Asking Permission, and Getting In
The most-asked question the Survey gets is where to go. The honest answer is that where matters much less than whether you are supposed to be there, and that the second question is the one that ends investigations.
We are asked where to go more often than anything else. The honest answer is that the site matters far less than people expect, and the paperwork matters far more, and that almost every group that stops doing this stops because of the second one rather than the first.
Trespass is not fieldwork
A building you are not permitted to be in produces nothing usable. Not because the measurements would be wrong, but because you cannot return to it, cannot publish it, cannot get a second operator to verify it, cannot leave equipment overnight, and cannot explain to anybody why you were there. A file that begins with an unlawful entry is a file that ends nowhere.
Who to ask
The person you need is the one with authority over the property, and finding them is straightforward if unromantic.
- A private house: the occupier. If they rent, the owner as well before anything is attached to a wall or left running overnight.
- A pub, hotel or restaurant: the licensee first, then the owner if they differ. Many will say yes readily; a working venue often has a paid ghost-tour operation already and will point you at it.
- A church: the incumbent and the parochial church council, in that order, and expect the diocese to be involved for anything unusual. Churches are working buildings with a congregation and a great many are also somebody's grandmother's grave.
- A museum, castle or historic site: the site manager, then the trust or authority behind them. These are the most likely to have a formal process, and the most likely to say yes to a group that follows it.
- A council building or a school: the estates department. Slow, but they answer.
- Land: the Land Registry will tell you who owns a registered title for a small fee.
What to put in the letter
Most refusals the Survey has seen were not refusals of the idea. They were refusals of a vague request that a busy person could not evaluate. Supply all of this and the answer changes.
| Who | Your name, the group's name, a phone number that will be answered, and one named person responsible on the night. |
|---|---|
| When | A specific date and a specific window. Not "some time in October". |
| How many | An exact number of people, and a commitment not to exceed it. |
| What you will bring | The equipment list. Say plainly if you intend to leave anything running unattended. |
| What you will not do | No smoking, no candles or naked flame, no alcohol, nothing fixed to any surface, nothing moved without being put back, no séance or ritual practice unless expressly agreed. |
| Insurance | Public liability cover, with the certificate attached. Expect to be asked; supplying it unasked is the strongest thing in the letter. |
| Recordings | What you will do with any footage or audio, whether it will be published, and whether the building will be named. |
| Afterwards | An offer to send them the write-up. Almost nobody offers this and almost everybody appreciates it. |
On the night
Anybody in the building can stop it, at any point, without a reason. That is the Survey's standing rule and it is not a courtesy — it is the only basis on which people let strangers into their houses at night with instruments. When it is withdrawn you pack up and leave, and you do not ask why, and you do not negotiate.
The shortest file in our archive is a survey abandoned twenty-six minutes after arrival. It contains a baseline and four log lines and nothing else, and the Survey would file it exactly the same way again.
The rest is ordinary consideration. Park where you were told. Do not knock on neighbours' doors. Keep the noise down at 3am in a residential street, because a group of people with torches in an empty house at three in the morning is a police call waiting to happen and the police are right to come. Leave the building as you found it, including the lights.
If somebody is frightened
Sooner or later a household will ask you for something you cannot give them. They will want to know whether it is safe, whether it will stop, whether the thing means them harm.
The Survey's practice is to be honest and specific about what was measured, and to decline absolutely to say anything about what it means — and to be careful, because people hear reassurance and its absence in ways that are not always what was said. Say what you found. Say what you excluded. Say plainly if you found nothing, and say plainly if you did not work it out.
If anybody in the household is unwell, distressed, or describing symptoms that could be carbon monoxide, that is not an investigation any more. Deal with that, and only that.
A note on our own register
The site register on this station is not yet carrying data, and the reason is this note. A list of "haunted places near me" is trivial to generate and almost always generated badly: scraped, unsourced, frequently naming private homes, and occasionally sending strangers to somebody's front door at midnight.
The Survey will publish a register when it has a source it can cite for every entry and a rule that keeps private dwellings out of it. Until then the page says so, which is less useful and considerably more honest.
Questions
- Is it illegal to investigate an abandoned building?
- Entering land or a building without permission is trespass, which in England and Wales is generally a civil matter but becomes criminal in a number of circumstances, including where a building is a dwelling or where there is intent to cause damage. Elsewhere the position differs and is often stricter. In every jurisdiction, permission from the person with authority over the property removes the question entirely.
- How do I get permission to investigate a location?
- Identify the owner — the land registry, the managing agent, the parish council, the trust or the licensee. Write to them with a specific date, a specific duration, the number of people, what equipment you will bring, what you will do with anything you record, and a named person responsible. Most refusals are because none of that was supplied.
- Do I need insurance to investigate a location?
- For anything other than your own home, expect to be asked for public liability cover, and expect a serious venue to ask for evidence of it before anything else. It is the single clearest signal that you are worth dealing with.