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TELOPHASE'S BASIC GHOSTBUSTING KIT
This is a slightly edited version of a couple of comments I posted on another LJ, on an entry talking about paranormal shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State.
I love watching these shows even though I'm a hardline skeptic. I find it fun to shriek "OF COURE THE EMF READINGS ARE GOING OFF THE SCALE! YOU'VE GOT THE METER NEXT TO A WIRED-UP LIGHTBULB AND ARE FILMING IT WITH A CAMERA ATTACHED TO A HUGE BATTERY PACK YOU NITWIT!!" at the TV. And my basic love of puzzle-solving and interest in culture and psychology lead me to spend the time working out how they're getting the results they're getting, and what it means to the people involved, and what it says about our society and our beliefs.
As most skeptics will say, I'd love to find evidence that various paranormal things are true, which is why it drives me nuts when people who don't know much about the equipment they're holding point to the results they're getting as evidence.
Here's a basic rundown of what I know about equipment and what can happen, so you can sort out a lot of the stuff that's due to mistakes from stuff that's actually unexplained:
EMF meters: Electromagnetic frequency meters. Seriously: don't accept any evidence from an EMF meter, because (a) the users are usually in houses full of wiring that are surrounded by electrical lines coming in from outside, and even if they shut off the house's power they can't get rid of the surrounding wiring, and (b) there's a frickin' FILM CREW there with battery packs and electrically-run cameras, and sound equipment and they're all carrying cellphones, iPods, digital voice recorders, thermal imaging cameras, have wireless microphones on the cast members, walkie-talkies for the crew, etc. They're SURROUNDED by electromagentic fields.
Sound for EVPs: Much like the human brain is wired to see patterns, especially the patterns of a face in visual noise, we're wired to hear patterns, especially the patterns of a human voice, in audio noise. Especially if you've been cued to hear it. You'll find, when watching these shows, that sometimes you won't be able to hear anything but a pattern in the static until someone else says "Doesn't that sound like [blah]?" Whereupon you'll start hearing [blah] clear as day. It's like looking for backwards masking in songs - you can find all sorts of familiar patterns.
When someone's using an analog recorder, instead of a digital, the magnetic tape can leave impressions on itself as it's wound on the reel - in other words, the magnetic data from one section of the tape can, when it's wound up and pressed against another section of the tape, leave a faint copy of itself on the other section. It can also be imperfectly erased, if they're re-using tapes. Both analog and digital recorders may also pick up faint radio signals (and possibly cellphone signals), or amplify sounds made by wind or brushing against the microphone, or just pick up sounds you didn't hear because you were distracted. Keep in mind that the crew probably has walkie-talkies and the cast often have wireless microphones on them to pick up sound for the camera, which all may be spilling out.
Film cameras: When an expert comes on one of these shows and says s/he can detect no evidence of tampering, that means they examine the picture or the film and saw no evidence of tampering on the piece of film or the photograph itself. *Not*, mind you, in the picture. It could have been staged, or be a light leak in the camera, or a screwup in the darkroom. I lost a lot of respect for so-called "experts" after one was quoted on a website I saw about 10 years ago, about a picture with a huge purple stain on it, as saying there was no way that it could have been a screw-up in the darkroom. Problem was: I've worked in the darkroom myself, and recognized the big purple stain as a screw-up that happens when you forget to dilute the developing fluid. I've done it myself, many times.
Digital cameras: Just as prone to light leaks as film cameras. Also, since the lens caps tend to be attached to them by a thin cord, and they often have thin wrist straps, are prone to taking photos of the strap when it gets blown in front of the lens. They're blurry, out of focus, and white because the flash reflects off of them. Manyidiots people who really want to believe refer to these as "vortexes" or "vortices." Nope. Camera strap (or strap from clothing). I've taken a fair share of pictures of them myself. (You can even see the honeycomb pattern from the weaving on the strap in that picture!)
