“I’m interested in [. . .] the sincerity and the intensity that [of]people who have encountered paranormal phenomena,” said Paul Kingsbury, a geography professor at SFU.

Kingsbury has accepted a grant for $183,000 to conduct research over the next four years that will focus on those who seek out the paranormal. This includes ghost hunters, UFO hunters, and others who seek out cryptids, mythical animals that have not been proven to exist, such as Sasquatch or the Ogopogo.

Two SFU graduate students, Noel Hawkins and Hilda Fernandez, will be helping Kingsbury on the project, with 82 per cent of the grant going towards training them in the field and giving them the opportunity to co-author articles with the professor.

The grant Kingsbury was awarded is called “Situating the growth of paranormal investigation cultures: a critical study of the lived spaces of the organizations and conferences.” He believes the grant is the result of a “trend which many scholars have noticed in the growth of interest of people spending more time, energy, and money on [paranormal] investigations.”

Kingsbury noted that these shows have taken off with television networks such as the History Channel, Space, and National Geographic, picking up shows about aliens, UFOs, Bigfoot, and other paranormal topics.

He added that the West has been seeing the rise of the “esoteric economy,” wherein more people are commodifying the supernatural or the spiritual. “You can go out and buy healing crystals at trades fairs or spiritual events, tarot palm reading, so there’s been an economic shift in the past decade as well,” he said.

Kingsbury’s research will focus on the investigation aspect. Studies show that there were 250 ghost hunter groups in the UK about a decade ago, and now there are 2,500. He says the trend in North America is similar. Although most research regarding ghosts has been in the fine arts and liberal arts, Kingsbury notes that there hasn’t been much work done in the “lived” experience of ghost hunting.

His research will include studying how knowledge is shared amongst investigators, how they represent their knowledge, and the disputes that may arise in conferences. Having already attended the The Mutual UFO Network Symposium (organized by the world’s largest UFO organization) in California, and interviewing two local paranormal investigation groups, Kingsbury already has a bit of an idea of how his research will be conducted. He has immersed himself in the culture to see how ghost hunters conduct their own research first-hand.

“In the focus group interviews we were surprised to learn that none of the groups charge their clients for their services.

“In fact, it’s considered a taboo or uncool if you’re charging for paranormal investigation services,” said Kingsbury.

“Another thing with that is many of these people that spend quite a lot of their spare time doing these investigations noted that a big point is to bring peace of mind, [and] to bring closure for clients.”

Kingsbury says both of his parents have had ghostly experiences, and that he has been open-minded about whether they exist or don’t exist. However, he isn’t sure if this knowledge early in his life is what piqued his interest for this area of research.

“I’ve always liked sci-fi movies and I have, in my order, anxiety about aliens,” Kingsbury laughs, citing the Japanese horror film Ringu as an example, “So I guess that is [a] pre-disposition for the possibilities of the world. I’ll put it that way.”