The Paraplex: Making the Paranormal Normal

As if there already aren’t enough reasons to visit New Orleans – free beads! – it now holds the world’s first interactive paranormal epicenter.

The Paraplex, a former funeral home located on the famous Canal Street, is fully-loaded with 4 ghosts and 40 thermal and infrared cameras, which parapsychologist Dr. Larry Montz will use to “prove these things exist.”

In the mean time, visitors can participate in “fear experiments,” private séances, and psychometry tests to see if and how psychic they are. (If they are psychic shouldn’t they already know?)

The Paraplex is also part museum, featuring the Freddy Kruger glove, the Honey Island Swamp Monster footprint, a vampire hunting kit, and dolls from vampire-writer Anne Rice’s collection. How appropriate.

But if all the lab is using to catch ghosts is cameras, how would this “proof” be better than that already found on Ghost Hunters or Paranormal State (assuming, of course, that those investigators aren’t just actors with a sweet team of Photoshop pros)?


I wonder if “scientifically” proving every haunting and ghost story as true – knowing the unknown – would make the whole idea of paranormality more scary, less intriguing, or make any difference at all.

On the other hand, say if Montz and his team actually catch these ghosts on camera, maybe the “paranormal” would no longer exist.

If the existence of ghosts, UFOs, and psychic abilities is proven, thus becoming scientific fact, wouldn't that render the paranormal...well, normal?