You'll also see lots of references to "orbs." Orbs can be many things, and I don't think that they're unexplained at all. The flash reflects off of dust, bugs, drops of water in the air, crud on glass, crud on the lens, etc. etc. and so on. When you see an orb that's nicely textured, it's 99% certain that it's dust - that's characteristic of photos of dust. :)
Thermal imaging: This is nifty, and we leave heat signatures behind for longer than we realize. You can press your hand to a wall and walk off, and the handprint will remain there for some time. You can read heat signatures of people through walls, too, I think, especially if the walls are thin. These cameras will also catch heat signatures off of any reflective surface, so it's easy to see what you think is a heat signature in front of you in an empty room when you're just catching the reflection of yourself or someone behind you from a glass picture frame, window, mirror, chrome surface, etc. Also, there may be pipes, rodents, pets, etc. lurking behind things.
Digital thermometers: specifically the infrared ones that look kind of like guns and can measure temperature from a distance away. These ONLY measure the temperature on a surface, and cannot measure the temperature in a section of air. Anyone who points the thermometer in a vague direction and talks about how "this area" is colder, and indicates a volume of air and not a surface either doesn't know how the equipment works or is misdirecting you.
Ouija boards: Since you mentioned them. XD I was pretty sure the people using Ouija boards were moving it themselves, without realizing it. I was convinced of that when Penn & Teller's Bullshit! filmed a simple experiment: they showed 3 people using a board and getting answers. Then they did it again, with the people blindfolded, and rotated the board without the people's knowledge. The planchette still moved - as if the board had not been rotated.
General common sense: On all of these shows, the investigators know what's going on before they get to the location. (Well, Rescue Mediums, a show on an odd cable channel my TiVo occasionally records says they don't.) So they're primed as to what to look for, which makes it easier to find stuff. I also find it suspicious that usually when something happens, neither the cast member holding the camera nor the cameraman filming the cast member ever catches it clearly on tape. In the first episode of Paranormal State -- the interivew with the kid where he pointed out the person they think is the ghost in a photograph? Very badly done. They showed him *one* picture and said "Someone in this picture is Timmy. Can you point him out?" That's the very definition of a leading question, and if you've got a smart kid who's engineering a lot of the haunting - and that's the cause of a lot of poltergeist and haunting cases - he can pick up on that and figure it out damn easily.
It's pretty much a fact that kids can jerk adults around surprisingly easily, especially if the adults are of the opinion that kids wouldn't or couldn't do that. Kids - and many adults, for that matter - are also often eager to please and very sensitive to other people's emotional reactions and desires and will construct a story that makes the other person happy, that jerks the other person around (Google the Fox Sisters for the classic case), or that makes the other person stop questioning them and go away. If a questioner is not trained in how to not ask leading questions, they can easily supply an entire story to a kid, that the kid can use for whatever reason they want.
It is also pretty much a fact that many scientists and academics are damn easy to fool with simple misdirection and magic tricks, because the scientists and academics think they're smarter than that. Nope, everyone can be fooled, and by the simplest of tricks, especially if they're looking for complicated explanations.
Never eliminate the simplest explanation: that someone is faking something or misleading you about something. Ghost Hunters pretends to be scientific and skeptical, but there's some evidence that at least some things have been tampered with or faked for the camera, or misleadingly explained, or not thoroughly investigated which makes all of their evidence questionable, and they often dismiss possible (faking) causes with words like "Well, if there were fishing line tied to that you'd see it" without proving it, when it's not at all clear that that's the case. (one two three four five AND MOST ESPECIALLY FOR TAMPERING six)
I love watching these shows even though I'm a hardline skeptic. I find it fun to shriek "OF COURE THE EMF READINGS ARE GOING OFF THE SCALE! YOU'VE GOT THE METER NEXT TO A WIRED-UP LIGHTBULB AND ARE FILMING IT WITH A CAMERA ATTACHED TO A HUGE BATTERY PACK YOU NITWIT!!" at the TV. And my basic love of puzzle-solving and interest in culture and psychology lead me to spend the time working out how they're getting the results they're getting, and what it means to the people involved, and what it says about our society and our beliefs.
