The REAL way to investigate a haunting

[Clairvoyant_Kyle]

I have noticed that on Ghost Hunters and all the other “ghost investigating” shows they seem to do only one night of research (AKA: walking around in the dark, carrying cameras, and asking questions while making lots of noise) and then come to a conclusion about the sight being haunted or not. In my opinion this is extremely flawed. The places they investigate claim to have paranormal events happening from time to time. So I would think that it would make more sense to wire up a BUNCH of cameras with sound, evacuate the building, guard the building so no one comes to interfere, and then after one week to one month see what turns up. After all, most “haunted” sights claim that TONS of activity happens like shadows, mists, objects move/fly around or full apparitions appear. So if that is the case lets take humans out of the equation and see if any of these things really happen.

I do understand when a household is “haunted” they cant just leave for a month, but if a research group is interested in the truth they might be able to talk the family into taking a free hotel for a week. Or if it is a retired navy ship, that is pretty much only used for high school field trips, they should be able to hand it over for 2 to 4 weeks of research. Then of course you have old a banded prisons, hospitals, and schools that should have no problem in getting permission to lock the place down for a month.

Doing this kind of research maybe a lot more expensive, but truth is we are trying to find out an answer to one of the most important questions mankind has ever asked, “Is there life after death?” Considering how many people do believe there is you would think this kind of research would already be going on. But instead we watch a 4-hour walk threw that use extremely questionable equipment and unproven “psychics” over and over as proof. Not to mention if they think a location is “haunted” they just say, “Yes I there are ghosts here” and move onto the next “haunting.” If a location is for surely haunted I say stick around for as long as possible and prove it beyond any question.

But that is just my take on the issue. What does everyone else think? Should there be a serious ghost investigation group out there that should use these tactics? What else would you suggest to make this kind of investigating better?

-Kyle

[Aerik]

Yup. You have successfully identified "Ghost Hunters" as 100% utter B.S.

They don't even know how to use their tools.

Their heat sensing equipment? Should be stationary and level, and set up to measure one area at a time, from 3 different perpendicular planes. Like the sides of a cube. That way they can get a correct 3-D, syncronized image of any activity they claim to detect.

It'd be nice if they actually hired an actual friggin electrician to help them figure out their EMS readings. Holy crap, I'm only an electrician's son and I know more about household electronics than the lot of 'em put together. I bet they would go deer-in-headlights if I asked them about 3-phase. Do they even know the difference between impedance and resistance? Do they even know that the very shape that the wire's path follows in effects its magnetic field? Do they understand the different effects that different conduit materials will have on this (pvd vs steel, usulaly)? They don't seem to.

Ghost Hunters is at best peurile entertainment, and in truth an advertising-driven scam.

[Maldon]

Quote:

Ghost Hunters is at best peurile entertainment, and in truth an advertising-driven scam.

Pretty much sums up my evaluation of above mentioned TV show.

[shayes666]

Yep, the 2 of you hit the nail on the head. I belong to a group out here in Colorado called Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society and we have to tackle these types of issues all the time.

First and fore most we continually have to explain that what is shown on TV is not the way we do things and that in all likelihood these things being touted as "evidence" on the big TV shows are being manipulated or just outright faked. How do I know these things are probably being faked? Well what I'm about to write is going to be an '"argument from authority" fallacy but I think it holds some water.

First, I feel these shows to be fraudulent because I'm in the video production business. I run my own motion graphics and video editing business and have been in this business for about 11 years. In that time I have worked with many producers, directors and sales people. Some of these folks I worked with were not the most "truthful" when it came to putting together a production. Lets just say they knew what made "good TV" and didn't have any qualms of "bending" the truth a little. Hell video editing in it self is bending the truth to a degree.

Secondly a member of our team was on one of these shows a few years ago. He was in an episode that did not get aired but he got a birds eye view of the production process on one of these shows. His testimony of being apart of this production relays the warning of "don't always believe what you see on TV"

Again, that is an "argument from authority" fallacy so I won't dwell on that aspect and I'll move on to the significant problems of "paranormal research"*. That problem being in some of the topics Clairvoyant_Kyle and Aerik pointed out.

Kyle pointed out that in most cases paranormal investigators only investigate for a night or two at a "haunted" location. That it seems most claims of paranormal activity are random and inconsistent and investigating for only a night is a very hit and miss thing. Kyle is absolutely right. This is kind of a piss poor way to investigate a claim. I would LOVE to get into a place that's reputed to have "paranormal activity" and set up for a week, a month, a couple months. Have a long period of time to collect consistent documentation and data.

The biggest problem with this scenario is we don't have the time or resources to do this type of investigation. This "paranormal" thing is not a full time job. We can't make a living off it so we have to hold real jobs and do this research in our free time. Now we could set up our equipment to document a place and let it continually run with out us being there (in fact this would be a good practice so we did not contaminate the data we collected) but the other problem is actually procuring a "haunted" place for a long duration of time. There's not many places that are into letting people document their businesses or homes for more than a few days.

Aerik touched on the fact that the folks on TV don't know how to use the equipment that is being used to find "ghosts". Again, absolutely correct! We are always explaining that all this "ghost hunting" equipment that's being used was never designed to find "ghosts". There is no such thing as a "ghost finding" device. No one knows what a "ghost" is so how the hell can you make a piece of equipment that finds "ghosts" when we don't know what they are or if they even exist?

The EMF meters are the best. I love watching people walking around looking for "spikes" or my absolute favorite, watching them hold Q&A sessions with the KII meter... Oy Vey! Yes we do use EMF meters. We use a variety of them, but we use them for what the were designed to measure. We use the AC meters for looking at EMF from electrical sources and a natural EM meter to check out natural magnetic fields. The only reason we take those measurements is because of the possible (and I emphasize possible) correlation of high EMFs effecting the brain that may cause perceived paranormal activity.

