Jason Hawes – Lead Investigator
Grant Wilson – Lead Investigator
Steve Gonsalves – Tech Manager
Dave Tango – Investigator In Training
Donna LaCroix – Investigator
Chris Fleming – Guest Investigator
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Donna informs Jason and Grant that the man who owns the house down from where the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, wants them to investigate his home where he says the spirits of the murder victims are now haunting. Donna tells of crazy things happening there; apparitions being sighted, footsteps being heard, etc.
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David Oman is the current owner of the house that TAPS investigates in this episode. He and his Dad had the house built and it was completed sometime in 2003. David has asked TAPS to investigate to find proof that he’s not the only one who believes that the Manson family murder victims are haunting his house, which is about 200′ away from where the murders were committed. He also claims that ever since they started building there, they’ve had strange things happen.
He also tells that about six months prior to completing construction of the house he gathered the workers together and asked if they’ve had any strange occurrences happen. He says one worker reported footsteps and voices coming down the stairs to the third level where the worker was working. The worker claims the voices got louder and louder then stopped, then suddenly there was a cold breeze that came across his shoulder and he just took off. David claims the worker left and didn’t return for six weeks.
Since then David says people have told him of different experiences they’ve had before they knew where they were. One testimony presented comes from Jeff Mandel, who says he heard footsteps: leather soled shoes on the wood floor that sounded as though they went across the room, up the wood steps, into the back room, and then disappeared.
David then takes the team to the master bedroom where he says he’s had lots of personal experiences with some of the spirit activity in the house. He then tells of when he was laying in bed and turned when his eyes immediately went to a spot on the floor. There he sees a guy standing with his left hand extended and he’s turning from the waist up, pointing towards the driveway, and then suddenly disappears. Jason asked if he looked familiar to him, to which David responds that he didn’t look the least bit familiar to him until three months later. Oman reports he was doing some research at the L.A.P.D., trying to find some more information about the murders, when he comes across a picture of Jay Sebring, at which time he thinks “Oh my God, that’s him.”
David then leads them down to the third level, which he says is the most active part of the house, and introduces the “Infamous guest bedroom”, and says he can’t even tell them how many experiences that have taken place in that room. Lisa Rigbee gives testimony to her experience where she says she heard footsteps while in bed and then felt someone sit on the corner of the bed. She says she sat up abruptly and noticed the bed was being pushed down as though there were some weight there, but no one was sitting there.
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While in this room, Tango gets a mild EMF fluctuation. Steve then announces, “Do whatever it is you need to do to move something. Make a noise, let us know you’re here. Or else we’re not going to think you are here. We’re not going to think you can do anything.” He then notices that there is a slight movement in the vertical blinds. They checked for obvious breezes, but claim to have found no reasons the blinds should move the way they did.
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Breaking out the K-II meter, Jason, Grant and Chris head to the Master Bedroom. Grant’s narration says that the K-II has been specially calibrated for paranormal investigators, and that the theory is that you can train the spirits to light up the L.E.D.s in response to questions.
Chris is then shown instructing the spirits that they can make the lights jump up quickly, twice for yes, once for no
The K-II meter then begins flashing wildly and Chris gets excited. As they’re checking out the meter, Jay claims to feel a cool spot in front of the meter. They then decide to change batteries, at which time the wild, flashing behavior by the meter ceases.
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With a fresh battery in the K-II meter, Jason, Grant and Chris head to the guest bedroom. Chris hands the K-II to Jason, and again instructs the spirit how to communicate with them by making the meter flash twice for yes, once for no. He then begins questioning the spirits.
Are you a male? (Yes)
Are there more of you here? (Yes)
Are you one of the people who were murdered, from the house that used to exist? (Yes)
Is your name Jay Sebring? (Yes)
Is one of the females that haunts this house, Sharon Tate? (Yes)
They then decide to move up a level to the master bedroom.
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In the living room, Chris asks the spirits to give him a concrete sign they are there. Jason calls Chris over to a chair in the room to see if he can sense what Jason is sensing. Chris says, “Ooo… there’s a difference in…” and Jason fills in “Density?” Chris replies “Something”. Jason then flops down in the chair. Chris starts saying “Come on, we need something concrete”, and then there’s a loud noise from the kitchen. They investigate the kitchen but cannot determine what made the sound.
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Donna and Steve do some EVP work.
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Jason comments that there is definitely a heavy feeling when they get into that room. Chris begins another K-II questions session.
Can you please come back into this room, please respond. (Yes)
Who killed you? Who murdered you? (The meter flashes several times)
Are you still here? (Yes)
You don’t get a chance to talk to someone like this, do you? (No)
Chris then explains it’s like using a Ouija Board, but nobody’s pushing it. (Back to Q&A)
Did Dave ever bring out a Ouija board before? (Yes)
Have you ever played with a Ouija board before? (Yes)
Jason then narrates that they kept getting cold spots around the meter and they kept getting activity from the meter so it must not have been the batteries causing the lights to flash earlier.
It is during this part of the investigation that Chris commands the spirits to lower the temperature to 62 degrees. Jason is holding an IR thermometer with an ambient probe attached, which slowly moves from 65 degrees to 62 degrees, and in the original airing of this episode, had correlating evidence from the thermal imager.
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The evidence in this investigation consists of a reported temperature drop that coincided with commands from Chris Fleming, which were confirmed with the thermal imager and a hand held IR/thermocoupler thermometer. There was also a “communication” session done with the K-II Safe Range EMF Detector, and a couple of EVPs. Because of what was discovered during analysis of this evidence we have decided to post it while analyzing it.
