01
Eligibility Review
The Society establishes authority to commission the work, the suitability of the site, and the proper scope of inquiry.
PS / PC—02
The Property Audit Protocol
A protocol is both a sequence of procedures and an account of the assumptions under which evidence becomes intelligible. The property audit makes both available for scrutiny.
Purpose
A bounded encounter with a particular place.
The Society does not begin with the premise that a property is haunted. Nor does it assume that every unusual event must be reduced, in advance, to error or material cause. The audit holds these possibilities in productive tension while establishing a record adequate to responsible judgment.
Because a haunting belongs as much to the meaning of a site as to its physical fabric, the protocol examines architecture, environmental conditions, testimony, use, reputation, and historical circumstance together. No instrument reading, personal impression, or inherited story is dispositive on its own.
02
Site Dossier
Documentary history, architectural conditions, prior testimony, local ghost-lore, and the present social use of the property are assembled.
The dossier distinguishes documented history from later folklore without treating either as irrelevant to the life of the site.
03
Diagnostic Survey
Investigators record the material and environmental conditions against which unusual events must be evaluated.
Baselines may include temperature curves, lighting angles, air movement, acoustic behavior, mechanical systems, sight lines, room functions, and patterns of occupation.
04
Invigilated Encounter
The site is observed under a defined protocol, with controlled provocations introduced where they are methodologically appropriate.
Investigators account for their own presence as a source of noise, expectation, and possible provocation. Every event is recorded within that reflexive frame.
05
Review & Determination
The record is examined for correspondences, recurrent anomalies, alternative explanations, and evidence of independent agency.
A positive spectral determination requires more than an unexplained incident. The evidence must form a coherent pattern and survive secondary review.
06
Certification & Registry
A qualifying property receives a numbered certificate, a findings report, and a verifiable public record subject to the owner’s privacy election.
Evidentiary order
Different forms of evidence answer different questions.
- Documentary
- What can be established about the history, alteration, use, and reputation of the property?
- Environmental
- What ordinary physical conditions can produce or constrain the reported phenomena?
- Testimonial
- Where do accounts converge, diverge, or acquire their form through retelling?
- Phenomenal
- What was observed during the audit, and under what conditions could it be repeated?
- Correspondential
- Do separate events form a meaningful pattern not adequately explained by the audit’s ordinary controls?
Modes of inquiry
Investigation, invigilation, and mediumistic practice.
The Society’s broader investigation protocol distinguishes among the search for material traces, the disciplined observation of a scene and its participants, and the deliberate cultivation of psychical receptivity. A property audit may use more than one mode, but it does not require every mode in every commission.
Governing criteria