It was a quiet night. The group was gathered in the living room of a charming suburban home. There was coffee, cake, and conversation as the half-dozen friends, old and new, caught up on their travels and adventures.

With no warning, things changed. One of the group, a young woman, sat up to listen to … something. Her companions were suddenly silent, staring into space. The one who had been telling a story of her day in New York City had stopped mid-sentence.

Then came the sound. It built up from a long way off, and then it was upon them. The windows shook. China in the cabinet tinkled.  A rushing noise swept around them all, and then as soon as it had come it was gone, back into the night, moving on toward some other destination.

Conversation resumed as if nothing had happened. No one seemed alarmed, except the one young woman.

“What the HELL was that?” she shouted.

“What? Oh, that. Just a train.”

This was an ordinary evening at my brother’s place.

While I was in law school, my dear brother and his lovely wife kindly let me stay with them in their house on Long Island. When not studying evidence or civil procedure I tried to earn a little of my keep by tearing out drywall and helping to rebuild an upstairs bedroom as a nursery. It is a fine house, with one unusual feature to its location: right by the back yard run tracks for the Long Island Rail Road.

When the trains ran by, we knew it. Everything in the house vibrated. Conversation naturally paused, picking up again when the last car had passed. We kept a train schedule near the stereo so we knew when it was safe to play old vinyl LPs.

So it is that I find great amusement in a particular Season One episode of of Paranormal State. In “Beer, Wine and Spirits” the PRS team visits Katie’s Bar in Smithtown, Long Island.

The PRS talks about the weird feelings some people get in the bar — like when they’re told that the place is haunted and then brought down to the basement. They talk about Charlie, a former patron who has been dead since the 1920s. They wave their EMF detectors around and talk about the readings. And they talk about the most dramatic and concrete evidence of paranormal activity on the premises: wine glasses spontaneously move, sometimes falling to shatter on the floor.

Somehow they never get around to talking about the fact that there are railroad tracks no more than 100 feet from the building. The very same LIRR that I know so well.

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Might the regular passage of large, heavy trains just over the back fence have anything to do with the unsteady tumblers?

Can I at least get a “maybe?”And since the effect of vibration caused by railroad trains is somewhat better established than the existence of ghosts, a good researcher would rule this out before moving on to suggest supernatural explanations. The PRS doesn’t even mention it.

The most direct inspiration for the Occam’s Razor Investigation Society was undoubtedly the A&E Network’s series Paranormal State. The speed with which the Paranormal Research Society jumps directly from mundane observations to supernatural explanations is breathtaking. Odd noises? Moving objects? A bit of a draft? There must be ghosts involved!

In one noteworthy episode, one of the team’s consultants was wandering around in a very old house. Maybe not 190 years old, but this house had been around for a while and did not seem to be the most stable of structures. The walls were askew and the floors seemed to creak and bow with ease.

Furthermore, this PRS consultant was a big guy. I don’t say that to put him down — I’m no lightweight myself. I’m just saying. This guy was heavy. There was a substantial amount of weight transferred from this man’s boots to the old wooden floor of the spooky house.

As he moved around the house small objects, doors, and their associated shadows shifted about. No surprise, right? Move a heavy weight around an old house and other things will move a bit. Simple physics.

Well that explanation may be OK for a Home and Garden house renovation show, but this was Paranormal State. So the only proper response was to panic and start hashing out just what kind of supernatural behavior was involved.

That’s the point at which I turned to my son and suggested a new organization that actually starts with the simplest and most likely answers to strange phenomena.

“Help! At night I hear strange sounds like there are animals in the walls!”

• “You live in an old house in the woods. There are probably animals in the walls.”

“Help! Glassware mysteriously falls off my kitchen counter!”

• “I just checked your countertop with a level — it slopes down to the left.”
  

  It's not just a level - it's a SPIRIT level!

Yes. I know — boring television. But it would be a better service than encouraging people to believe in ghosts.