Ghosts and Sodium Chloride

Halloween has come and gone once again.  And with the season, there was a flood the obligatory pieces written by reporters who went on a ghost hunt with their friendly neighborhood paranormal group and got creeped out.  Overall, at least the ones I perused, the articles were pretty cliche: "skeptical" reporter gets assigned to go ghost hunting with paranormal "experts".   Equipment with blinky lights are used, "unexplained" shadows are seen and eerie noises are heard.  So at the end of the night, the reporter believes they experienced something paranormal.   While these make for entertaining seasonal reading, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

I will break down one such article here.  I won't link to it because it was fairly typical of other such articles and I don't want to bring attention to the ghost hunting group.  It describes the same tired ghost hunting "formula" we've seen (without any breakthroughs) for the past several decades: ghost hunters with a bunch of blinky technical gear, a psychic or two coming along, all wandering around in a dark building looking for signs of ghostly activity.  (For more about the formula, please see: http://carolynscreepycorner.blogspot.com/2015/06/stop-insanity.html)

A reporter was assigned to go to a haunted location with a local ghost hunting group.  While the reporter claimed she was skeptical, that was the last indiction of any skepticism in the story.  She described the ghost hunters as "paranormal experts".  Here's problem number one: If the reporter was a true skeptic, she would investigate and provide information on what the heck makes these folks "experts".  Formal education? Training? Professional experience?  Just because they said so?  As I've said before, as far as I'm aware, there is no degree or certification from any accredited institution in ghost hunting.  Unlike real professions, there is no licensing nor a governing body through any state department of education monitoring those in the paranormal field.  Anyone can put up a website, print up nifty tee shirts and call themselves ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, etc.

The reporter went on to say this group uses both psychic and scientific methods in their investigating.  Readers know by now how I feel about psychic methods and how subjective and even misleading they are.  As one who promotes critical thinking, I'm all for scientific methods.  But there was no description from the reporter of any scientific methodology.  Not a peep about hypotheses, independent testing of validity of claims, or any known scientific reasons how people mistake a situation for paranormal.  No mention of environmental, physiological or psychological issues that create misperceptions of seemingly paranormal events.   She did talk about them using EMF meters with flashing lights that lit up from time to time.  No explanation though of electromagnetic fields, nor what can affect them.  No description of the specific meters and what environmental factors can influence them such as EMFs from other equipment, cell phones, certain metals, etc. In fact, she describes the team using a ghost app on their cell phones while using the EMF meters.  For those who don't understand why this is a problem: EMF meters can pick up radio frequencies, including those from cell phones.  Other equipment used by the team included infrared cameras and voice recorders.  Again, no word from our supposed skeptical reporter on how these devices work, why they were being used, or how useful they really are on a ghost hunt, or again, what factors can causes glitches and false positives.

The location for the ghost hunt is a historical hotel and, according to one of the ghost hunter's research, women were beaten and murdered there and their bodies dragged out from a fire escape.  Unfortunately, as we have seen, well-known stories from some of the most famous "haunted" locations are complete fabrications. So... did this really happen?  Is there an official record of this story in some dusty archives somewhere?  You would think a journalist would do some research to verify such claims, since they seemed provide an origin of why folks think the place is haunted and who might be haunting it.

The article goes on to describe how they wander through the building in the dark.  Mostly, the reporter describes how one of the ghost hunters used dowsing rods and could "sense" ghosts.  Throwing any objectivity out the window, the reporter seemed to buy completely into this.  So there was no explanation of how priming can influence what we perceive, nor any mention of how the ideomotor affect has been attributed to dowsing rods.  This "sensitive" ghost hunter kept describing feelings of heaviness or lightness in the air and seeing shadows here and there. No questioning of what else could cause such sensations in the environment, such as infrasound. There was no mention of the shadows being captured on any of the cameras.  Because of this, if I was a skeptical reporter, I might look into the possibility of visual misperception.  But there was nothing to indicate she had done so.  If she had, she would have found that our eyes do not see well in the dark, and how misperception of seeing shadows peripherally are fairly common in low light conditions.  (See an older post of mine, "Ghosts and Misperceptions": http://carolynscreepycorner.blogspot.com/2010/11/ghosts-and-misperception.html ) By the conclusion of the article, the reporter too had seen a shadow out of the corner of her eye and had the sensation that the room felt "lighter" after the shadow was gone.  The ghost hunters "confirmed" this as a paranormal experience and now the reporter has gone from supposed skeptic to believer.

But in my opinion, the reporter was never truly skeptical to begin with.  Approaching claims from a skeptical approach is active, not passive.  It requires one to question claims and test their validity, not take them at face value.  Granted, this was a fluff piece done in the spirit of Halloween but the problem with this, and others like it, is that was written by an actual journalist, a professional we are generally led to believe is impartial and strives to report facts.  But there was no fact-checking at all here.  These types of stories not only mislead the general public, but also inexperienced paranormal enthusiasts in particular, that such ghost hunts are scientific investigations, producing evidence of the paranormal when they are not. They perpetuate misinformation and detract from actual science and the pursuit of valid answers.  I think it would be wonderful to find authentic evidence of the paranormal.  But as long as many ghost hunters continue to ignore scientific methodology and stick to subjective means because they are more fun (and popular), I doubt they can reach that goal.