As most skeptics will say, I'd love to find evidence that various paranormal things are true, which is why it drives me nuts when people who don't know much about the equipment they're holding point to the results they're getting as evidence.
Here's a basic rundown of what I know about equipment and what can happen, so you can sort out a lot of the stuff that's due to mistakes from stuff that's actually unexplained:
EMF meters: Electromagnetic frequency meters. Seriously: don't accept any evidence from an EMF meter, because (a) the users are usually in houses full of wiring that are surrounded by electrical lines coming in from outside, and even if they shut off the house's power they can't get rid of the surrounding wiring, and (b) there's a frickin' FILM CREW there with battery packs and electrically-run cameras, and sound equipment and they're all carrying cellphones, iPods, digital voice recorders, thermal imaging cameras, have wireless microphones on the cast members, walkie-talkies for the crew, etc. They're SURROUNDED by electromagentic fields.
Sound for EVPs: Much like the human brain is wired to see patterns, especially the patterns of a face in visual noise, we're wired to hear patterns, especially the patterns of a human voice, in audio noise. Especially if you've been cued to hear it. You'll find, when watching these shows, that sometimes you won't be able to hear anything but a pattern in the static until someone else says "Doesn't that sound like [blah]?" Whereupon you'll start hearing [blah] clear as day. It's like looking for backwards masking in songs - you can find all sorts of familiar patterns.
When someone's using an analog recorder, instead of a digital, the magnetic tape can leave impressions on itself as it's wound on the reel - in other words, the magnetic data from one section of the tape can, when it's wound up and pressed against another section of the tape, leave a faint copy of itself on the other section. It can also be imperfectly erased, if they're re-using tapes. Both analog and digital recorders may also pick up faint radio signals (and possibly cellphone signals), or amplify sounds made by wind or brushing against the microphone, or just pick up sounds you didn't hear because you were distracted. Keep in mind that the crew probably has walkie-talkies and the cast often have wireless microphones on them to pick up sound for the camera, which all may be spilling out.
Film cameras: When an expert comes on one of these shows and says s/he can detect no evidence of tampering, that means they examine the picture or the film and saw no evidence of tampering on the piece of film or the photograph itself. *Not*, mind you, in the picture. It could have been staged, or be a light leak in the camera, or a screwup in the darkroom. I lost a lot of respect for so-called "experts" after one was quoted on a website I saw about 10 years ago, about a picture with a huge purple stain on it, as saying there was no way that it could have been a screw-up in the darkroom. Problem was: I've worked in the darkroom myself, and recognized the big purple stain as a screw-up that happens when you forget to dilute the developing fluid. I've done it myself, many times.
Digital cameras: Just as prone to light leaks as film cameras. Also, since the lens caps tend to be attached to them by a thin cord, and they often have thin wrist straps, are prone to taking photos of the strap when it gets blown in front of the lens. They're blurry, out of focus, and white because the flash reflects off of them. Many
You'll also see lots of references to "orbs." Orbs can be many things, and I don't think that they're unexplained at all. The flash reflects off of dust, bugs, drops of water in the air, crud on glass, crud on the lens, etc. etc. and so on. When you see an orb that's nicely textured, it's 99% certain that it's dust - that's characteristic of photos of dust. :)
Thermal imaging: This is nifty, and we leave heat signatures behind for longer than we realize. You can press your hand to a wall and walk off, and the handprint will remain there for some time. You can read heat signatures of people through walls, too, I think, especially if the walls are thin. These cameras will also catch heat signatures off of any reflective surface, so it's easy to see what you think is a heat signature in front of you in an empty room when you're just catching the reflection of yourself or someone behind you from a glass picture frame, window, mirror, chrome surface, etc. Also, there may be pipes, rodents, pets, etc. lurking behind things.
Digital thermometers: specifically the infrared ones that look kind of like guns and can measure temperature from a distance away. These ONLY measure the temperature on a surface, and cannot measure the temperature in a section of air. Anyone who points the thermometer in a vague direction and talks about how "this area" is colder, and indicates a volume of air and not a surface either doesn't know how the equipment works or is misdirecting you.
