Battery Drainage

[Claire Nichols]

This past weekend at an investigation, 2 recorders lost batteries within 5 minutes of each other. Both recorders had new batteries at the beginning of the investigation, but then at 2hrs and 40 minutes and then at 2hrs and 45 minutes, the batteries in these 2 died. I have been using these recorders for months and they generally run 10 - 12 hours on new batteries. We have experienced battery drain numerous times before. That is nothing really out of the ordinary. However, this weekend there was a question posed. If the entity is intelligent, are they draining batteries because they need the energy, or is it because they don't want to be documented, or both?

To me, I think it is a little bit of both. I had an experience of something turning off my recorder and it only recorded for 5 minutes and I have also been in a room with a lot of activity and the battery would drain so fast that I would be afraid that the battery wouldn't last and then I would be grouped in another room and it would go back to full battery. Weird huh?

I think that so many people watch GH and GHI and think, "If they say they need the battery drain then that is the holly grail... that is what they are doing." However, I think it takes a REAL PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR to argue the fact that there could be another factor involved. Because one person says one thing, doesn't mean that it is necessarily true. But Jeremiah, did you notice that those two recorders were in the two most active areas AND they both have a good EMF readings in both?

Which leads me to another question, which I will start a new topic about it and not steer the topic away here.

Thoughts Anyone?

[Sherry]

We experienced this on a recent investigation as well, we were only about a half hour in and Dotti and I both had to replace the batteries in our walk around recorders. Now, I will qualify that, becasue neither one of us had put new batteries in at the start of the investigation, so it is hard to say if there was a paranormal factor to it. But the fact that they both went down at the same time seemed peculiar.

As the evening went on we also had other equipment malfunctions, one of the video cameras ceased to function at all, and a camera that was set up on a tripod was totally turned downward when I went back to check on it - like someone had pushed it down . And finally on our last EVP session, the handycam that had about 50 minutes left on battery went off by itself after only about 10 minutes, just like someone turned it off.

The odd thing about that was that normally it will save the video even if the power disconnects, but this time it was totally gone! Now, if we were still new at this I would blame it on operator error, but we pretty much know our way around with our equipment now, it just seemed like we were plagued with problems that night. We know the place where we were at has activity going on that we had already documented from a previous investigation there, but since we are always inviting the entities to come on over and check out the equipment, it makes you wonder if they didn't do just that! LOL!

We are not saying definitively that the equipment/battery problems are proof of acivity, there are just too many possible variables with a situation like that, but we did note it on our investigation report that it could be an indicator that activity is going on, which most groups have experienced at one time or another. My personal take is that I agree with you that it could be a sign of both the spirit drawing energy, and then using that energy to more or less get our attention by doing some cantakerous things like turning stuff off and messing with the equipment.

[Claire Nichols]

Well I am not really saying is this proof of an entity being in a location, all I am wanting to know is this simple question:

Do you think they need the juice from the batteries or if this is an intelligent haunt do you think they just dont want to be documented.

[Sherry]

I think something in the activity is either using the energy from the batteries or something in the make up of the activity itself sometimes causes the batttery drain just by virtue of being in close proximity to it, sort of like a side effect.

And in the case of an intelligent haunt, I think it is totally possible that they make a decision whether to be seen or not.