Episode 315 – The Gibbon’s House

The Location

The Gibbon’s house, Sammamish, Washington. This is a private residence located outside of Seattle, Washington.

Investigation Team

Jason Hawes – Lead Investigator
Grant Wilson – Lead Investigator
Steve Gonsalves – Tech Manager
Dave Tango – Investigator
Kris Williams – Investigator-In-Training

The Pitch

In episode 315 TAPS travels to the Gibbon’s home in Samammish, Washington. Donna informs the group that this woman really, really, really needs their help and that her family is going crazy. The woman’s sister had died and they took in her daughter. Donna explains to J&G that right after the niece moved in with the ashes of her mother that it was like opening Pandora’s box; light’s flickering on and off, and the niece was seeing an armless figure.

The Tour

The woman tells J&G that they are hearing thumping sounds. The husband tells of how the woman, their son, and himself had witnessed a ball of light shoot past the kitchen window.

The woman then takes them upstairs to the bedroom where she says there is much activity and some of the being hearing a woman and mans voices coming from the furnace duct work, after everyone has gone to sleep. The conversation is indiscernible. She then tells of activity in the Master Bathroom and explains seeing a full size shadow with defined head and shoulders. In what appears to be the family room, another black shape is described, seen by the niece when she was in the adjacent bathroom. It is also mentioned sounding as though people are on the stairs.

The Investigation

Upstairs Bedroom – Kris & Tango

While doing EVP work in this room, Tango and Kris hear footsteps and then Kris hears a “errr” sound, which Tango describes as a grunting, growling sound. Neither is on the audio of Pilgrim’s cameras/sound.

Theories and Claims Made

Girls manifest poltergeist activity

Jason ~ A poltergeist type case usually involves high limestone deposits in the area

The Evidence

Video Evidence

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This is the video evidence presented at the reveal when they slow it down.

Audio Evidence

The EVP presented.

Darkrealm Labs Analysis

The evidence and conclusions presented in this case are somewhat shocking. When looking at the video evidence it is clear that the IR illuminator on Steve’s camera reflects off of the “shadow” that pops up, and that the shadow on the back wall is caused by his hand casting a shadow from the IR illuminator on the camera behind him {circled green in the image to the left}.

In fact, what Steve captures is the statuette that is located on the coffee table in front of him.

To the right is a picture of the living room and coffee table. It’s pretty straightforward what happened, and that is as Steve got up off the couch his camera caught the statuette in his camera’s field of view. What isn’t clear is whether or not TAPS realized this before the reveal. If we go by what is presented on the show and TAPS conclusion is that the image in the video is paranormal then we’d have to say that their conclusion is sloppy and lacks any real examination of the evidence, which we are hoping is this case because the other conclusion would show a major breach in ethics, but we’ll discuss that later.

Other things that would indicate this nothing more than sloppiness and bad judgment is when listening to Steve discuss his movements as he gets off of the couch.

In the clip to the left, Steve explains his actions as to how his arm moved when he got off the couch. &nbspBut, what we see in the clip is the opposite of what he states as it shows his arm moving in a downward motion. Now some will write this off as a little mistake, but what they are failing to see is that this is a prime example of human mis-perception, and how that one failed perception is used to support a bogus conclusion.

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This is something that can easily happen when relying on human perception of an event and highlights the dangers of using personal experiences as any type of indicator of the paranormal, or in this case, to substantiate a bogus piece of evidence.

The EVP in this case is like many presented by TAPS and other paranormal investigators; buried in background noise and at best it is coincidental. Since there is no way to know it’s origin, meaning, or authenticity, it is at best a novelty and is definitely non-conclusive.

Darkrealm Labs Comments and Conclusion

The video evidence in this case is pretty clear. The image captured is nothing more than the statuette on the coffee table. What is truly interesting about this case is how Jason and Grant went into “cover our ass mode”. Shortly after Scribey had posted on the SciFi forums that the figure was the statuette, Jason and Grant responded in their blogs stating that they weren’t sure what it was but they and the owners had tried to duplicate the footage with the statuette and couldn’t do it. Then, as more and more fans pressed them on their blogs they changed their story and said that it couldn’t have been the statuette because they had moved it so it wouldn’t get knocked over and damaged, and that it was nowhere near the coffee table.

This makes absolutely no sense. If they had moved the statuette then why suspect it and try to duplicate it? What it looks like is they got caught passing bogus evidence and were doing everything they could to get out of hot water. But I can somewhat understand why. Imagine that you had just passed off bogus evidence to a client; wouldn’t you try to cover your ass as well? Then there’s the whole ethics issue if they knowingly passed off bogus evidence. If that were the case then they committed a major breach of ethics in order to satisfy ratings, and if this is the case then the show should be removed from the air as it is clearly a case of fraud for money.

Whatever the case may be, the least that can be said is that TAPS did an extremely unprofessional job of investigating and their performance is worse than that of drunken teenagers in a cemetery.

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