Gothic.Black Editorial and Verification Policy
Website page draft | Version 1.0 | September 17, 2026
Gothic.Black maintains a permanent archive of paranormal reports, historical mysteries, folklore, anomalous experiences, witness testimony, and related research. The archive exists to preserve accounts, organize available documentation, encourage responsible investigation, and make source material easier to find and discuss.
We do not ask readers to believe. We ask readers to examine the record.
Publication means that a report or historical case was considered appropriate for documentation. Publication does not mean Gothic.Black has established that a paranormal interpretation is true.
Core Editorial Principles
Preserve the Account
Witness testimony should be preserved in the witness’s own words whenever practical. Staff may correct obvious formatting problems, remove malicious code, and make privacy redactions. Staff should not silently rewrite a statement to make it more dramatic, persuasive, coherent, or paranormal.
• Clearly distinguish the original witness statement, privacy-redacted statement, editorial summary, research notes, community discussion, and later clarification.
Separate Claim from Fact
• Documented fact: supported by an official, institutional, archival, or reliably sourced record.
• Witness report: something a person says was directly observed or experienced.
• Secondhand account: an account provided by someone who did not witness the event.
• Historical tradition: a story preserved through records, scholarship, folklore, or oral history.
• Interpretation: a proposed explanation for an event or evidence item.
• Unverified claim: a claim lacking sufficient supporting documentation.
• Disputed claim: a claim about which credible sources materially disagree.
• Forum discussion: community commentary not automatically adopted into the curated record.
Attribute Information
Identify sources whenever practical and consistent with confidentiality commitments. Prefer original records, contemporaneous evidence, and clearly attributable testimony. Always distinguish quotation, paraphrase, summary, and editorial interpretation.
Minimize Harm
Document reports without unnecessarily exposing or humiliating witnesses, property owners, family members, or other private individuals. Public curiosity does not automatically outweigh personal privacy.
Correct the Record
Preserve meaningful corrections, rating changes, status changes, and new evidence in a visible timeline or revision log. Corrections should not be hidden because they weaken a paranormal explanation.
Case Types
• Community Report: submitted directly by a visitor, caller, registered member, or guest.
• Historic Case: assembled from historical records, books, interviews, newspapers, institutional collections, or previous investigations.
• Graveyard Shift Case: originating from a caller, guest interview, livestream, or related production.
• Research File: organizes material across several reports or recurring phenomena.
• Location File: an umbrella record concerning reports associated with one place or region.
• Investigation: receiving structured follow-up, records research, witness interviews, technical review, or field work.
Account Classification
• Firsthand Account: the source says the source directly observed or experienced the event. This label does not establish accuracy.
• Multiple Firsthand Accounts: two or more people claim direct observation. Note whether interviews were independent and where accounts differ.
• Secondhand Account: the source did not directly witness the event. Identify the relationship when possible.
• Historical Account: chiefly preserved through historical documents, newspapers, legal records, diaries, institutional records, or scholarship.
• Mixed Account: contains materially different evidence phases that must remain separate.
• Folklore or Legend: culturally significant but lacking a reliably attributable firsthand account.
Verification Standard
Verification does not mean proving whether extraordinary phenomena exist. Verification means establishing what can responsibly be said about a report and its supporting material.
1. Who supplied the account, and did the source directly witness the event?
2. When was the account first recorded, and has it changed?
3. Where and when did the event allegedly occur?
4. Are other witnesses identifiable, and were accounts gathered independently?
5. Does original evidence exist, and can its origin be traced?
6. Are relevant public, institutional, historical, weather, astronomical, geographic, or technical records available?
7. Are reasonable conventional explanations available?
8. Does the report identify or accuse another person?
9. Could publication create a privacy or safety risk?
A report does not need to answer every question to be archived. Missing information should be disclosed rather than filled through assumption.
Historical and Occult Material
Historical belief should not be confused with historical fact. Files should distinguish what demonstrably occurred, what participants believed, what contemporary records reported, what later writers added, what tourism or entertainment popularized, and what current scholarship supports.
Conventional Explanations
Include credible conventional explanations when materially relevant, including misidentification, weather, astronomy, wildlife, optics, acoustics, geology, structural movement, electrical conditions, camera or compression artifacts, memory reconstruction, sleep phenomena, folklore influence, deliberate hoaxing, and social factors.
The absence of a confirmed conventional explanation does not prove a paranormal explanation. A plausible conventional explanation does not justify mocking or dismissing a witness.
Archive and Forum Relationship
The case file is the curated record. The attached forum topic is the community discussion. Forum posts do not automatically become archive evidence.
This topic is the community discussion for the linked Gothic.Black case. The official case file remains the maintained archival record. Claims, theories, and replies posted here have not necessarily been verified or adopted by Gothic.Black.
Commercial Independence
Ghost tours, tarot services, memberships, sponsorships, advertising, or other commercial relationships must not determine case acceptance, documentation ratings, status, included explanations, criticism, or witness treatment. Disclose a relevant connection when readers would reasonably consider it material.
Policy Administration
• Display a version number, effective date, last revised date, policy owner, and public change log.
• Link this policy from every case page, the submission form, and the footer.