A Ghostly Wager

Against my better judgment, I watched a bit of Ghost Adventures last night. It's no different from all the other ghost hunting shows that have cropped up over the years, and the fifteen minutes or so that I watched consisted almost entirely of night vision footage of a guy wandering around a darkened room waving an EMF detector around at a vase of flowers¹. When the EMF detector reached "an incredible" 0.9 milligauss ¹, the fellow with the EMF detector proudly declared something to the effect of "I've proven that ghosts are associated with EMFs because as the detector is reading higher, I'm actually feeling a presence here and my hand is going numb." Skip to about 1:33 of this clip to see what I'm talking about. ³

Right.

I should also note that for reasons that are inobvious to me, they had set up "vortex pumps" (EMF generators to the layman) throughout the building they were investigating for unexpected electromagnetic readings.

Without getting into the whole "we have no real evidence that ghosts, if they exist, generate electromagnetic fields" thing or the bit about how miniscule electromagnetic field changes like the ones described are not really anything worth noting, I'd like to propose a bit of an experiment. I'd like to see one of these ghost hunter fellows wander around with an EMF detector strapped to his forehead, like in Indian poker. That way the viewers at home could see the levels of electromagnetic energy being generated, while the ghost hunter could give a running account of his own impressions of any ghostly happenings.

Just imagine each of these guys with a $200 EMF detector tied to his head.

I'd bet you a nickel that, when the EMF detector is invisible to the paranormalist, his "feelings" about supernatural presences around him will no longer synch up quite so nicely with "spikes" in the detector readings like they do on most of these shows. What would such an experiment prove? Not a lot, but I think it would drive homes the point that TV ghost hunters (The ones that aren't just acting, anyway.) tend to derive most of their "evidence" from equipment that they've no clue how to use.

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1.) The Ghost Adevntures guys use Mel Meter products, which are designed and marketed specifically for paranormalists. Just sayin'.

2.) That's right, 0.9 mG. Zero-point nine milligauss. As in 0.0009 gauss. The magnets on your fridge would register about 50 gauss each.

3.) Let me take this time to remind you that this fellow is claiming to feel something like an electrical current numbing his arm...in response to an electromagnetic field about 1/55,555th as powerful as a refrigerator magnet

The History Channel Loves Ghosts

At work today I ran across an awesome article from the Onion entitled Science Channel Refuses to Dumb Down Science Any Further. I got a laugh out of it, forwarded it to my brothers, and went on my merry way. Great story, huh?

Fast forward to 6:36 PM EST - While flipping stations I paused on the History Channel at the sight of two guys standing around with a FLIR camera. A-ha, I thought, if anyone on TV has a FLIR camera, then they must be looking for ghosts. Sure enough, the Mystery Quest narrator soon began a grim intonation:

The average temperature of the room was measured at 72 degrees...but the anomalous spot on the wall measures nearly 80 degrees. With power cut off to the house, the hot spot on the wall cannot be explained. Investigators believe that it is a vortex, a portal through which spirits enter our world.¹

Wow, really? Apparently it's the case that temperature fluctuations in a powered down office building can only be explained by way of portals to another dimension. Nevermind the possibility of variations in wall density, electrical current being passively drawn to unlit light fixtures or other machinery, or even the remote possibility of an animal moving around inside the walls, clearly the most plausible explanation is a heretofore undiscovered portal to another plane of existence.

Putting aside all other arguments for a moment, I'd also like to point out that FLIR cameras, for all their versatility, are not built to detect portals to the afterlife. I checked the official FLIR website to make sure. They are used for "building diagnostics" - not to diagnose hauntings, but to diagnose irregularities in insulation, air and gas leakage, electrical problems, plumbing issues, and structural damage. Watching some of the promotional videos on the site, it becomes pretty obvious that if you go through any empty building with a FLIR camera you're going to see a lot of "hot spots" and irregular heat patterns, the sources of which may not be immediately obvious to someone who isn't trained to interpret the readings from the camera. I fear I must suggest that some ghost hunters may not be using their FLIR equipment with quite the level of sophistication that, say, a structural engineer or building inspector might.

There are plenty of mundane explanations for temperature fluctuations within a building, they just aren't sexy enough to get people to watch a TV show.² Also note the fallacious line of reasoning we've been fed by our dear announcer: "Wow, there's no explanation...except we have the explanation." That's just not true. We actually have a ton of possible explanations: Gas leaks, bad insulation, an opossum, even (just maybe) a "vortex". Just finding something weird isn't science in and of itself, it's only observing the presence of a phenomenon. The real task, the actual science to be done, is to identify and subsequently eliminate, through experimentation, as many of the potential explanations for the phenomenon as possible in order to say "X is most likely caused by Y."

