My mum thinks I'm wasting my time with all this - anyone else get grief from family?

So I've been into the paranormal seriously for about four years now and my mum has moved from vague bemusement to open skepticism to what I can only describe as active hostility. Last week she saw my investigation kit laid out in the hallway before a trip to a location near Hexham and she said, and I quote: You're a grown adult spending your weekend in the dark talking to nobody. Your father and I didn't pay for a university education for this. Which, fair enough on the face of it, but also - Dad watches five hours of football on a Saturday and nobody gives him grief about how he spends his leisure time.

I'm not claiming I've found definitive proof of life after death. I'm not even sure what I believe, if I'm honest. But I find the investigations genuinely interesting, I've met some lovely people through the community, and some of the experiences I've had in the field have been... let's say difficult to explain and leave it at that for now. Surely that's worth something?

Does anyone else get this from family or partners? How do you handle it? And I suppose the honest question underneath all of this is: do you ever worry they have a point?

My partner was deeply skeptical when we first got together - thought the whole thing was silly, politely said so, then very impolitely said so after I came home at 3am from a location in the Scottish Highlands smelling of mud and having spent sixty quid on fuel. What actually helped was inviting her along once. She had an experience she couldn't explain - nothing dramatic, just a door that opened on its own in still air in a room we'd been sitting in for two hours - and while she's still not a believer exactly, she's stopped dismissing it. Sometimes the best argument is just direct experience.

Your mum's not wrong that it probably looks strange from the outside, but then so does every hobby. My brother-in-law spends a fortune restoring a car he never drives. My neighbour gets up at four in the morning to go stand in a field and look at birds through binoculars. At least you're doing something that involves genuine questions about the nature of reality, even if the methodology is sometimes a bit... let's say unorthodox. Don't let her get to you.

Honestly? Yes, I do sometimes worry they have a point. I'm a fairly rational person in the rest of my life, I work in IT, I like data and evidence. And when I step back and look at four years of investigations and ask myself: what have I actually established? - the answer is not very much. Some experiences I can't explain. A few audio clips I find genuinely strange. A lot of cold nights in uncomfortable locations. Whether any of that adds up to something meaningful or whether it's apophenia and pattern recognition in action... I genuinely don't know. That uncertainty is uncomfortable but I think it's more honest than either a full conversion or dismissing it entirely.

Do you ever worry they have a point?

Yes and no. I think the skeptical position - that there's a natural explanation for everything that happens on investigations - is probably right more often than not. But more often than not still leaves room for something worth investigating. What I've never been able to shake is a night at a location near Bodmin about six years ago where three of us independently reported the same thing simultaneously without communicating. I've gone over it many times trying to find the conventional explanation. I haven't found it yet. That's not proof of anything - but it's enough to keep me looking.

My dad calls it my ghost nonsense which is his term of affection for anything he doesn't understand, so I've made my peace with it. My nan, on the other hand, thinks it's lovely and occasionally rings me up to tell me about something strange that happened in her semi in Coventry. She's probably my biggest supporter and she's eighty-three. Make of that what you will.

The football comparison is actually quite sharp and I'd use it. The amount of time, money and emotional energy that goes into supporting a Premier League club that will never know you exist is - by any rational measure - an extraordinary thing for adults to do. Society has decided that's fine. Going to investigate a reputedly haunted location and making careful notes about what you observe is somehow sillier? I don't think so. Your time, your weekend, your torch batteries.