Haunts or Hype?

Recently, friends Kenny Biddle and Lou Castillo interviewed a guest, Mellanie Cadwell, on their YouTube series, "Geeks and Ghosts".  They discussed her paranormal group’s investigation of a very famous haunted location. She not only found environmental factors explaining away many paranormal claims, but also found serious discrepancies between the stories the owners and TV shows give and the actual history of the site found in archived documents.  You can listen to the interview here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUF3pq3p-7Y

Unfortunately, this is nothing new or unique.  As I discussed before, many researchers have found that the tales spun on TV and to paying tourists at allegedly haunted locations are often embellished or fabricated.  Take one of America's "most famous haunted houses", The Myrtle's Plantation, for example. The best known story on their tours and featured on TV shows is of Chloe, a house slave who killed the owner's wife and children with a poisoned birthday cake.  But researchers found there was never any Chloe among records, and documents show the wife and children actually died of yellow fever during an epidemic.  But hey, it made for a great story that I believed at one time.

Anyway, the episode of "Geeks and Ghosts" prompted me to revisit an article I wrote for MyPara Magazine a few years ago:

Rolling Hills Asylum:  Haunts or Hype?

A few years ago I was part of a paranormal group that visited the Rolling Hills Asylum.  Since I had heard stories of paranormal activity there from other investigators and seen it profiled on TV, I was excited about going to the site.  However, because Rolling Hills had been featured in a lot of media (including two of the most popular ghost hunting TV shows) and charged a hefty fee for investigations, I had to wonder if there was more hype than haunts.  Even though it was a public ghost hunt (at $55 per person) I approached it as any other case and began the preliminary part of the investigation: learning what the claims of activity were, studying the history of the location and researching the surrounding area to look for possible environmental factors that could contribute to conditions, such as EMFs and infrasound.

I got an initial cursory history from the Rolling Hills website and the two paranormal TV shows.  Right away, I noticed discrepancies between the history on the website and what was presented by owners and teams on the TV shows.  What was consistent is that the first building on the property was open in 1827 to house the destitute.  At this point, I want to clarify that "Rolling Hills Asylum" is a commercial name given to the location when it was bought in 2002 as a paranormal attraction.  It had never been called that while in operation.  It was called the Genesee County Poor House and later, The Genesee County Home. The website presented a substantial amount of paranormal claims including shadow people, mysterious lights, a spectral screaming lady, and casts of ghosts, with names attributed to them.  I also noticed discrepancies of stories between the two TV shows.  One was filmed a few years later after the first, and, after the property had changed owners.

I found that the site is near several small airports, three of them within 10 -12 miles.  Our team leader found that there are salt mines nearby and wondered if they might have been a factor in unexplained EMFs and lights due to piezoelectricity.  There are large fields and woods surrounding the locations. In fact, much of the original property has been reclaimed by overgrowth.  This is important because of the claims about the "screaming lady".  The property is in prime fox habitat. Foxes can produce human-like screams, and from the TV shows, the condition of the building looked like it could be prone to animal access.  So I wondered if that was what people were actually hearing.

Our team arrived on a cold, windy evening.  It had rained earlier, so the air was damp.  As we approached the site, we passed a dead fox in the road. Besides our group, there were a few other teams. Before we all entered the building, we were advised by the owner that rats and even a woodchuck had been spotted inside.  So this gave more credibility to my fox theory.  The building was immense.  It had two wings with an addition.  Since it is a concrete structure with concrete walls and floors, long corridors and metal windowed doors, the acoustics were very live.  Many windows were not sealed and we felt gusts of air throughout the building.  There was water dripping in the basement onto the floor.  We were scheduled for an 8 hour public investigation.  The first two hours were spent on the tour, where we heard a mountain of paranormal claims.  In addition to what was on the website and TV shows, the owner gave us accounts of her many personal experiences, including conversing regularly with various spirits and seeing UFOs hovering above the property.  While on the tour, I noticed some of the claims didn't jibe with the history of the location or that specific claims had changed.  When I asked about any documentation behind some of the stories, I was told it came from "reliable psychics".  To me, this was the equivalent of being manufactured.  Throughout the tour, paranormal celebrities and TV shows were heavily promoted.

We were told about the "evidence" captured during investigations there.  Having perused the photo gallery on their website, I saw mostly what could be attributed to long exposures, dust, breath (it can be cold and damp in the building much of the time) and matrixing.  As usual, I dismissed anything from psychics, spirit boxes or other subjective techniques as there is no way to substantiate the validity.  But I was eager to see what our team might find, paranormal or not.