Unfortunately our ghost hunter friends seem to have mistaken the beginning of an investigation for the ending. They began with the assumption that an empty, unpowered building would have no naturally occurring anomalous heat patterns. When they found a hot spot, they wiped away all natural explanations by simply saying "well, it can't be anything normal"...and thus it must be supernatural. And, conveniently, they arrived at just the conclusion they were hoping for.

The History Channel may not have stooped quite to the level of the "Science Channel" in the Onion's wry piece, but these days it's not too far above it.

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1.) As usual, this is paraphrased from memory.
2.) Here at home the bedroom is generally about 10 degrees cooler in the winter than the rest of the apartment, even with the heat turned on and all of the vents open. It's not a ghost, it's shoddy insulation.

Haunted by Goofiness...

Your ol' pal Skippy is on a bit of a forced vacation - Kentucky and Southern Indiana got dealt with a couple of days ago by a huge ice storm and my place of employment is currently closed due to a combination of bad roads and widespread power outtages. My electricity was off for the better part of yesterday, but it's back on now and there's not a lot to do around here but read and watch daytime TV, which brings me to my point: There's a woman wrestling a ghost on the freakin' Discovery Channel.

Maybe that's normal for the Discovery Channel these days, but I remember when, you know, it was possible to actually learn things from watching the "educational" cable channels. I'll admit that the Discovery Channel did start going south earlier than say the Learning Channel and the History Channel, but I'm nonetheless aghast that at 2 in the freakin' afternoon the Discovery Channel is running an "investigative" show about ghosts which culminates in a literal wrestling match between some "psychic" lady and a big zombified fat guy. The show's called A Haunting and it's big draw is the relatively sophisticated "re-enactments" of supposedly supernatural events. It provides essentially no verifiable information about the cases it claims to discuss. Seriously, it's beneath even Unsolved Mysteries when it comes to actually trying to show any kind of "evidence". Instead it's kind of like watching an episode of Tales From the Crypt, but with no Crypt Keeper and no possibility of nudity. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that it's is pretty goofy - the show is affiliated with Ed and Lorraine Warren, the "demonologists" that helped to fabricate the Amityville hoax.

The best/silliest bit about the whole thing is watching the psychics and exorcists they trot out to fight the various monsters talk with a straight face about all their battle tactics against these supernatural beasts. The episode with the aforementioned wrestling patch was accompanied by commentary in which our psychic friend explained that even though the ghost was "trying to rip [her] neck off" she was able to "release its negative energy" and destroyed it. Lucky thing, that - Astute readers will recall that monsters imbued with negative energy drain an entire experience level every time they touch someone, so the psychic lady was in real danger here. If I recall correctly, being drained to zero levels by a ghost causes the victim to rise as a ghost themselves, but with only half the hit points of the original monster.

...Or maybe there aren't actually ghosts and the people on these kinds of shows are either deluded or opportunistic charlatans. I'm honestly not sure whether the veiled use of Dungeons and Dragons nonsense on the part of these "ghost fighters" points to the former or the latter.

Oooooo...spooky.

Here in Louisville the "haunted" place of note is the Waverly Hills Sanatorium. (That's San-a-TOR-ium, not San-i-TAR-ium. It was a TB hospital, not a madhouse. Even the place's own fliers get that wrong sometimes.) It was a local legend long before being featured on Sci Fi's "Ghost Hunters" program a couple of years ago, and has been operating as a haunted house during the Halloween season for years now.

The place is actually more properly called the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, given that it existed in that capacity for around 28 years after the Sanatorium shut down, but the Waverly Hills bit sounds scarier. I recently attended the haunted house attraction there, and I have to say that it's a legitimately creepy place. The architecture is cool and its indisputable that a ton of people died there, so it's obvious why urban legends about ghosts and whatnot abound regarding the place.

Sadly the only thing that was actually scary about the haunted house itself was the line - My party foolishly purchased our tickets in advance and waited in line from 10:30 at night until around 2 in the morning to actually go through the place. By that point, no amount of guys dressed up as Michael Myers could make the place worth the wait. (To be fair, the werewolf at the very beginning was quite cool, and one of the performers got a legitimate jump out of me towards the end.) Much was made in the lead up about the "haunting" at the building itself, but precious little of the attraction centered around it. I'd have been more interested just to take the tour...

That being said, I'm considering signing up for one of the overnight stays that the Mattingly family (the people that own Waverly these days) organize. Sadly they're a $100 a person and there aren't any openings until next year. I think it would be an interesting place to do a Skippy video, but that's one heck of a location fee. Plus I've heard rumblings about cameras not being permitted and actors being strewn hither and yon throughout the building to turn it into "an experience", but I suppose we'll see. The official Waverly website is rather obfuscatory, while the superior Memorial and Resource Center site has nothing to do with the touring aspect of the operation.

Time will tell, I suppose.