In defense of TAPS
- Sunday, September 20 2009 @ 11:20 pm UTC
- Contributed by: tomcat
- Views: 632
As many of you know, I've hunted with TAPS members on a couple of occasions and I've always found them to be very polite and somewhat shy people. They've got their opinions on things and I've concluded that they are famous folks who sometimes are a little bewildered at the sheer mass of humanity watching them at all times.
For many moons now, I've watched folks sit in judgment of this episode or that and who take issue with TAPS and GHI's approaches to things. A lot of things are charged. Everything from outright faking of evidence to personal attacks for reasons that border on the insane.
I've wondered where this all comes from. Considering how easy it is these days to capture EVP and other evidence with the sheer numbers of haunts now known to exist, WHY would one of the more experienced teams in the world fake evidence?
I heard it (in person) best said at a conference where GHI and TAPS were present and they said if they ever got caught doing such things, it would wreck the entire paranormal field. And their opinions on how easy it is to catch evidence made it clear to me that they had their priorities pretty well figured out. I think that they are on the level and that we can trust their investigations and evidence presentations unless evidence is brought forth to prove otherwise. What galled me into writing this article was yet another TAPS-bashing I heard on the radio and I decided I had to say something.
If it were not for TAPS, I wouldn't have had the courage to join this field and develop my own methods and protocols with their team as an inspiration and guide. I've been accused of trying to be a "TAPS-wannabe-clone" and actually decided it best to depart in certain areas from the TAPS model as I saw fit. TAPS is the example of how to run a good team and also shows the joys and sorrows of real-life paranormal investigation. Their showing of the humanity and imperfections show us what it means to be an investigator.
And as for the claims about advising people to take back their house and that ends it. No. That is not what happens. These sorts of cases stay active and if the clergy are needed, TAPS and other well-run teams have established connections with these people.
People believe the show is the end-all be-all and forget that this is a one hour program. They don't understand that the cases are hunted for days by TAPS to get the footage and also that the job doesn't end when TAPS leaves. The case remains open. So it isn't like what you just "see" on each episode. If you want, read the book by TAPS and you'll get a better feel for what their methods are about.
I wish to publicly thank TAPS for their example and showing me that I could do this myself. You won't catch me saying bad things about them. The entire field owes them a debt of gratitude in my opinion and those who bash them should construct logical arguments to take to TAPS and ask them in person to explain a point of debate rather than to talk about it from behind a keyboard or on a radio program. I think they might be surprised at the factual and logical explanations they might get.
Go TAPS. You guys rock. May you have many more years of investigations and amazing experiences!
