In short I won't be doing anything on Halloween and in fact I've always specifically avoided it, it can be something for children, but I'm definitely not a fan of trick or treating, it is in my opinion a type of begging that children are often encouraged to do. Many people don't want anything to do with trick or treating and it's their right, they can annoy residents and sometimes the tricks can go too far with older children or even young adults that may even demand more than just sweets. Perhaps trick or treating is more accepted in the USA where Halloween is apparently a much bigger occasion, but even there I doubt everyone agrees with it. Marketing however plays a big role in Halloween and they've been trying to make Halloween bigger in the UK so it's closer to the USA for a long time with only limited success, they have managed to promote it as a big night out for "ghost hunts" however to my dismay...
I used to be involved in serious paranormal investigating from 1996 in the UK, but since around the year 2000 there's been an influx of extremely unprofessional public "ghost hunt" events and unprofessional paranormal groups that have made a mockery of the paranormal along with various fake or grossly exaggerated TV programmes like
Ghost Adventures where virtually every few minutes something apparently happens that you'd be lucky to catch in 6 months of genuine professional investigating, a few you'd even be lucky in a lifetime or it would never really happen, yet it's sadly so popular and has conned literally millions of people. In genuine investigations you need patience, it's not uncommon to go an entire night without anything happening what-so-ever, in fact even in what used to be allegedly the most haunted house in Great Britain,
Chingle Hall I've had a good few nights with absolutely nothing happening and some nights with very little, I did have one incredible night there which was one of the best nights I've ever known, yet even this doesn't come close to what allegedly happens on Ghost Adventures all the time. One TV programme that kicked it all off in the UK was Most Haunted which is mostly fake and got worse as the programme continued under pressure to get viewing figures, they even used to have live specials on Halloween. For instance I spoke to John, the elderly owner of a very infamous haunted location called
The Ancient Ram Inn when I stayed there privately with a couple of team members. Most Haunted paid for John to stay in a nice hotel, he however missed being home and returned while they were still filming. One of the most rememberable and apparently shocking episodes of Most Haunted was filmed at this location when a member of the crew was allegedly violently attacked by a spirit and thrown to the floor when the rest of the crew apparently struggled to carry him out while still allegedly under attack. This was totally and utterly fake, what you didn't see in the TV programme was the crew laying down a mattress for him to fall back on safely ready for when the supposed spirit was apparently attacking him, throwing him to the floor once they started filming, the whole thing was planned and setup.
Anyway, back to the subject of Halloween. Halloween is now very big business for masses of paid public "ghost hunt" event companies that couldn't be any less professional. Their events are often advertised with slogans such as "will you dare to spend the night" and are designed to frighten people with the same addictive qualities as riding on white knuckle rides at a theme park. "Ghost hunts" for frights was also promoted by the TV programme Most Haunted where the crew nearly always pretended to be constantly frightened, often screaming and running away in apparent fear, this is NOT what true paranormal investigating is supposed to be all about and if something does happen it's very important to keep a clear head in order to obtain evidence. Sadly the biggest of these pubic "ghost hunt" events groups in the UK are profit making, the biggest of all that was started by a wealthy lady that I won't name is likely to run close to 20 different events just on Halloween alone and they will all usually be sold out well before the date. I also know for a fact that at least some groups create their own so called "paranormal activity" by faking it, or at the very least they will claim that every creek caused by expansion / contraction of materials is paranormal and since it's all officially for entertainment purposes only this is also perfectly legal in the UK even if was proven totally fake. When I started paranormal investigating in 1996 there wasn't a single public "ghost hunt" group that sold events in the UK and there was just a couple of private investigation groups that were mostly a lot more serious and professional, I'd estimate there's at least 50 public events groups now in the UK, plus absolutely masses of unprofessional private groups and most will be specially out on Halloween. It's now very difficult to do any serious paranormal investigation work any more, most locations charge a fortune with high demand while there's even many locations that aren't even particularly haunted that are jumping in just to make money, even private jobs which I've done in the past are jumped on by so many unprofessional groups, the whole scene has been completely ruined, it upsets me and Halloween reminds me of this when virtually every unprofessional group will be out.
Some people believe that there's more paranormal activity on Halloween, it is feasibly possible, not because Halloween is anything special, but because there's a lot more people out looking for it, unfortunately only a tiny number of reports, most probably less than 1% will actually be caused by genuinely unexplained phenomenon, especially on Halloween and with so many unprofessional as well as fake groups it's virtually impossible to single out the genuine ones. They've even been promoting Friday 13th as a secondary night "special" to Halloween for "ghost hunts", similarly to Halloween the date has absolutely nothing directly to do with increased paranormal activity, but there will be more people out looking for it.
LOL! It's a fun time.