When the tour was over, I was surprised that unlike other public investigations I had attended, we were left to investigate with absolutely no coordination or scheduling.  Obviously, this created contamination for any audio and video being recorded since various groups of people were wandering aimlessly about an echoing dark building throughout the night.  This lead me to believe that it was far more likely that false positives were being captured there than any valid evidence. Not at all ideal for a "center of paranormal research", as it was once promoted.

The building, in my opinion, was staged for maximum creepiness.  There were cockroaches scattered about the floor.  They were fake.  When we questioned why they were there, we were told they had been left over from a haunted house event that was held. There were scarecrows and dolls strategically placed that could startle people in the dark.  A coat rack, with an old jacket hanging on it, was placed in the middle of a corridor.  Since it was in a blind spot until one came upon it around a corner, the only logical reason for its placement was to startle investigators.  There was a bloody handprint on a wall that, supposedly, a CSI team was scheduled to come investigate.  We had a former nurse and a corrections officer on our team and, in their opinion, it did not appear to be genuine blood at all. In one hall, there was an innocent-looking vase with fake flowers in it.  When viewed through an IR camera though, the vase was nearly invisible, so the flowers looked like a floating white blob.

Over the next 5.5 hours, we visited the most notorious spots on every floor on every wing.  Our group operated with the idea that in order to find causes that might be truly paranormal, we had to first identify and rule out all natural explanations for the reported experiences.  If we found another valid reason, we dismissed the claim or alleged evidence.  At Rolling Hills, we quickly found rational causes for many of the claims:

The screaming lady:  I already mentioned how the location is in fox territory and that animals of comparable size have been seen inside the building.  If you want to hear how similar a fox cry can sound to a human scream, there are several videos on YouTube of fox cries.  As an aside, when I first moved to the country and heard one in the middle of the night, I thought one of our neighbors were being murdered.  Luckily, my husband told me it was just a fox and to go back to sleep.  (All neighbors were later accounted for.)

Doors slamming on their own:  As I mentioned before, the building was not air-tight and we saw open and broken windows and felt gusts in the long corridors.  Hallways can act like wind tunnels and, given that the doors were fairly light, they could have been easily caught and shut by a draft.

Disembodied voices and cries:  Wind and acoustics can create ambient noise, which, at certain frequencies and patterns, the brain can misinterpret as speech.  In fact, in one room we were in, the wind came through a window creating an eerie, human-sounding howl.  This can also explain the "screaming lady" reported.  Water dripping in the basement can also sound like speech or even footsteps.  Even if good EVP protocols could have been followed there, these sounds could easily been misinterpreted.

Shadow people:  The hallway on the second floor was reported to be teeming with shadow people.  There were many reflective surfaces and light shining through exterior windows that could have created light and shadow play and cause people to misinterpret the shadows, especially in the dark.  There was also the possibility that people were affected by a common optical illusion, peripheral drift.  This happens with alternating black and white patterns, which can create an illusion of movement, and especially in the dark, the brain misinterprets as shadows.  Open doors into dark rooms down a hallway can create such a pattern.

Ectoplasm:  This term was invented by mediums during the spiritualism movement at the turn of the 20th century.  Researchers have found that the "ectoplasm" displayed in "ghost photography" at the time was actually gauze or cheesecloth secreted on the medium's person and then produced, often through disgusting means, during seances.  I believe what people were catching in pictures and video at Rolling Hills was more likely breath.  Much of the year, it is cold in that building.  Even in the warmer months, the air would be damp.  Summer in Upstate New York is humid and the surrounding fields and woods would enhance the humidity.  And, there is water leaking in the basement, creating more moisture in the air.

Mysterious lights:  Mystery lights were reported in a hallway that lead to a solarium, which was comprised of windows.  It faced two roads, and the way headlights bounced off the glass, could create light play in that hallway.  Again, there were a lot of reflective surfaces in the hallway.  We witnessed this phenomenon with headlights ourselves few times.  Another claim of a mysterious light was one seen at the level of a tree line.  But there is a hill with a road behind that tree line, so it was likely that headlights might have been misidentified as lights floating above the trees.  Remember, I also found a few airports nearby, which could explain those UFOs and mysterious lights above the tree.

Jack:  Jack (whose name was divined by a psychic) was said to block off the windows of double doors at the end of a hallway.  He blocked off one before moving to the other.  This may simply have been a case of tunnel vision.  If one stares at one of the windows (which have exterior light shining through) down the dark hallway, tunnel vision will naturally block out the other window, which we experienced.

Basement door closing on TV paranormal investigator:  In one paranormal TV show, a door apparently closed by an "unseen force" on an investigator, pushing into him.  He and his teammate claimed the door was heavy and barely moved when they pushed on it.  We found this to be false.  The door was indeed metal, but hollow and very light.  It actually swung closed on its own, which was why a brick had to be placed at the bottom to keep it from shutting completely and locking.

