Hoaxing

If you spend enough time researching the paranormal then you come across a lot of hoaxing.  Some of it is very high quality and continues to fool people even after it has been exposed as a hoax.  Other hoaxes are easily identifiable as such.

People that present hoaxes as reality are a huge problem to this field, in my opinion.  This is perhaps the biggest problem in the realm of UFO research.  From my experience, I have to say that I've seen more UFO/alien hoaxes than I have seen hoaxes of anything else in relation to the paranormal, perhaps with the exception of ghosts.  The problem of hoaxing is twofold and it really does do the field an enormous injustice.

The first problem with hoaxing is that it takes time and resources to investigate a hoax.  If someone were to file a false police report then they would be held accountable for the expenses of that investigation.  There are no such laws or rules concerning UFOs or the paranormal, but the fact remains that someone is spending time and resources on looking into this case that was intentionally fabricated to fool people.  It takes resources away from looking at actual anomalies.

The second problem with hoaxing is that it hurts the credibility of the field.  All it takes is for a few well-made hoaxes to be passed off as real to credulous people and then they get incorporated into the public mind.  When eventually exposed as hoaxes they have the effect of making people think that all similar occurrences must be hoaxes.  Even with the existence of legitimately anomalous cases, people will often look at the exposed hoaxes as being a nail in the coffin for the field.

I've focused on the example of UFOs, but ghosts might be a very good example as well.  There are so many hoaxed ghost videos that it has the same effect of people pushing aside even the legitimate cases.  No doubt there is a certain amount of skill and artistry in making videos like that, but the honest thing to do would be to label them for entertainment purposes only.

Perhaps putting a disclaimer at the end wouldn't be enough though.  I come across people to this day that still think Paranormal Activity was the real deal.  The same thing happened with The Blair Witch Project when it was first released.  These were both major movie releases designed to look so real that people actually believed they were recovered footage from real events.

In a perfect world people wouldn't be so dishonest as to pass off a fake as the genuine article.  This isn't a perfect world though, so we have to be vigilant and discerning when it comes to evidence that is "too good to be true," especially when we have people intentionally trying to deceive others for profit.  Let it be noted that deception isn't confined to just UFOs and ghosts.

Creating fake evidence and passing it off as real is dishonest and really does a disservice to those of us that are looking for genuine answers.  Hoaxing evidence is bad enough, but then profiting from deception makes it even worse.  I know I'm not the only one that feels this way.  Remember to keep a healthy amount of skepticism in your search for the truth.