Dead Wrong

To Debunk is:

To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of.

I read a lot. I think that reading is important and enjoyable.  In choosing what I read, I will often select books by authors I already know. It's tried and true. But reading posts on social media is like eating at a salad bar with a blindfold on. You just never know what you're getting until it's down your throat. 

I have "friended" (don't you hate it when a perfectly good noun starts being used as a verb?) many paranormal groups on my social media page. One day I found myself in a generous mood and clicked the check mark beside every single person who was listed as a possible friend. I wound up with dozens of paranormal groups as friends. I read their posts because they fascinate me, sometimes not in a good way. I can count on a few laughs, a few silly comments, an occasional truth, and, more frequently than I care to admit, a post good enough to expend my time writing an opinion, mostly, in order to defuse my built up confusion, anger and frustration over how really silly paranormal people can be.

So, one day recently I came across a post about debunking. It's a perfectly good word. It means to expose falseness. In the paranormal realm, I think that Ghost Hunters were the first group to make the term a sort of standard for investigating claims of paranormal activity in order to find out the truth of the matter; to distinguish between a natural occurrence, an explainable phenomena and something that just might be unexplainable, and, therefore, paranormal in origin.

Well...heh.   No.  The word, apparently, is offensive to many. It is insulting. It is demeaning. All paranormal investigators with a heart should never use this term. It assumes that a client is feeding the investigator "bunk" and the investigator is there to de-bunk you.  This, according to the writer, is very wrong. Hurtful. All claims, no matter how incredible, should be assumed to be paranormal and legitimate. Do not try to disprove or explain away such phenomena if the client believes. This is not your job. Your job is not to go around calling people bunk-ers. and de-bunking them, like de-lousing them for bugs. No. Your job is to explain whatever it is in paranormal terms. All knocks and ticks and bangs are mysterious. All footsteps are from ghost feet. All voices are from beyond our realm. We are to be, first and formost, believers, not debunkers.

Well, I say BUNK to that. 

Dead wrong.

P. J.