In my second blog post, I mentioned my guilty pleasure of watching Ghost Hunters and now I am going to write about an investigative practice I enjoyed on Ghost Hunters International. Now before someone freaks out about paranormal investigators emulating TAPS and other yada yada, hear me out.
In 2008, on an episode of Ghost Hunters International. Barry used the phrase "The Singapore Theory" in reference to the practice of using period music as stimuli during an investigation. For years since, I have kept this theory in the back of mind, as I myself enjoy the use of music on investigations. When I decided to start a blog, I made a list of topics that I wanted to cover and The Singapore Theory was one of the first on the list, but this post has taken an unexpected turn.
I don't try to pass this blog off as any form of academic writing, or a professional venture, it is simply a side project for fun. However, I do try to do a fair amount of research before I post anything and I must say that my research on "The Singapore Theory" surprised me.
The first thing I looked for was a published copy of the theory itself and any corresponding experiments/research. What I found was disappointing, just a lot of other teams, organizations and blogs talking about the application of paranormal stimuli under the name "The Singapore Theory". I never found a published theory of any kind, and no explanation of why Barry assigned this name to the use of period music on an investigation. I hate to say it, but I think this is yet another example of paranormal TV shows messing with our heads. It seems that the "Singapore Theory" is nothing but a buzz word that spread like wildfire after its use on TV. This isn't the first time that the Ghost Hunters franchise, or TAPS have gotten themselves in a bit of hot water over renaming common practices to take some sort of "ownership" over them. It's a shame really that we all (myself included) get so caught up in the faux science so often associated with paranormal research. Why call something a theory that doesn't even resemble a true scientific theory? So often what is passed off as "scientific research" in this field is nothing more than loosely organized ideas. But that's a rant for another day...
