The OVERNIGHT youtube channel: My brief thoughts
This is going to be a different type of post from the previous ones I've done on this blog. One thing I find interesting about the paranormal is how there seems to be so much evidence showing it to exist, and there are so many teams across the world actively going out each night collecting this evidence, yet it isn't accepted as a fact that there is life after death. Granted, not all teams are legitimate, and not all evidence is good evidence of the existence of an afterlife, but it still strikes me as odd that there is still a debate over it when its something which has been discussed throughout human existence.
This being said, there are a couple of paranormal investigation groups which have come on my radar and this has led to me wanting to watch what they do and review them on here. The two groups I'm going to review are 'OVERNIGHT' and 'Ghosts of Britain'. Two TV programmes I will review are 'Help! My house is haunted' and '28 days haunted'. This will show a comparison between a UK based investigation group and an American based investigation group, along with a comparison of a UK based paranormal TV programme compared with an American based paranormal TV programme.
This particular post will discuss a portion of one of the 'OVERNIGHT' channels many videos. The video is titled 'TRUTH about POSSESSION of ELTON CASTEE | Haunted Homies Ep1' and is pictured in the image above. This post will also not be an in depth review of the video, or the group, it also won't discuss the entirety of the video. During a portion of their 'Haunted Homies' videos they bring a number of people on the stage, wether that be guests, or audience members, and they hear the paranormal experiences of these people and discuss them. My aim is to create one post per story in order to create a good log of paranormal experiences from across the world in order to find patterns amongst the stories. This way, I know what the recurring details are, and can lean towards them being consistent facts of how the paranormal works which is exactly what is needed to create theories on which to find evidence for. Its always best to find facts, create a theory based on the facts, then see if when finding more facts these new facts fit the established theory. If they do, great, looks like the theory is good. If not, the theory needs adjusting.
At the start of the video it is mentioned that there will be 25 videos in the Haunted Homies series, so I'm hoping this will give a good amount of experiences for me to use and comment on. I have contacted the OVERNIGHT team to see if I'm allowed to use the experiences shared in my blog, and they replied saying I could which I am very grateful for.
This post was originally going to discuss the first story, but then a couple of interesting discussions occured before the first experience was shared, so I decided to save that for the next post on the video. This post will touch on their credibility, how the paranormal works, and possession. At the start of the recap the two main guys from the channel, Elton and Corey, are sat in their museum giving an introduction about the series and then something falls. I think you can tell from Eltons reaction that it is a genuine moment and that he is extremely excited that one of their many haunted objects had just fallen. This kind of thing is what makes me believe this group, and that these two guys in particular, are genuine not only about their enthusiasm for the paranormal but also about their willingness to do proper investigations. I do not think they fake things, I also received a comment from a member of their team via email reassuring me that everything in their videos is real. This moment in the video isn't something I have much comment on, I just thought it was nice to see a genuine reaction like that.
Next, at roughly 7 minutes 20 seconds through the video the discussion turns to Elton being possessed due to the voluntary possession he undertook in a previous video. Specifically, it was about what he described seeing during their Whaley house investigation video. They describe how there was a point Corbyn began feeling unwell and how Elton described seeing eyes when he closed his eyes. This caused everyone but Elton to leave the building in fear. I think that in the moment this happened, it was due to a misunderstanding of either what Elton was describing or the interpretation of what the team knew about possessed people. During one of their videos at the Warren museum, they were told about how someone had taken a photo of the Annabelle doll and that in the picture it looked like the doll had a pair of eyes visible behind the dolls eyes. In the haunted homies video, they say its a common thing said about the possessed that you can see eyes behind the eyes. Using the logic of the Warren video, if Elton was possessed you would be able to look into his eyes and see eyes behind his. Using the logic from the haunted homies video, if Elton was possessed he would close his eyes and see eyes on his eyelids. At least, this is how I interpreted it, and I think it was all a misunderstanding. What Elton clarified is he was experiencing what mediums claim to experience when having their eyes closed and 'seeing' a spirit, which is a pair of eyes manifesting ahead of him which likely belonged to a spirit in the room.
Next they discussed if Elton was still possessed. Elton asked what he could do to prove he wasn't, the response was 'go to church' and he told them he had done. What followed was very interesting information. Elton said he reached out to someone who works with the Warren museum in order to get himself cleansed and he was told that he wouldn't be able to film it if he did because any credible priest will not want the work of God to be for profit in any way. So, to me, this says any priest who has ever done a public exorcism or who receives profit/publicity in any way is probably not legitimate which is a mixed bag. In some ways it's bad because anything public like that involving a priest is probably fake, but in others its good because these things are never heard about and so this adds legitimacy. The angels and demons side of the paranormal is something I am very skeptical on, but am open to investigating to see exactly how much of the lore is true. Possession also falls into this category for me as I believe extreme activity like this is extremely rare at best.
The final point I wanted to discuss about the start of this video is a really good question asked by Elton at roughly 25 minutes and 50 seconds into the video.
Elton: 'You said you want to have a one to one undeniable experience, I feel like you've had those, so what's undeniable to you then?'
Matt: 'Obviously your vision is what you trust the most, so I mean that would be the most undeniable experience, but the coolest thing I haven't been able to explain was at (...) Preston Castle where you and I were upstairs talking to the ten year old boy. Every single question we asked was so specific, so well timed, no equipment could malfunction so specifically that we were having this conversation. It was a catball across the room, and then when Josh came and kept trying to scare us: completely went away. The questions we were getting answered were so specific and so fascinating and it was the first time that it showed me the more comfortable we are, the more comfortable they are in communication. It's almost like they can tell your intentions, so the fact that we felt like we were talking to a ten year old boy and we were treating them just like that is really what helped kick up that experience, and because we felt like it was this child it was a very warm, welcoming, non-threatening relationship energy.'
To me, both the question and response are brilliant. Matt is another member of the OVERNIGHT team, hence why he is asked the question about undeniable experiences. I often hear people who are skeptical talk about evidence like they expect to see footage of someone crawling on the ceiling, or of things being hurled across a room like a tornado has just spawned there, but I just don't think this is possible. I don't even think documentation of a full body apparition is likely. I think good evidence is far more subtle and far more reliant on what others would pass off as 'just a coincidence'. I was thrilled when Matt shared that experience because it backs up my own beliefs on what to expect. He says the coolest thing he has seen is equipment going off in response to his questions. He says the timing is what made it. This is something I look at im my own investigations; timings and reoccurrence. As a result, this not only gives OVERNIGHT even more credibility as a team due to their members having realistic aims and expectations, but it also is a good word on what evidence is good evidence. It doesn't matter if you haven't got an image of a disembodied head, audio of a wailing voice, or a video of doors slamming... the best evidence, and the most consistent evidence, is the little things which are coincidences as a one off but if you can get enough of them in the same location more times than not... then you've got good evidence.
This is all I've got to say on the video at the moment, I hope the post made sense as I think it may have been a bit of a ramble at times. I will include the links to both the haunted homies video pictured at the start of this post, along with the Whaley House investigation video below:
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