Door slam, weird energy:  Another team of TV investigators had a door slam on them (off camera) and then one of the members felt a "weird energy" in the room, giving him goose bumps on his arms.  Again, the doors were light, and gusts of air could easily close doors.  As far as his goose bumps, the window in that particular room was not sealed, and his goosebumps could have been a result of either cooler or more humid air blowing on him.

I would love to show you pictures to corroborate our opinions, but under the terms of the ghost hunt, all pictures taken were property of Rolling Hills Asylum.

To be fair, we formed our opinions based on our observations during our one visit.  Perhaps other groups have experienced actual activity and some of the claims are true.  But, I think much of what was being experienced was misinterpretation and misidentification fortified by TV shows.  Which leads me to the history of the location, and how, as presented on the TV shows and parts of the tour, was manipulated to capitalize on the dark associations with such places.  After we returned home, I contacted the Genesee County Historian, Susan Conklin, for some clarification on the history and to discuss the discrepancies.  She was very helpful and was generous with her time and knowledge.

Orphans, lunatics, and vagrants all lived under this roof:  Nope. The building that currently exists, the same featured in those TV shows, was built as a nursing home in 1938.  Its addition was built in the 1960's.  The other buildings that housed the orphans, mentally ill and vagrants were long gone.  Records show the various populations were housed separately in different wings and buildings.  Being there were never insane nor orphans housed in that building, the story of "Raymond" a ghost of a mentally ill patient who haunts the basement where he lured and molested little girls, is likely a fabrication.  It also places some doubt that the so-called Christmas Room is a haven for the ghosts of all the orphans who lived there.

Electroshock therapy was conducted on the insane:  Not at all likely.  The lunatics, as they were called, were all moved to Buffalo State Hospital or Willard Insane Asylum by 1887.  There was no electricity at the location at the time the insane were housed there.  (Kinda hard to conduct electroshock therapy without it.)  Furthermore, there is nothing in the country records, which include the inventory of equipment of the property, that would support the treatment was ever conducted there.

The building once had a TB ward:  False.  While there were patients with tuberculosis, they were transferred to Livingston.  In order for there to have been a TB ward, they would have had to move all the other patients to other facilities, under the state guidelines at the time.

Nurse Emmie:  Nurse Emmie was said to have abused her patients and was even connected to a satanic cult that supposedly broke into the building around 2004.  According to the county historian, there are no records to substantiate this story.  She said, there were no reports of abuse in the records, nor were there any claims of abused filed by either former patients or their families.  What makes the story even more implausible is that the nursing home closed in 1972.  I find it hard to believe they know who broke in, let alone whether they had any connection to a nurse who worked there over 30 years before.

So many people died, they were buried "all over the grounds":  Yes, over the 150 years of operation, a lot of people died there.  But, some had families who claimed their bodies and those who were not  were buried by the county.  There are records showing that a cemetery was on the property and was maintained while operating under the county.  The property had several large buildings while in operation, and the land was farmed for food, so it would have been difficult and impractical to bury bodies "wherever you can walk", as claimed.

Some might ask me, "So what if the history has been embellished?"  Well, if we call ourselves investigators and researchers, shouldn't we, by definition, strive to uncover and present facts? Secondly, historians painstakingly piece together history from a large amount of documents.  This can take years of tedious work.  They do this to preserve the history so future generations have an accurate account to study and learn from.  Finally, because of respect.  Real people lived, worked, suffered and died at that location.  They deserve to be remembered as they were, not to have people pick their names from a register and make up sensational ghost stories about them for a profit.

Rolling Hills Asylum may indeed be haunted, and I have no problem with people making an honest profit to preserve historic buildings.  But because of the manipulation of facts and manufacturing of stories, doubt was placed on the credibility of any "evidence" supposedly caught there.  For such locations to be taken seriously as places for valid paranormal research, they need to drop unsubstantiated stories, ditch the props, restore the historical integrity, and let the buildings – and the spirits, if they exist - speak for themselves.

Those Odious Orbs

I submitted "Those Odious Orbs"to The Bent Spoon Magazine and they were very kind to use it.  Check out the entire issue here:  
http://thebentspoonmag.com/2012/09/01/issue-12-at-last/


Recently my friend Wes Forsythe invited me on his show "Paranormal Filler" to discuss the never-ending battle with those who believe in "spirit orbs".  He posed the question, "How the hell did we end up losing the orb debate?"

At first, I wasn't so sure we (meaning those of us who don't accept that orbs are paranormal since there is no supporting evidence) have lost the debate.  After all, many more paranormal teams are now dismissing orbs in photos or videos, recognizing them as airborne particles.  People are actively calling out teams who post them as "evidence".  Some paranormal sites won't allow orbs photos at all.  For example, MyPara.net enforces a strict no-orb policy.  And thanks to experiments conducted by credible researchers,* there is plenty of available evidence showing what actually causes orbs in photos and video.  But the fact that we're still having the debate, despite all the information listed above, indicates we haven't exactly won, either.

