Steven LaChance Blog

I have always disliked the word field when it is applied to the paranormal. A field suggests rules and boundaries. It suggests experts, degrees, certifications, and governing boards. It creates a false authority that does not exist. When you call the paranormal a field you fence it in too tightly, and that is not what it is.

The truth is that no one has the answers. There are no experts who can say with certainty why hauntings happen, or what a ghost really is, or why the dead sometimes seem to return. Anyone who claims otherwise is selling a performance, not truth. The paranormal is messy and vast. It stretches across folklore, grief, wonder, psychology, religion, and lived experience. Trying to condense all of that into the neat little box of a field misses the entire point.

The paranormal feels more like a philosophy. It is a way of approaching the unknown. It is not about proving or disproving but about asking questions, sitting with mystery, and being willing to admit that you may never know. Philosophy does not fence things in. Philosophy opens them up. That is how the paranormal should be treated.

At its best, the paranormal invites all of us to think for ourselves. It is not a matter of experts dictating answers but of individuals wrestling with their own experiences and interpretations. The paranormal is not a tidy academic field. It is a philosophy of wonder and fear and grief. It is the recognition that we live surrounded by questions that may never be solved. And maybe that is the point.