Ouija boards: Since you mentioned them. XD I was pretty sure the people using Ouija boards were moving it themselves, without realizing it. I was convinced of that when Penn & Teller's Bullshit! filmed a simple experiment: they showed 3 people using a board and getting answers. Then they did it again, with the people blindfolded, and rotated the board without the people's knowledge. The planchette still moved - as if the board had not been rotated.
General common sense: On all of these shows, the investigators know what's going on before they get to the location. (Well, Rescue Mediums, a show on an odd cable channel my TiVo occasionally records says they don't.) So they're primed as to what to look for, which makes it easier to find stuff. I also find it suspicious that usually when something happens, neither the cast member holding the camera nor the cameraman filming the cast member ever catches it clearly on tape. In the first episode of Paranormal State -- the interivew with the kid where he pointed out the person they think is the ghost in a photograph? Very badly done. They showed him *one* picture and said "Someone in this picture is Timmy. Can you point him out?" That's the very definition of a leading question, and if you've got a smart kid who's engineering a lot of the haunting - and that's the cause of a lot of poltergeist and haunting cases - he can pick up on that and figure it out damn easily.
It's pretty much a fact that kids can jerk adults around surprisingly easily, especially if the adults are of the opinion that kids wouldn't or couldn't do that. Kids - and many adults, for that matter - are also often eager to please and very sensitive to other people's emotional reactions and desires and will construct a story that makes the other person happy, that jerks the other person around (Google the Fox Sisters for the classic case), or that makes the other person stop questioning them and go away. If a questioner is not trained in how to not ask leading questions, they can easily supply an entire story to a kid, that the kid can use for whatever reason they want.
It is also pretty much a fact that many scientists and academics are damn easy to fool with simple misdirection and magic tricks, because the scientists and academics think they're smarter than that. Nope, everyone can be fooled, and by the simplest of tricks, especially if they're looking for complicated explanations.
Never eliminate the simplest explanation: that someone is faking something or misleading you about something. Ghost Hunters pretends to be scientific and skeptical, but there's some evidence that at least some things have been tampered with or faked for the camera, or misleadingly explained, or not thoroughly investigated which makes all of their evidence questionable, and they often dismiss possible (faking) causes with words like "Well, if there were fishing line tied to that you'd see it" without proving it, when it's not at all clear that that's the case. (one two three four five AND MOST ESPECIALLY FOR TAMPERING six)
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Actually, what annoys me the most about the debunkers replicating the stuff caught on film for GH is that they never try to replicate the footage exactly - usually the light is better, or there's less noise, and so on. I don't doubt that it's usually the way that the show faked it*, but it doesn't look as good as the show's footage. Mostly because the show uses professional cameramen and special-effects artists and the debunkers don't, but you know what I mean. It would look so much better if the whole thing were replicated.
* There's a good analysis online that I don't think I linked to about the footage at a penitentiary that seemed to show an indistinct figure running toawrds and away from the camera. It shows how the footage has been "improved" by doing some stuff to the original frames - I think by removing a few frames here and there to make the motion look odd.
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And the way they're always going:
*turns head quickly* "Shh! Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"Quiet! I heard something!"
"Sh!"
"Quiet!"
"Sh, she heard something!"
"What did you hear?"
"Sh! It was coming from over there!"
...until you're screaming at the TV for them to just shut up and let you listen!!
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And it does sound like they ran out of money for recording it, so the guy had to phone his voicemail and use the mp3 for the narration. XD
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I'd love to go ghost-hunting at some point, but I suspect I'd spend the entire time playing with cool tech toys. XD (If I have a thermometer next to me, I'm taking my temperature every ten minutes. If I had an EMF meter in hand at this moment, there's not a square inch of this place that would go unmeasured in the next 24 hours. XD)
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I have a feeling it'd be even more fun as an adult. Plus, of course, as you said. . . TOYS.
