Paranormal Investigators Around the World

Contents: About the Collection | About the About Page | Tech

About the Collection

This site is dedicated to gathering information on paranormal investigation organizations. This resource is both a directory of organizations as well as a starting point for research for those who have an academic interest in paranormal investigation. What makes this site more than a directory is that I include a description of the organization as well as listing specific paranormal phenomena that each organization specializes in. Additionally, the subject details also include some information related to services that the organization provides, such as consultation, research or investigation. As far as I know, there are few directories that include this kind of information. This information would be particularly useful for researchers who wish to utilize this information to answer research questions, such as performing a content analysis on paranormal research organizations.

Although this website is useful for scholars, it is primarily designed for either those who are seeking the services of a paranormal organization or who wish to become a part of one. The information provided on this website, such as location, description and speciality, are meant to help the user identify an appropriate organization. This website then lists the website and any available contact information for the organization so that the user can either learn more about the organization or contact it.

The organizations, though primarily in the U.S. and U.K., span the entire world. Though they are spread far, they are linked by their efforts to aid people going through experiences that can be traumatic and resist traditional explanations. Because of this, I argue that paranormal investigation organizations together create a large network that aggregates the knowledge of paranormal researchers. This is corroborated by the fact that paranormal research organizations exist in relation to one another, through directories and organizational “families”.

Concerning directories, one of the most important directories of paranormal research organizations is ParanormalSocieties.com, a key source for gathering the information for this website. This site lists 4,892 in the United States alone, and lists organizations for 34 other countries. Though paranormal research organizations operate primarily independent of one another, coming together on a resource such as a directory makes them more discoverable by prospective clients and allows the organizations to stay connected with one another and share information.

Concerning organizational “families”, we can observe that as an organization gains a positive reputation, other, smaller organizations may seek to join them to achieve a level of legitimacy. This is true of the T.A.P.S. (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) family. Originally based on the Atlantic coast, they now proudly have member organizations across the entire United States, including the Midwest and Pacific coast. This is an additional avenue for collaboration and information sharing among paranormal research organizations. More information on the T.A.P.S. family can be found on the T.A.P.S. page.

Some technical details will help users most effectively use this website. Firstly, it should be noted that the organizations selected here were selected from ParanormalSocieties.com. I only selected organizations whose information could be accessed, such as websites or social media. Many of the organizations listed on ParanormalSocieties.com did not have operational websites or any online presence. The organizations were selected through random sampling of ParanormalSocieties.com listings, with listings that had no website or online presence discarded and the selection process repeated until 24 were collected. The site is designed so that user can browse the entire directory in the Browse page or can perform searches based on metadata elements, such as city, state, specialty, subject, and name. The site consists of objects, which are screenshots of the homepage of the websites of the organizations, taken October 10th, 2024, with the information detailed alongside the image. This site is not meant to be an exhaustive listing of all paranormal investigation organizations, but is a starting point that will be continuously added to. The future of this website will be to include a feature where users can suggest paranormal research organizations to add to the website.

Finally, I would like to thank my advisor John Walsh, professor of the course, Digital Libraries, during which this website was created, Gyuri Kang, the Assistant Instructor for the aforementioned course, and my classmates from the Digital Libraries course for their support and assistance in the development of this website. I would also like to express my appreciation for the ParanormalSocieties.com directory, without which this project would not have been possible.

Creator: Sasha Goryl - Third Year PhD Student in information science at Indiana University and archival assistant with the Indiana University Archives.

Controlled vocabularies used: Format: MIME Media Types City, State and Country : Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Specialty, Subject: American Folklore Society Ethnographic Thesaurus