Even with the EMF data we collect we take it with a grain of salt because we are not getting the full picture. The meters we have will measure the radiation strength but they will not tell us the frequency. We also, at this time, can not get continuous EMF data. We would need a data logger for that and, as with any equipment, it cost money and gets expensive quickly.

Another favorite of mine is the thermal camera. These devices are extremely difficult to use. Most of the "investigators" out there are basically grabbing the camera right out of the box and just start filming. These cameras are very finicky and need to be calibrated for each use. A few of us at RMPRS are certified to use these cameras (the FLIRS to be exact).

We took the online courses that the manufacture supplies. After taking these courses we learned that this piece of equipment would be useless for what we are doing. The images produced by this camera can just be outright confusing.

We do a lecture that touches on the FLIR camera. We show a still from one of these cameras and then ask our audience what they think the picture is of. We do this for a few minutes and get all sorts of different answers and opinions on what they think the image is of (to date no one has guessed right) after we get a few good guesses we reveal what the image is... a chest freezer full of turkeys.

Our point in this is to illustrate if we can not tell what a freezer of turkeys looks like with one of these cameras how can one tell what a "ghost" looks like with one of these cameras. Also, what some people don't realize about these cameras is they only read surface temperature, reflected temperature. They will not find that "cold spot" in the air.

Yeah, this whole "paranormal research" thing is interesting. It would be nice to weed out all the fantasy and BS associated with it. It would be nice to have some level of clarity and maybe someone can finally find credible evidence that tells us if there is any thing to this "paranormal" thing.

[JWideman]

This reminds me of the guy I knew who insisted his house was haunted. He'd tell me about how things would get moved around in his living room, and all other sorts of things going on when he wasn't watching. So there I am at his house, watching TV. His daughter comes in the room, picks up a knick knack, moves it to the other side of the room, and walks out. He comes in, sees the knick knack isn't in its usual place, and starts talking about how the ghost was in the room with me.
He didn't like my explanation of his "ghost".

[jimtron]

If they used sound scientific methods, they would find no sign of the paranormal, and no one would want to put it on TV. Woo sells on TV; skepticism and science, not so much. That's why you have Oprah promoting stuff like The Secret, and Larry King having on psychics, etc.

There are exceptions like Mythbusters and Nova but these are exceptions and I doubt they get nearly as many eyeballs as the woo content. In short: people like crap.

[plumjam]

Originally Posted by JWideman

This reminds me of the guy I knew who insisted his house was haunted. He'd tell me about how things would get moved around in his living room, and all other sorts of things going on when he wasn't watching. So there I am at his house, watching TV. His daughter comes in the room, picks up a knick knack, moves it to the other side of the room, and walks out. He comes in, sees the knick knack isn't in its usual place, and starts talking about how the ghost was in the room with me.
He didn't like my explanation of his "ghost".

Because his daughter was dead.

[Lanzy]

TV = Entertainment

No one is investigating anything, they are attempting (badly) to entertain.

[Denver]

I think there some interesting comparisons to be made between Ghost Hunting and Storm Chasing.

One of the common issues is that what they are after cannot easily be predicated, and can't be demanded to appear. But while both ghost hunters and storm chasers try to hang out around likely areas of activity, look at the extra effort that storm chasers put in: rather than scheduling a chase when it is convenient for them, they are ready at a moment's notice to go after currently occurring activity: sometimes to the point of taking weeks out of their other activity just to stay in the areas of likely activity, with all their equipment at the ready, and waiting for a direction in which to run.

Ghost hunters, on the other hand, seem a lot less serious. They try to chase on their schedule, not when someone is actually reporting when they think a paranormal event is occurring.

I think for the ghost hunters to get really serious and take things to the next level, they could follow the example of the storm chasers. In a way, that puts them in a similar light as the movie GhostBusters: dedicated to this search, rather than as a hobby; Funded somehow so they can do this full time; Maybe even having their contact information widely available (even to 911?) so at the very moment someone thinks something weird is happening, they can dispatch immediately to the location.

At least at that point, the argument of "We don't get much evidence, because ghosts don't appear on demand" because less of an issue.

If nothing else, it might be more entertaining for tv then the current batch of paranormal shows.

[PingOfPong]

Is "ghost hunting" even important? I'm reminded of searches for the Loch Ness monster. Someone finally went out and looked for Nessie with advanced sonar equipment. What did they find? nothing. Why? because the Nessie stories were likeley driven by hysteria and over-active imaginations.

That's what I think of ghost stories. I've personally known people with ghost stories to tell. They started out tame but became exaggerated over time. If you want to look for ghosts based on all the anecdotes then you might as well watch the skies every night for UFO's, look for the chupacabra in Tampa, and look for evidence of penis snatchers in Africa. Of course, I'm sure people are already wasting their short mortal lives doing just that.

[shayes666]

Originally Posted by jimtron

If they used sound scientific methods, they would find no sign of the paranormal, and no one would want to put it on TV. Woo sells on TV; skepticism and science, not so much. That's why you have Oprah promoting stuff like The Secret, and Larry King having on psychics, etc.

There are exceptions like Mythbusters and Nova but these are exceptions and I doubt they get nearly as many eyeballs as the woo content. In short: people like crap.

Unfortunately my friend, this is the sad truth. I guess we can chalk it up to human nature as to why most people glom on to the woo-tainment?

[Minarvia]

Originally Posted by plumjam

Because his daughter was dead.

Finally! A convincing case!