So, why?  There are many people who want to believe in ghosts so badly that they will cling to any "evidence" that will support their beliefs - even after it has been soundly disproved.  There also those who are emotionally invested in catching "evidence" because it somehow feeds their egos or agendas.  They create justifications of how "their" orb is the real deal.   How many times have we heard the following: "But there was no dust when I took the picture."   "But I recorded an EVP in the same spot we caught the orb."  "But I felt a cold spot, when I took a picture, there was an orb."  "But this orb is real because it is more opaque than dust orbs".   Of course, all of these have also rational explanations, which people either don't bother to learn about or choose to ignore. Then there is my personal pet peeve:  "99% might be dust but there's the 1% that are paranormal."  Who came up these numbers and where is the data to support them?  There is absolutely nothing to substantiate this claim!  Yet, it has been repeated so often that some people accept it as fact.

There are also claims that some orbs have been seen with the naked eye.  There is no evidence that these are paranormal either.  There are known phenomena to consider first, including ball lightning, electric discharge, piezoelectricity, bioluminescent matter, as well as visual misperceptions due from physiological and environmental factors.  Before we call something supernatural, we should try to better understand the natural world first.

One of the biggest criticisms of paranormal investigating is that most people in the field fail to educate themselves about their equipment or scientific methodology before they go traipsing around with cameras, recorders and EMF meters.  Many spend much more time coming up with nifty team names and logos and collecting "likes" on Facebook than they do learning the simple basics of how their cameras work.  Even some "seasoned" investigators who boast they have been in the field for a decade or two are still presenting common false positives such as lens flare and long exposures as evidence. In today's world, where information on basic photography is widely and easily accessibly, there is no acceptable excuse for this.

Business-minded people recognize these issues and exploit them for profit.  That is why we still have paranormal themed TV shows portraying orbs as evidence.  Some try to be clever by changing the terminology from "orb" to "light anomaly", but it's just the same camera affect caused by the same conditions.  Unfortunately, bogus evidence attracts more viewers than does rational explanations.  And viewership equals advertising revenue for the network, so I doubt they have any burning ambition to set the record straight.

In addition, many historic cities have least one ghost tour.  Again, the owners of these tours are in it for profit, so they promote false positives as "proof" to attract naive tourists.  They also know these customers will share their "ghost photos" that they captured on these tours with friends and family.  It's great free advertising.  And other businesses are cashing in on orb photos: for a fee, you too can "investigate" and "catch evidence" at so-called haunted hotels, restaurants, and abandoned hospitals. These owners are invested in continuing the promotion of spirit orbs.  Not a lot of people are as willing to fork out the money if all they know that they are only photographing dust.

To be honest, I like to keep an open mind.  After all, I used to be a believer myself before I took the time to do a little research.  Maybe there are spirit orbs floating about.  But until somebody comes up with technology that can provide objective data to differentiate them from the orbs caused by all the other known factors, I will remain skeptical.

So moving forward, how do we "win" the debate?  My answer:  inform and educate.  If you have a voice, a webiste, or blog, then you have the power to counteract the misinformation being pushed onto the public by TV shows. Make paranormal investigators and business owners accountable for any "evidence" they promote.  If you spot someone presenting orb photos, contact them directly and provide relevant resources for them to learn from.  If they persist after that, then either call them out publicly or notify someone who will.**  The notion that orbs are ghosts didn't pervade populate culture overnight.  It was repeated as "fact" for a while before it took hold.  With a little time and a lot of persistence, the truth will prevail.

*Kenneth Biddle:  Orbs Or Dust:  A Practical Guide To False Positives
Craig Telesha:  Strange Frequencies
Midnite Walkers Paranormal Society:  http://midnite-walkers.com/experiments-false-orb-experiment.php
Association for Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena: http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articles/Orb%20Zone%20Theory.html

** Worst Paranormal:  http://www.worstparanormal.com/
VIPER Paranormal:  http://www.viperparanormal.com/
Debunk Paranormal:  http://wwps.grou.ps/home

Bigfoot or Big Foolery?

Recently a writer friend (and staunch skeptic) was mildly traumatized by the stupidity of a certain TV show about bigfoot hunting.  So he asked me if I planned to write anything about cryptozoology, specifically Bigfoot. I told him I hadn't planned on it, because I don't have any field experience in it (other than going to a bigfoot museum once).  But then he argued that much of what I discuss in my book and blog applies to cryptozoology as well.  After I thought about it, I decided he's right.  In full disclosure, I confess I believe more on the side of its existence, but I admit that is probably due to growing up in Northern California and hearing the stories from hunters and Native Americans.

There are a lot of parallels between ghost hunting and bigfoot hunting.   These include the high probability of misperception and misidentification, the lack of proper analysis of "evidence", people with no formal credentials calling themselves "experts", cognitive bias, fraud and overall poor investigative techniques.

