A shout out to the Strange team from its leader & co-founder

The 2008 Strange Occurrences team on the steps of Inverlochy House; James Gilberd, Denise Durkin, Mark Marriott, Karen Lee, Jo Davy, Helen Gower.

Strange Occurrences has had a pretty stable and loyal membership since its formation in 2005. In that time we've only had one team member actually leave, however as the decade has passed it's fair to say that several members are much less actively involved than in the past, due entirely to family reasons, which is understandable.

Although the group is still active as a paranormal investigation team, a year ago we changed our name to the New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society. We are implementing some ideas that will reflect that change. Watch this space, and other spaces!

Strange Occurrences has never quite been a conventional paranormal group in the sense of, say, TAPS. Although the early TAPS shows on broadcast television in NZ partly inspired the formation of SO, we've always had more of a leaning to the Society for Psychical Research - the original, serious, beardy, old-school intellectual types who strove for a scientific understanding of the supernatural events that were before them - mostly the feats of physical and mental mediums. (The SPR  formed in 1882 and remains highly active today.) We've focused mainly on ghosts, which has been the trend of our time, and we've employed much the same sort of pseudo-scientific, technology-based approach as our contemporaries, but we like to think we have a somewhat scientific leaning, overall.

One thing we've purposefully avoided is monogrammed baseball caps and jackets, and branding in general. Another thing is defined roles within the team. We are all investigators, but each of us has different life skills, career skills, interests and backgrounds, as well as a range of degrees of belief in the various paranormal phenomena.

We are all Paranormal Investigators, however, if we had to label our roles within the team, the list might look something like this:
- Helen & Nick: joint Case Managers
- Rob: Principal Photographer (and Underwater Investigator, should the need arise)
- *Karen: Historian
- Patrick: Shotgun Rider (Security Officer)
- Jo: Literature Consultant
- *Mark: Tech Manager & Principal Solderer
- Scott: Chief Medical Officer
- Jayne: Profiler
- *Denise: Psychometrist (What?! See Psychometry)
- *James: Head Honcho.

* Founder member from 2005

So, this is just a big THANK YOU to all the team members of Strange Occurrences (and I have to single out my wife and loyal, founding team member Denise as the longest-suffering) who've graciously put up with my demands and eccentricities over the last decade or so. May it continue!