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This is the first episode where there is clear proof of staging of events, both with the thermal footage used to verify the temperature drop, as well as the K-II communication sessions. Because of the clear case of tampering with evidence, we will focus on those two and not go into the EVPs since there is no way to know if they are fraudulent or not. We can only surmise they are.
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The Doctored Thermal Footage
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For those who did not get to see this episode when it first aired you may be wondering what the ruckus is about the thermal footage since there is no evidence of tampering. This is because after the initial airing and the exposure of the doctoring of the footage, Pilgrim has removed it from all subsequent airings as well as making sure it did not make it’s way to video. But, they did leave in the footage of the K-II sessions that clearly show manipulation on the part of TAPS members. But let’s focus on the thermal footage at the moment.
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The first thing that tipped me off to the doctoring of the thermal footage was how the 4 in the temperature display was dancing around. Having worked in electronics for over twenty years, I know that this is not how a malfunction would behave and that there is no logical explanation for this except manipulation of the video image. If you watch in the video to the right, you’ll see what I’m discussing and how only the 4 is not stationary.
While this evidence is very damning there is more to show manipulation; consisting of signs of pasting as well as duplicate time stamps in the footage.
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Signs of Pasting
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2x magnification
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In fourth thermal clip there are further signs of video manipulation. If you look just above and to the left of the 2 in the temperature readout, there is a sharp line where the background color changes. This is typical of a rush job and is either caused by pasting a piece of background image over the true number so as to clear that space to paste the number two in, or is caused by the difference in background between the true background and that which surrounds the piece of video that they clipped the number two from. Also note that the tail of the two is much closer to the decimal point than it should be, and that the four is not as sharp as it should be.
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Now a lot of people have argued that this was all set up by Pilgrim and that Jason and Grant had nothing to do with it. There’s a problem with that argument and that is demonstrated in this audio clip, located to the right. If you listen you first hear Chris say, “Bring it to 62, I know you can do this.” You then hear Jason call out “64.1″, and Grant confirms this with “Yup”. Big problem here. As can be seen in the thermal the wall is 65ºF to 66ºF. There’s no way he could confirm that reading with the thermal imager..
But it doesn’t end there. Later in the clip you can hear Jason calling out “Sixty three point nine”, then as he’s calling out “sixty three point seven”, you can hear Grant calling out “sixty three point …”. Clearly, Grant is in on the charade since the thermal imager can only measure the temperature of the wall, which is 65 to 66 degrees. So to lay the blame solely at the feet of Pilgrim and to exonerate Grant is false assumption. Taking this into consideration illustrates that this was planned out before the thermal footage was ever sent back to Pilgrim.
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Many people will quickly dismiss the doctored thermal footage and still believe that the ‘spirits’ made the temperature drop to sixty two degrees, all because of the thermometer Jason is holding. After looking at the manual for the TN408LC, Darkrelam Labs found that this thermometer has several modes. First, it can measure the temperature of the surface of an object with a IR sensor. It can also measure the temperature by means of a thermocouple. Second, and most interesting, the thermometer has three available modes of operation to choose from: average, difference, and standard modes. Now, it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone to re-create a temperature drop as was seen on the show. All you would have to do is point the IR sensor at an object that was 62ºF, put the unit in averaging mode, then start out by measuring the air temperature. After a moment or two, switch to the IR sensor. As the thermometer begins to average between the air temp (roughly 65ºF), and the IR (62ºF), the thermometer will show a steady drop, and because of the limited number of samples that the meter will store, it will eventually drop down to 62ºF. Now when you want it to go back up, simply switch back to the thermocouple and measure air temp again.
Some people will say Jason would never do that. To those people we remind them that Grant was in on the stunt. So to assume that Jason would never do that seems very naïve, to say the least.
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The K-II Communication Session
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This is where Chris Fleming is supposed to be communicating with the ghost of Jay Sebring, via the flashing lights on the K-II meter. Darkrealm Labs has obtained one of these devices and found it to be very easy to produce the same result with just a slight variation on the on/off button because of the type of momentary switch used in the devices construction. There is a tell-tale sign when this occurs and that is that the first light (L.E.D.) blinks out for a moment when the power is interrupted. Then, as a self initialization, the meter swings full scale, drops back to one light, then swings half scale before dropping once again to a single light. This can be seen throughout the questioning session. Below are a few cropped clips showing this.
Now for anyone who does not know what this device is, it is a very simple EMF detector that was built during the height of the EMF scare from a decade or so ago. There is nothing special about this meter, in fact it is a very cheap meter designed for the typical person to check for EM radiation from their appliances.
One thing that strikes us as being peculiar is how many people believe that this meter is different from other meters on the market, and how for some reason that ghosts can manipulate this meter but not others. Truth of the matter is, that if it were possible to communicate with ghosts with this meter, then it would be possible with numerous other meters on the market. One thing we here at Darkrealm Labs would like to see is for Mr. Fleming to communicate with ghosts using a K-II meter that has either had the momentary switch shorted in the on position, or has had the momentary switch replaced with a much more reliable toggle switch.
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This is the response to Chris’s question of are you male. Notice the first light winks out momentarily just before the flashes.
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Are you one of the murdered?
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This is the response to Chris’s question of “Are you one of the people who was murdered, from the house that used to exist?” Again notice the first light winks out momentarily just before the flashes.
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Darkrealm Labs Re-creation
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This is a recreation of how the K-II meter can be manipulated, and also appears in the article “The K-II Safe Range EMF Detector” on T.I.P.S. blog site, which addresses other issues with the K-II as well as their use in investigating.
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