Like ghost hunting, a lot of people talk in absolutes about Bigfoot, meaning they assert things as facts that have little or no evidence to back them up.  For example, some enthusiasts claim that Bigfoot is either a descendant of, or close relative of the extinct Gigantopithecus.  The late anthropologist Grover Krantz made this speculation.  The problem is, there is no evidence that one ever made it to this continent.  Another issue is, as far as I know, nobody has proven that Gigantopithecus was bipedal, walking upright.  The supposition came from the size of jaw fragments and speculation how the skull would fit on the neck.  But many researchers assert there is more evidence it was a quadruped, based on its massive size.

Another example is that we're often told that Bigfoot is a nocturnal creature.  This is likely due to more alleged encounters occuring at night.  But for me, this simply increases the probability of misidentification.  The human eye is not designed well for night vision.  We don't see colors as well in the dark and our peripheral vision, which detects motion but does not register details well, often misinterprets what is seen out of the corner of the eye.  The brain fills in missing data, and add suggestibility and fear, and the result becomes a bigfoot.  Finally, we are also told these creatures communicate by knocking wood.  Maybe they do, but there are also other possible (and more likely) sources of these sounds.

There are similar credibility issues with the claims from eyewitnesses who see a bigfoot and those who see ghosts.  The same environmental or physiological factors that can impede one's perception in an allegedly haunted location can affect someone out in the middle of the woods.  I already mentioned poor visibility at night.  There are studies which suggest infrasound can impact our physiology and induce seemingly paranormal experiences, including unexplainable anxiety and visual disturbances. There are natural causes of infrasound like running water in rivers and waterfalls.  Thunderstorms can produce infrasound, as can tectonic activity.

There are reports of campers who wake up in the middle of the night to find a bigfoot lurking in their camp.  Besides misidentification, another common phenomenon to consider is hypnagogic hallucinations, which occur in a semi-dream state upon falling asleep or waking up.  Fatigue, stress, change in sleeping habit/patterns are known factors that can cause one to experience this disorder, and are not uncommon on a camping/hiking trip.  The experience seems very real - subjects report seeing, feeling, hearing, and smelling things in this state that are not real.  Why would the brain pick a bigfoot and not a ghost?  The surrounding environment (woods) likely plays on the subconscious and plants the suggestion, even if the camper doesn't consciously believe in the creature.

Eyewitness testimony is highly flawed, especially when fear is involved.   It is simply not reliable.  When doing research for a story, another writer friend learned that the NYPD uses regular decoys for their line-ups and 20% of the time, a decoy is mistakenly IDed by a victim.  As mentioned before, when we don't have sufficient data, our brains take over and "fill in" details for us.  Our perception is skewed.   So when we are startled by something happening quickly out of the corner of our eye, what seems like a 7 foot tall creature in reality could be much smaller and more mundane.  Not long ago, I watched a psychological study profiled on a TV show about the Loch Ness Monster.  A group of people on one shore were told about the study.  A log was launched and the group was asked to sketch what they saw.  They all drew a straight log.  Then the researchers interviewed people on the other side of the shore - who were not informed of the experiment - to sketch what they saw.  Miraculously, the straight log suddenly grew an angular neck and head in some of these drawings.  It's not because the people were being dishonest, but because their expectations filled in the details.   (See, not all the TV shows are bad, haha.)

The evidence suggesting the existence of the creature remains elusive and controversial, at best. Every picture and video of the creature seems to be blurry and therefore inconclusive.  Without visual confirmation, any audio evidence is useless. But the cryptozoologists do have a couple of advantages over ghost hunters.  First, they have a more tangible idea of what it is they are looking for:  presumably, a bipedal primate.  (For today, I am not entertaining any notion it's a supernatural being.)  Second, they can examine physical evidence like hair, prints, and scat allegedly left by the animal.  But evidence is another area where we encounter credibility issues.

One of the main criticisms about ghost hunters is that many do not understand how to properly use their equipment, analyze so called "evidence",  recognize what factors in the environment can affect the the witnesses (and equipment), or fail to put controls and procedures in place to reduce false positives.  The same can be said of many bigfoot hunters.  Many bigfoot hunters I have talked to have no formal training or experience in biology, anthropology or other relevant sciences, which would be usefull on a bigfoot hunt. Personally, I took biology in college and even have a credential that says I can teach it.  But that does not make me a biologist nor qualified to lend any "expertise" if I came across any supposed evidence.  It would be an insult to those who major in these sciences, have completed field experience, and earned their degree.

