1,300.

PSI carries out at least one full-scale investigation a month, and has been invited to work at both private homes and commercial sites.

Sound recording and photographic equipment are carefully set up and monitored by investigators.

Dave added: “We approach everything from a rationalist and scientific perspective.

“Other people who approach things from, say, a supernatural perspective might have their own theories about things, but from a scientific perspective this is nonsense.”

PSI and everybody involved with it are willing to consider the possibility of the supernatural, but only after all other avenues have been exhausted.

In his years of investigating, Dave says he has not encountered anything in Swindon for which he believes there was no rational explanation.

Strange sounds, changes in temperature, even apparent visible manifestations can be put down to anything from unexpected echoes to tired eyes.

The only thing to have stumped Dave happened at a site he attended in Devon before PSI existed.

He saw stones on a patch of gravel lifted and apparently thrown by some invisible means.

A ghostly force? Dave says he had no time to investigate further, but the fact that the site was over an underground cavern suggests to him a possible scientific explanation – perhaps small gusts of air from below.

According to PSI, 95 percent of alleged supernatural phenomena are readily explainable scientifically.

Dave said: “We have been able to bring comfort to people who thought they were being haunted by showing them the rational cause of the events.”

A wealth of information about PSI and its work can be found at www. p-s-i. org.uk.