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You can demonstrate the sound illusions thing by just repeating the word "rest" over and over again to someone ... they'll start hearing things like stress, Esther, chest, and many other things, even things not remotely close to "rest."
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So I guessed totally fake, but it was apparently one of the "true" (or at least not deliberately faked) ones. Mm-hm. I believe ya.
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I'm still very junior at writing horror so I like to watch (or listen) to these shows to see what makes a believable, scary story! But really, I'm sure they're almost all just stories.
Even my own experiences can be explained away by science. The impression of someone being near my face while I sleep? Or seeing strange shapes in the darkness? Or feeling like something is preventing me from breathing? (sleep apnea?) That's been happening since I was a kid and I already know it's probably because I partially wake up and open my eyes but I'm really still sleeping. (ah! There is a term for it! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogic_hallucination) I am also a strong lucid dreamer so this makes sense.)
I'd love to go ghost hunting with all the doodads and investigate 'haunted' houses!
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If you want a spooky episode of something and cn get Ghost Hunters, there's an episode where they investigated some old ruins in Ireland* that were said to be haunted by ghosts and the Fair Folk. They
createdgot some footage with the thermal cameras and the regular camera that was pretty spooky - gave me the creeps, even though I'm convinced it's all fake.YOUTUBE TO THE RESCUE! Here's the reveal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytGMDKeK1w&feature=related) from that episode. Season 3, episode 6, the segment (they invesitgate two different locations each episode) on the Lisheen Ruins, if you want to do a bit more searching to find the parts before the reveal.
Yeah - I'm very prone to hypnagogic and hypnopompic (as you're falling asleep) hallucinations and do some lucid dreaming, so I know I can't trust anything I see or hear as I'm falling asleep, sleeping, or waking up. XD
* Ghost Hunters International starts in January. I wanna see all the locations!
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There are a few paranormal shows that play on that channel but I don't care for a lot of them.
OOH! That was interesting!
so I know I can't trust anything I see or hear as I'm falling asleep, sleeping, or waking up. XD
Exactly!
I would be interested to see Ghost Hunters International! International ghosts are so much more exotic than the local variety.
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That GH episode was spookier when you watch the whole thing, as you get to see everyone slowly freaking themselves out. The Irish guy was there to start - he'd been at their previous investigation - but left after he said he saw the face they taped. My cynical heart says he left so they'd have someone at the end to do the reveal to, since the structure of the show demands they show someone the footage. XD The footsteps were better, too, as the guys who recoded them had squeezed themselves into a room that was mostly below ground when they heard the footsteps and recorded them. And freaked themselves out.
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Of course the classic example of an otherwise brilliant and incisive mind turning into mush in the presence of dodgy evidence for something he wanted very badly to believe in is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini, who knew all the tricks in the book as a professional magician, tried his damndest to disabuse Doyle of his delusions (woo, alliteration!) but Doyle, even when shown exactly how a particular illusion was achieved, insisted that Houdini himself had paranormal powers that he didn't realize. *smacks forehead*
What the hell can you do against the apparently limitless human capacity for intellectual self-sabotage, which possibly increases rather than decreases with IQ? Maybe for Christmas we could give everyone in the world a lifetime subscription to The Skeptical Inquirer, but for every true believer you can turn around, nine more fall straight into the pit...
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Relating to ghosts - I heard a This American Life once about ghosts that fascinated me. There was a family that moved into an old house and started having all sorts of ghostly incidents, and it turned out it was all a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. I found a link to an bit of that account: http://www.ghostvillage.com/resources/2004/resources_10312004.shtml
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That story sounds familiar - I think I heard that This American Life.
The one that beats the others hollow
But how can it be that no one has mentioned the greatest of the ghost hunters, Don Kanonji of "The Spirits Are Always With You"??? Now everyone cross your arms over your chest and laugh "BWAHAHAHAHA!"
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I also hate the fact that amidst the writers strike we are going to be stuck with about 8000 more of these shows, and other reality crap...