Many boast their experience as hunters make them qualified as any field biologists.  However, many promising bigfoot prints found by hunters were later identified by pesky science people to be either bear prints or even bobcat prints, where as the animal walked, the posterior paw stepped into the print left by the anterior paw, making a elongated footprint shape.  Weather can quickly distort the size and shape of a print left by an animal, so that an inexperienced observer could easily misidentify it.  Most bigfoot hunters are not qualified to distinguish between static print left by a hoaxer, or a dynamic print left by a living animal.  Many hair or scat samples have been rendered useless for DNA testing by mishandling and contamination by inexperienced enthusiasts. Many are simply not familiar with the habits and sounds of other animals inhabiting the woods.  When one is looking for a bigfoot, any unfamiliar sound can be attributed to one.  Furthermore, it is impossible to place controls for audio in the woods.  Without  credible corresponding video, we have no way of knowing whether you recorded a bigfoot whistling or an aggravated thrush.   Again, without credible corresponding video, if rocks are being thrown at you or your camp, we have no idea they are being tossed by Bigfoot or a human screwing with you.

Which brings us to fraud.  Let's face it:  it is far easier to fake and film a bigfoot sighting than to actually find a bigfoot.  The internet and YouTube is full of bogus bigfoot footage.  There have been frauds saying they have killed or captured the creatures.  Yet, in this day of everyone and their grandma carrying cell phones with built-in cameras, somehow nobody ever gets it on video.  I personally support the "No Kill" approach to Bigfoot.  First, capture will satisfy science.  Second, because sightings are likely due to misidentification or hoaxes, a human is likely to get killed before a bigfoot.  Some places even have made the bigfoot a protected species.  I am all for this for the same reason: to prevent somebody getting shot by an overzealous bigfoot hunter.   Just last week, a man trying to pull off a bigfoot hoax got himself killed when a car hit him.  

It doesn't help when some of the TV shows on Bigfoot portray shoddy investigative techniques.  Announcing to a community that you will be in the immediate area to film a bigfoot hunt really sets one up for problems, including hoaxers or just curious looky-loos.  Running around in the dark after every odd sound is ridiculous.  While eye-witness accounts are obviously a starting point, relying on them as evidence without looking for any other explanation is not valid research.  Just like ghost hunting shows, false positives are also presented as evidence, because that's what keeps viewers tuned in.

At the beginning, I admitted that I lean more toward the possibility of Bigfoot's existence.  Part of this is my own preference.   I want to believe the accounts I heard.   I also wonder about some of the sightings reported in broad daylight by forest rangers, experienced life-long hunters and Native Americans.  Are they all misidentification?  Before the bigfoot craze in the 1960's, there were reports from pioneers and Native Americans of such creatures dating back hundreds of years, not just in the Pacific Northwest, but on the East Coast and Canada.   Is there some truth to these stories?  Since everyone else gets to make assumptions, I'd like to throw in a couple.  What if we are dealing with something closer to us than apes?  Recently, researchers found evidence supporting Neanderthals were capable of language.  Perhaps these creatures are capable of communication, and possess the intelligence to stay the hell away from us. Maybe they even bury their dead.  What if the reports of some tribes are true and these creatures are cannibals?  After all, there are still tribes today that practice cannibalism. If they have their late Uncle Bob over for a barbeque, this may also explain why bodies are not found.

When it comes to paranormal research, I believe it is our purpose as paranormal investigators to find valid answers - paranormal or not -  for claims.  We need to ask, "What can cause this experience?" and then strive to find every rational explanation first.  Otherwise, we might as well save time and money and just sit around a big campfire and tell each other ghost stories.   We will never find the answers we seek if we cling to false evidence and jump to conclusions to suit an agenda to prove ghosts exist.  The same holds true for Bigfoot hunting.  As much as I hope Bigfoot is wandering about in dense forests, I value the truth - and obtaining it through valid research - even more.

The Evocative EVP

By now, many of us in the paranormal field have been exposed to natural explanations of orbs caught in photos and videos.   Some of us have even repeated various experiments to replicate all kinds of orbs in order to validate these explanations.   So naturally, informed investigators set out to educate others to dispel the unsubstantiated claim that orbs are evidence of the paranormal.    This is a good thing.

However, while more investigators are being hyper vigilant over orbs and other photo/video artifacts, other common forms of "evidence" are not receiving the same level of scrutiny.  Perhaps this due to the level of subjectivity.   It is relatively easy to recreate orb photos and therefore offer objective data for people to study.   But other "evidence" is much more subjective, and harder to convince blind believers otherwise.  An example, and my focus here today, is EVP.

EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) is often touted by paranormal groups to be evidence of the afterlife.   While that may be, the problem is that like photo and video, the potential for misidentification due to poor protocols, poor controls, poor equipment, misuse of equipment as well as pareidolia, is quite high - perhaps even higher.

It is disappointing to see investigators who passionately criticize orb photos become overly defensive over their own evidence, including EVPs.    They preach to others how to properly use cameras, but then they fail to take a good look at their own audio equipment and recording procedures.

Part of the problem is people don't want to learn about anything that might challenge the validity of their beloved EVP collection.  Not long ago, I had a conversation with an investigator who was a cast member of popular paranormal TV show for a while.  We discussed EVPs and how he claimed to capture more using cheaper recorders.  He even anticipated my arguments against cheaper recorders because he'd heard them before.  Yet, he stuck fast to his belief, despite substantiated facts to the contrary.  While he's a nice guy, what he is doing does not fall under my definition of investigating or research.  It is simple wish fulfillment.

