Recession Ghosts

Riamfada

I was wondering, the costof renting a location for an investigation hasnt gone down at all across the board in the past 12 months. Some places are still charging the same massive rates as they were 4 years ago. Dosnt this bother anyone else in the community? Are we all getting a bit ripped off by certain places?

I had expected the price of getting a few of the old reliables to drop but they havnt and compared to a regular night in a country B&B/Hostel ect where you also get heat, food and a bed paranormal locations are up to double the price.

Just looking to start a discussion on this, what do you think? Personally I refuse to pay to get locations anymore unless certain standards are met?

Steve X2

Well maybe we should start listing the prices we pay here on boards so people know what kind of prices we mean.

What do you think?

paranormal

Grimes wrote: »

I was wondering, the costof renting a location for an investigation hasnt gone down at all across the board in the past 12 months. Some places are still charging the same massive rates as they were 4 years ago. Dosnt this bother anyone else in the community? Are we all getting a bit ripped off by certain places?

I had expected the price of getting a few of the old reliables to drop but they havnt and compared to a regular night in a country B&B/Hostel ect where you also get heat, food and a bed paranormal locations are up to double the price.

Just looking to start a discussion on this, what do you think? Personally I refuse to pay to get locations anymore unless certain standards are met?

what sort of standards are you looking for.and yeah i like the sound of a list of prices from the start of 2010 that way we could try to get the price dropped a little or maybe get more for our money

maccored

i have always thought the idea of charging people to 'investigate' was a rip off in the first place.

paranormal

maccored wrote: »

i have always thought the idea of charging people to 'investigate' was a rip off in the first place.

I agree that the prices should come down .But i think it depends what kind of service you get. we recently did ross castle at a price of 65euro each. Now for that we got the place to ourselves for the night ,a bed ,and breakfast the next morning so you cant really complain about that.Dont get me wrong i would have liked to pay less but that is about average for b&b in a castle id say.

Ziycon

Grimes could be talking about he basic need for heat. I agree for the price you pay for some of the locations you should get at least heat and running water, sure there are places you pay less than €20 and you get heat, water and a bed.

I think some places just keep the extensive rates because we keep paying them, if everyone agrees not to go to certain places until the prices are dropped the locations will be forced to drop their prices.

maccored

I think these things need to be clearly defined. If its a B&B and people want to go on a most haunted scary weekend and are willing to pay, then fine.

If on the other hand, one views ones group as a 'paranormal research' group, then you shouldnt be bothering with the 'pay to be scared' haunted hotels/castle (oh noes! its the old places that are haunted dont you know!) and instead you shoud go out and help people who are having genuine problems.

They wont charge you.

Going by this thread, Im assuming most of you here are ghost hunty types and not really bothered with trying to find out anything about the paranormal?

Riamfada

How exactly do you help people that have ghosts in their house?

You are also probably not part of a paranormal group but its not very often you get a call from people saying "there is a ghost in my house" so the best way to investigate and learn is often to set up your equipment in a place with known activity and document results over a series of years. These are the places that charge. So enough of your sarcasm, no one said anything about old places.

Going by your post im assuming you have never been on an investigation?

maccored

do ghosts exist in the first place? Isnt trying to find out that info what its all about? Why are you asking questions like that in a paranormal forum?

I had assumed this was a place for paranormal investigators - are you hinting that I was wrong to think that?

6th

Cos you said they should be out helping people.

Riamfada

maccored wrote: »

do ghosts exist in the first place? Isnt trying to find out that info what its all about? Why are you asking questions like that in a paranormal forum?

I had assumed this was a place for paranormal investigators - are you hinting that I was wrong to think that?

Okay I don't really understand any of that in relation to any of the previous posts.

maccored

Im sorry - My bad. I was working under the (obviously) wrong assumption.

6th

maccored wrote: »

I had assumed this was a place for paranormal investigators - are you hinting that I was wrong to think that?

Its a forum for anyone with even a passing interest in the paranormal. Be that enjoying the odd scary story or spending €1000 on gear and devoting days on end to gaining an understanding of paranormal phenomenon and the people who experience them.

maccored

and you say I make no sense ? :pac:

maccored

certainly my turn to be confused now.

paranormal

maccored wrote: »

I think these things need to be clearly defined. If its a B&B and people want to go on a most haunted scary weekend and are willing to pay, then fine.

