There are plenty of stories out there about paranormal investigators doing an investigation and at various times having their batteries seemingly go dead or drained of their energy. There is also a growing opinion that the batteries are not actually drained but something either normal or paranormal interferes with the flow of the electrons in the batteries temporarily rendering them useless until moving to another location away for the apparent anomaly. Could possibly the EMF field that some entities can supposedly produce (at least there is the theory) be enough to interfere with the flow of the electrons in a battery?  Could it be something else very normal?  Is there anyway to qualify this somewhat scientifically?  I am no scientist but why don’t I throw some ideas out there to think about.

 First off of course most investigators on an investigation say they either have new batteries in their devices or the rechargeable batteries are properly and fully charged. The only way to verify this would be to watch everyone put in new batteries or newly charged batteries and measure that the correct voltage did exist on every battery. Doing a battery check by measuring everything would of course greatly complicate the investigation process and in order to be accurate it would have to done onsite at the investigation location. Measuring each battery charge is one way to make the process controlled and somewhat scientific though not perfect.

Another part of the equation is does the type of battery or the size of the battery make a difference. For instance there are various sizes including the ones we are most familiar with AA, AAA, C, D, 9V and other batteries we are less familiar with but would need to include in some kind of controlled testing. The types vary greatly as well Alkaline, Rechargeable Alkaline, lithium, NiZN, NiMH, NiCD, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion batteries etc. In order to again make things somewhat scientific it would be necessary to use a controlled cross section of the types and sizes and keep a detailed log of what is used when.  

So as you can see it would take a great deal of work and data and controlled testing  to come to some type of near scientific conclusion about the battery drainage theory and whether there is truly some influence on the life span of a battery by possible paranormal events or even normal anomalous events.   

I will say that personally I believe that the chances of an entity of some type draining a battery (usually small) and using the energy to materialize or do anything is small at best. It is more likely in my opinion that either an entity or some normal phenomena interrupts the flow of electron through the battery and power is temporarily lost. There are many reports that would seem to substantiate this in that in one location investigators batteries appear to have gone dead only to come back to life after the investigator move to another area.

 Lastly I’ll leave you with what I found to be an amusing statement though if the people who wrote it read this they may not agree. In one of the many articles I read from various paranormal groups I found one particular practice extremely interesting. There is a group that believes that it is an excellent idea to keep all the spare good batteries they bring with them to an investigation out in their cars. Why? So they will not be drained by whatever seems to have drained batteries of many past investigators. Here is what I find interesting. Let’s set the scene for this and you will see why I was amused by this. You are in the large multi-floored building that has no power and lots and lots of stairs. Suddenly all your devices go dead including your flashlights. Now obviously this becomes an issue and a little dangerous to say the least trying to get down to the car to get the spare batteries so you can use your flashlight to see where you are going. My thoughts are keep the spare batteries with you and hopefully you will be able to get safely out the building and home in one piece.

By

Steve Sarachman