Kurt Begue says he has never seen a ghost and he doesn’t believe in them. He’s a Christian, he says, but when you die, you’re gone. You don’t hang around as a ghost.
Oh, Begue knows plenty of people who tell him they’ve seen strange apparitions and heard disembodied voices, but he’s an engineer and wants hard proof, he said, and no one’s ever been able to provide that.
So it’s curious that Begue is a founding member of an outfit called “In Nomine Paranormal Research,” a local group of paranormal investigators who, according to their mission statement, seek to produce quantifiable evidence of spirits and other strange things.
One of their favorite places to do research, oddly enough, is the Masonic Temple at 216 E. Washington Blvd., that huge sandstone cube that sits practically next to the downtown YMCA.
There is no record that anyone has ever died in that building, Begue said, but when it comes to the paranormal, the temple, some say, is one of the most active buildings in the state.
How come?
“It depends on how you interpret life and death,” Begue said. “If you’re caught in a limbo, where do you go? To a place that feels like home, where you feel welcome, comfortable and safe,” he said.
Begue doesn’t buy a lot of stuff, such as cold spots and drafts and electromagnetic spikes, as evidence of spirits or ghosts. All old buildings have cold spots. They’re drafty. Old wiring can create electromagnetic fields, and electromagnetic fields can have an affect on the brain, he said.
He also looks askance at unintelligible, static-filled recordings of so-called entities that people claim are voices saying something.
“If an entity is intelligent it can give you an intelligent (and understandable) response,” he said.
Once someone sent him a photo of an individual with a fuzzy entity standing in the picture. Was it a ghost? Begue said he immediately asked whether the photo was taken by a particular model of cellphone, which it was. Well, he said, that phone has a flaw that causes cloudy figures to appear in all photos when lighting is poor.
Look, he says, the country is full of paranormal investigators who say they’ve had personal experiences, but you can go through the entire Internet and not find a single video or recording that provides concrete proof.
Whether you believe in this stuff or not, though, there’s nothing like going through that huge, ornate temple and having a look around. In Nomine members have gone through the place several times in the past few years.
Some members of In Nomine have told him stories of things they’ve heard and seen, but Begue said he has never seen or heard a thing himself.
Source: JournalGazette
I found this piece curious to say the very least.
Begue claims he is a Christian, and has never seen a ghost, and once you`ve gone, you`ve gone .... he says.
Although he is now a paranormal researcher, he doesn`t believe in the paranormal. So as a paranormal researcher do you think you`ll get an unbiased viewpoint? Of course you won`t, because the paranormal doesn`t exist, - as a Christian man like Begue would testify.
You could say (and with good cause) that Begue is not a paranormal researcher, but a paranormal denier. And like all good paranormal deniers, he makes assumptions based around his own belief mechanism rather than embracing the fact that many believers may have good reason to believe - with evidence to support it.
But to Begue these are but a minor distraction. After all, (so he says) he has checked out the internet and has yet to find `concrete proof`. But (and no disrespect here intended), there is no concrete proof that a man called Jesus was really the son of God. In fact, I could argue that I too have trawled the internet for proof of this, and have yet to find any.
So, does that mean I have to become a religious researcher, and create my own religious research site in order to destroy Christianity? Of course not. But unlike Begue - as a real paranormal researcher, I accept that we are all entitled to believe or worship in whatever we want to follow. I am not a Christian, persae, and I do not believe that any one individual could ever be the son or daughter of God.
But I do not decry those that follow these beliefs. In fact, I often visit churches to meditate and make my own personal communion with God, but that is my choice to do so, and I do not expect people like Begue to try and discredit me for doing so - whether it`s the paranormal or even for a man called Jesus.
If Mr Begue runs true to form, I expect him to contact Google and get this article shelved from my site for breach of copyright. If he does, I will tell you. But then perhaps I am making too many false assumptions, - just like Mr Begue!
We will see .....
Chris Halton