When we started our research in 2013, we believed that our work would be primarily focused on finding evidence of life after life. After all, the few really high quality anomalies we had recorded over the years (and not just as the Paranormal Team Inc.) told us that there was definitely something beyond our understanding. However, as our experience, budget, and caseload grows, we are realizing that the answer to the origin of mystery anomalies may be multiple. Not only are we no longer considering various esoteric theories, we are successfully disproving our earlier claims. And the mystery research at Fort Josefov has even successfully undermined one of the foundational pillars we built in 2013. What it is and what it means for us, you will find out in this article.

Each research was a shift for our association. So we can't say that one research was worse than another. Everything that has taken place has been a success and an expansion of our knowledge of the reality around us.

When we first started, we used technology primarily to communicate with "spirits". Soul, also spirit, can be broadly defined as intelligent energy with a personality. In a narrower definition, we have it listed as: an intangible energy specified to a human substance exhibiting intelligent behavior with specific traits of a given deceased personality.

It should be noted that the above definition was created only at a later stage of the Paranormal Team's operation. More precisely, in 2015. And it is these definitions, their meanings and their use in practice that are behind many of the changes we are experiencing in the field of research. Why, would be worth a separate article (which we will write at some point), but the important thing lies in the recognition that it is difficult to confirm objectively that behind an anomaly in which a pebble comes flying at us horizontally out of the darkness (and no one alive threw the pebble), or that when we hear several syllables of an unknown voice in a dictaphone, an intelligent energy specific to a particular deceased person is necessarily behind it. Unfortunately, in the objective methodology of cognition, the answer is not so clear, which is why we decided to look into one important matter in our last research of 2015.

Tradition has it that most energy anomalies and hauntings are in places with troubled histories. If you visit our website, you will see that we mainly research in places with such a history. Of course, what can places where nothing tragic has ever happened tell us? Locations where life was so trivial that no one expects anything paranormal to happen there? And that's exactly the kind of place we've found.

The military barracks in Josefov is an abandoned building with a courtyard (so we will have maximum peace there), which was used by filmmakers in the past and now we will use it for our measurements and research. No one - as far as we know - has died here. The underground of the Joseph Fortress is in another part of the city. The Battle of Hradec Kralove happened again in a completely different place (miles and miles away). Just the perfect boring place where even the grim reaper would go on holiday if she could.

No one has ever experienced anything paranormal here, and we took it upon ourselves to do exactly the same research on this place as the location to be "haunted". What will our instruments reveal?

research

The first phase of the research was conducted in the daytime. We walked the entire building and its courtyard with EMF field instruments and measured the electromagnetic variations room by room. The entire study area has long since been devoid of working electrical wiring and our cell phones were turned off. Since electromagnetism surrounds us all the time, we concentrated on specific deviations in this field. These did not exceed 3-5 milliGauss on the instruments, one of which operates at 30-20,000 Hz and the other at 30-300 Hz.

These deviations did not represent any significant supranormal anomalies.

Once the cameras were deployed and the nighttime monitoring was planned, the actual overnight monitoring began. During this time, we followed the same methodological approach as we have done at other study sites over the past year. For the most part, we did not experience anything. Voices from outside were heard here and there, which we always put on record for future analysis, and otherwise we knew nothing about the surrounding population.

Around three o'clock in the morning Ondřej Bezouška took his camera and went to do a survey to see how the abandoned spaces in the dark would affect him psychologically. His cognitive processes were most affected when the wide and large spaces of the house narrowed considerably. At that moment his body began to produce more adrenaline and his senses evaluated even a simple crackle as the possible presence of someone or something.

Analysis

The analyses from the third hour of the morning, when Ondrej himself walked through the building, revealed nothing objectively paranormal. However, when examining the recordings of the midnight research in the attic, where Katerina Běhanová and Ondřej Bezouška were asking questions for possible intelligent answers, their tape recorder recorded a voice that did not belong to any of the investigators and, when analyzed, was unanimously evaluated by several researchers as, "Pepan quietly." You can hear him in both the first and second episodes of Ghosts of Fortress Josefov.

This footage is consistent with the better evidence of the EVP phenomenon that we have published in the past. The question then arises, why is it heard even where nothing tragic was ever supposed to happen?

The answer, of course, may not be one. And objectively they will all be hard to prove. But logically we already know that energy anomalies like EVP or parakinetic activity do not necessarily imply the presence or even the existence of ghosts. Thanks to ever new experiences and analyses, it is possible that other factors may explain these mysteries. For example, our own psychology, other realities or dimensions, etc. We have to realize that once we operate with mystery, theories such as the intertwining of times are just as real as the claim of the existence of ghosts.

And this is perhaps the greatest contribution of all the research in Joseph. We don't necessarily stand on paradigms when the results reveal other possible explanations, including rational ones. Because openness to other approaches and ideas may ultimately be the right way to fully understand the mystery around us. And therefore the reality of the world we live in.

• thanks for photos to Tadeáš Kadlec

by Ondřej Bezouška
Proofreader: Kateřina Běhanová

video of the investigation

• in Czech, without English subtitles