Our group, ASUP has been around a long time, but it never ceases to amaze me what some new groups claim as their work.  Most recently, I was shocked to hear that a ghost hunting club is claiming that they are the official caretakers of a piece of property that we have been researching and maintaining for several years, since we inherited it when we adopted another group.  A few months ago, we noticed that a sign, graciously put up by the County, acknowledging that we keep the area clean, was first painted over and later stolen.  Now we learn that this other group is telling everyone that they are the caretakers of the site, while our group does the work and files a monthly maintenance report to the county.  Obviously, this other group knows that the area has been under our care and the center of two years of research, but want the general public to think it has been them all along doing the work.

This is not the first time, nor do I suspect it will be the last; People with a year or less in the field claiming to have been doing research at well known locations for years.  I recently approached one such person at a conference and asked him about his experiences at a place mentioned prominently, word for word on their web page and obviously copied from our own.  They mentioned an out building at the site, but that structure had been demolished shortly after we were there 20 years ago.  For this individual to say he was there and saw it was really remarkable… he would have had to be three years old at the time!

Come on folks, I have a theory that any building could be haunted, so there is plenty of places to investigate. Let’s give credit where it is due… I’ve been working in the field for over 35 years and would appreciate your efforts in other cases. Frankly, there is nothing to be gained by going over the same old ground and no need to claim things you have not done. I applaud new research but I deplore copy cats

 

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