I was just made aware of a show on National Geographic called “Haunted Prison.” While I haven’t had the opportunity to watch a full episode I have checked out a few clips they have on the National Geographic website. This show is shot at Eastern State Penitentiary, and has a team comprised of scientists who exam various aspects of hauntings. From what I’ve seen in the video clips they have posted, investigators should definitely tune in and pay attention to how real science works, as well as getting explanations of some elements of physics.

Next showing is tonight, January 24, 2010, at 9:00PM.

UPDATE: Another showing is scheduled January 31, 2010 at 11:00am

Patrick Doyle gives us another good video on hoaxes, as well as some more sound food for thought. Enjoy!

One thing I’ve seen asked numerous times on the Ghost Hunters forum on the SciFi boards is “Why do they go dark?” The main answer I’ve heard is that it will be easier to see the faintest of light sources. A sound reason, but it’s not what is actually observed when seeing how paranormal investigators implement the plan. What I always see is an IR camera with an IR illuminator spot light that does nothing more than illuminate an area that is similar to the lighting a flashlight produces; only in this mode it is monochromatic, making it far worse.

Here’s what I see:

Out of all the reasons I’ve heard, the most plausible is to catch the faintest of lights. That’s all and good until you look at how the investigators execute the method. First they turn off all the lights, which is expected. Then they setup an infra-red camera and turn on an IR illuminator. Here’s where I start scratching my head and ask, “What are you doing?” If the purpose of going dark is to catch the faintest of lights then why are we adding an IR illuminator and setting the camera in a mode that reduces its ability to record visible light?

Basically, all any investigator does by going dark in such a manner is to cripple a camera and make it so it’s no better than strapping a flashlight to a camera and turning out all the lights. In fact, strapping a flashlight to a camera would produce better video than being in IR mode, since IR mode reduces the camera’s ability to see in the visible spectrum of light.

One argument I’ve heard for shooting in IR is that the ghosts aren’t aware of it. Again I have to ask myself, where is the data to support this? If ghosts do exist, then how do we know what they are aware of and what they aren’t aware of? It seems to me that if a being is no longer bound by its organic body then it must be sensing things without the use of eyes, ears, nose, or touch. Therefore, how can anyone assume what a ghost can or cannot sense? If that’s the case then who’s to say it isn’t aware of IR illumination? Without proper data to support such an idea then it’s just as easy to say that ghosts can’t see anything other than people, including visible light.

I’ve also heard investigators claim that they get better results when using the IR method of going dark. Many of them claim that there are more shadows that manifest, which is true to a point, but when looking at their video what I see is a camera that is struggling in a low light situation. Putting cameras in such a situation isn’t much different than putting a person in the same setup. Neither does well to interpret images in low light and both will exaggerate minor differences in light levels, giving the impression there is something there when it’s not. For a person, this effect is further exaggerated by the composition of the human eye and how rods and cones affect vision. But at the moment we’ll stick with the camera, as that is our subject.

Basically, what this all boils down to is failed implementation. If investigators go dark so they can see the faintest of lights, then they need to abandon the IR mode and illumination on the camera and simply stick to shooting in the dark.

One of the biggest problems I see with most paranormal groups is how they collect their data. Many investigators wander around with a single EMF meter and get excited when they observe a spike in their reading. Many also will be quick to conclude that the spike was paranormal in nature with nothing more to support it. Some go on to claim that because they collected an EVP at the same time as the EMF anomaly, the EVP substantiates their EMF readings.

First, let’s deal with the single meter issue. By using a single meter you are only sampling one data point. Not much can be proven with a single data point, and drawing conclusions from a single data point can easily lead to false conclusions.

Example:
Let’s say a car manufacturer produces 100,000 cars of a particular model. Out of the 100,000 cars, 0.1% has a manufacturing defect. You purchase one of these cars and find that it’s defective. Now, because the car you purchased is defective, you conclude that the model of car is a lemon, or worse yet, you decide that the manufacturer produces junk cars. Does this seem like a fair assessment? After all, you can show people that the car you have is defective.

This is how much of the data is collected and analyzed by many paranormal investigators. Let’s go back to the single EMF meter. What most investigators do is very similar to the example above. They get a spike on an EMF meter and think that it’s something significant or that they can draw conclusions from that one spike. About all that can truly be concluded by their evidence so far is that there was a spike. With only a single meter they can’t even determine if the spike is confined to a small area, as in a particular room in a building, or if the spike is much larger, perhaps covering an area of several hundred acres. Determining that a single EMF spike is paranormal in nature is just as irresponsible as concluding that the model of car in the above example is defective.

For investigators to be able to start making any sort of reasonable conclusions from their data they must first look at their collection methods. Does the method create a single data point or does it produce multiple data points? If your data collection only produces a single data point, then it’s time for a change unless you wish to spend your time collecting useless data. In the instance of EMF, multiple meters need to be employed. The more meters, the more data points. The more data points, the more accurate your conclusions are likely to be, especially if you are trying to determine the area affected by an EMF spike.

Once again let’s look at the car example. Let’s say we buy 2 more cars so that we now have a total of three. Again, the two additional cars are defective. Odds are against us getting three defective cars, but it is possible. Now, while we’ve expanded our sample size, effectively increasing its size by 100%, overall we still have a very small sample in comparison to the total number of vehicles that exists. Because we coincidentally purchased two more defective cars, we mistakenly drew the conclusion that all cars of that model are lemons. But look at what happens when we purchase a total of 1,000 cars. Even if we did somehow manage to purchase all the defective vehicles (total of 100 out of 100,000 at a 0.1% defect rate) we would only find a 10% defect rate, not the 100% defect rate that we had previously assumed. This example with a larger sample size shows us that the car is not a lemon as we had initially concluded in our original samples and illustrates, in general, how easy it is to make an inaccurate judgment based on insufficient data.

So as can be seen, one data point does not provide sufficient evidence and surely does not give an investigator enough data from which to draw any sort of conclusions that would be considered acceptable by any peer group in the scientific community.