Week 4: Fieldwork Safety Protocol

The three real-world safety traditions this course's fieldwork protocol borrows from, and the case next week that makes the buddy-system rule's necessity concrete rather than abstract.

What to do when observation becomes participation.

15 March 2027

Open the slides

Outline#

• where this week’s three rules actually come from: paranormal- investigation safety guidance, urban-exploration ethics, and academic fieldwork risk-assessment policy — three real traditions that independently converge on the same core moves (never alone, a mapped walkthrough first, a named outside contact with a return-time deadline)
• the one addition academic risk-assessment guidance brings that the other two don’t: a plan for psychological distress, not just physical injury — this course’s own disengagement rule is closer to that framing than to a ghost-hunting show’s dramatic “get out now”
• consent as a site-selection filter: no site is observed without the course’s sign-off that it’s currently sanctioned, and nobody is placed anywhere they wouldn’t otherwise go as an ordinary part of campus life
• why the buddy system isn’t just “two is safer than one”: previewed with next week’s first case, where a trapped observer cannot self-extract — only a second person outside the site can end the observation. The rule stops being abstract the moment corroboration and rescue turn out to be the same requirement
• the disengagement rule’s trigger is procedural, not a judgment call made under pressure: “no longer feels able to leave at will” ends the observation immediately, with nothing left to argue about in the moment

After this lecture#

Sign the consent and buddy-pairing paperwork before next week’s first case clinic. Nothing in weeks 5–6 runs without it on file.