If on the other hand, one views ones group as a 'paranormal research' group, then you shouldnt be bothering with the 'pay to be scared' haunted hotels/castle (oh noes! its the old places that are haunted dont you know!) and instead you shoud go out and help people who are having genuine problems.

They wont charge you.

Going by this thread, Im assuming most of you here are ghost hunty types and not really bothered with trying to find out anything about the paranormal?

It seems you dont quite understand that if somewhere is a b&b and you request to do an investigation on their premises they are going to charge you the same rate as they charge everyone else otherwise they would have a different crew in there every week or two.But if they ask a team to come down and investigate a site well they arent going to charge as they asked you to have a look and give your opinion on the place.Now to do an investigation you will want the place to yourself that means that no paying public can use the place that night.Of course teams are going to want to go to a place that has had some reported activity .They will want to investigate the place for themselves and draw there own conclusions.Now some places have cashed in on the whole haunted/scare night thing and some people love it. Others are looking for places with reports of paranormal sightings/activity to investigate .now i think the best way to get prices reduced is for each team to post the price they paid per head for each place the do explaining what they got for that price and we all need to haggle a bit more with the owners on price.as for people with "genuine" problems we always look into calls or emails we get and even travel to peoples homes (at are own expense i might add) to do private investigations.

Well what is worse , paying for an investigation or an unqualified, unexperienced team going into somebodys house to do an investigation were they can effect somebodys life by telling them that there is a ghost in the house.

What makes you qualified that you can help people in a house .

Experience would help . Should you get your experience from going into somebodys living space. No

So were do you get your experience ?

Paying for an investigation is both partys agreeing that an investigation can be done . Alot of the time nobody lives in these places . So you are not upsetting somebodys living conditions.

Now i dont agree on over paying for a premises. Unfortunately there are a few out there that do . But if you have to pay for staff to be there at the time , or electricity . This is actually causing less damage then going into somebodys house.

sambuka41

I think its fair enough paying for somewhere like Charleville as the money is going towards the restoration of the place. Thats a win-win situation. hopefully it'll be open to the general public again someday

If its private property and there isn't a gain for the community or heritage of town then i dont think its fair to charge high prices, in reality people dont have the money anymore. It would be a shame to see the amount of investigations decrease because groups cant afford the high costs. I would agree with posting prices, personally im not involved in any investigations but just from a purely business point of view it makes sense to "out" the rip off merchants.

stormkeeper

Any investigations that I'll start doing in the near future will have to have at least 5 quid on top of the charges that a location will charge as over here in the UK, locations won't touch anyone who isn't insured. Given that the UK is pretty far ahead of Ireland when it comes to the field of investigation, it's now gotten to the stage that many locations won't touch you unless you've got Public Liability Insurance. I did a bit of research into this a while back, and I'm still of the stance that it's okay to charge an extra 5 quid (Euros or Sterling) to cover the member of public under the organisation's insurance.

This unfortunately means there's going to be an increased cost per investigation, but nowadays it's a condition to get into anywhere half decent. As for the matter of a location doubling its prices for an investigation, I think that it's wrong to as those places are only cashing in on the fame that Most Haunted or any other paranormal show has brought them. When you think about it, nowadays there's a lot of moral, ethical and legal considerations that need to be addressed during an investigation, be it public or private. For public investigations, the majority of organisations offering it don't make a penny (or cent) off the investigation itself as they do it at cost price. More often than not, it's the locations that are leveraging the high fees, which is averaged out based upon how much it'd cost per person based on the number in the group.

I'm not sure how widespread it is here for non-profit paranormal groups, but if the location is charging £45 per person, the group would need to add another 5 on top to cover their insurance and excess. Insurance for paranormal groups can cost at least 300 quid (200 policy, 100 excess) for a group of 8, we'll say for arguments sake, though it could be more (or less) than that, based upon how many people are at the location. I am thinking that I might have to instigate a yearly membership fee, both to cover a portion of insurance, and also to cover any other extra materials. Again, stuff like this isn't cheap. I know that charging 5 quid per person (except core team) per investigation means that there will be extra money, but the problem is that a policy with at least £10 million liability (yes, it costs that much now!) isn't cheap either and this also drives up costs.

If you're lucky, the location will negotiate with you, and perhaps can bring down the cost per person, especially if you mention your insurance. Not to repeat myself, but over here, if you don't have insurance taken out, locations won't want to deal with you!

It's a rather complicated process really, one that's honestly hard to resolve...