There are two primary flaws using cheaper digital recorders to capture "authentic" EVPs.  First, they do not provide sufficient shielding from radio frequencies.  I've talked with professional audio engineers and radio techs who confirmed that recorders can and do pick up radio frequencies.  I also recently read about an interesting experiment conducted by Modern Age Paranormal which supports their hypothesis that EVPs are ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) radio waves.  The second issue is that cheaper digital recorders compress and distort what you record, resulting in missing data.  Therefore, upon playback, you do not get a complete or true representation of the sound.    Keeping this in mind, here's a visual example to consider:

On the left is the infamous "Face On Mars" taken in the Cydonia Region on Mars in 1976 by Voyager.  On the right is an image from 2001 of the same formation, at a much higher resolution.   As we can see, with lower resolution, crucial information is missing, causing a misinterpretation of the what the formation actually looks like.  Add a little matrixing to the the mix and you get this guy:

Even if one can rule out the issues I've mentioned, there is the problem of how the brain misinterprets sounds.  There have been reliable scientific studies showing that people hear things that are not there.   One study, discussed in Mary Roach's book Spook,  illustrates this and is relevant to EVP review.   Subjects were asked to transcribed a poorly recorded lecture.  Many were able to hear words and even complete phrases.  However, in reality, the recording was nothing but white noise.  As I've discussed before, ambient sounds can easily be misinterpreted as voice, especially when they are within certain frequencies and rhythms causing the brain to automatically switch to speech mode.  Personally, I've participated in many audio reviews where people swore they heard a meaningful response when all I heard was something akin to "Glarmpht".  So even if something sounds like a voice or a phrase, it doesn't mean that it is.  And even if it is, you still have are left with the task of proving that it belongs to a ghost.

Then there is another controversial possibility:  psi activity.  Some parapsychologists hypothesize that living, breathing humans can somehow imprint our thoughts on electronics via psychic means.  Before some readers roll their eyes and dismiss this outright, if you think about it, it's just as plausible (if not more so) than the idea that we are recording ghosts.  There are even more assumptions to consider with the latter:  if ghosts even exist,  if ghosts can hear us, if ghosts can understand us, if ghosts are willing to communicate, and if ghosts' "voices" can be recorded.  

Since the burden is on us to provide extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims, ALL evidence must be met with the same high level of scrutiny, even when it is harder to explain than orbs.  Going back to my title, "The Evocative EVP", evocation is defined as the act of calling or summoning a spirit, demon, god or other supernatural agent.   In a way, some investigators are indeed summoning false spirits by misidentifying EVP.

Links:
http://www.modernageparanormal.com/kb/the_science_of_evps.asp
http://www.jimsdestinations.com/pgststrt.htm

Ghosts in the Machine

The other night I was watching a rerun of a certain paranormal TV show and they claimed to capture an EVP that supposedly was the moan of a murdered woman . Well, what I heard was a cat yowl. As a cat person, I know sounds cats make and I am certain it was a cat, not a ghost. This took place in an abandoned building with broken windows and all sorts of other possible access points for cats (and other noisy critters). This is not the first time I heard something entirely different than what the show presented. One "EVP" (which was also audible to them at the time) was of an old woman screaming. I heard a fox. Being the location is near a vast wilderness area teeming with foxes, and I've actually seen foxes near the location, I'm confident that I'm right. On yet another episode, they heard and recorded, "children's" voices. But I instead heard the yipping of coyotes, a sound I have become quite familiar with from living in a rural area. That episode of their show was also filmed in a rural area and known coyote habitat.

There was a time when kids went camping - real camping - in the great outdoors. They would learn to identify sounds from the native wildlife. People still camp, but increasingly, it's luxury camping: inside an RV or common camp ground and "plugged in" to TV, radios, iPods, handheld electronic games, smart phones, etc. The natural sounds of the night are drowned out.

The same can be said in our own habitats. We are so used to having the TV or radio on, or having iTunes running on our computer as we surf the web. We are surrounded by mechanical noise: the hum of the refrigerator, the hot water heater, the furnace, etc. Outside is the drone of traffic or nearby industry. How do we know what the true sounds of our dwelling may be if we can't hear them? Wind can sound like whispers. Rain hitting the roof can sound like footsteps. A loose rain gutter can sound like knocking. Acoustics can be tricky as vents and pipes carry sounds to other rooms.

One time, several years ago, I was staying at my parents' house. They had bought a new refrigerator since my last visit. That night, while in bed, was awakened by a frightening sound: someone (thing) was breathing above me. It scared me half to death! Turned out it was the new fridge's icemaker. The refrigerator is located in the kitchen - under a register. My bed was also located under a register and the sound carried to right above me.

The very first day I moved into our current home, I heard someone say "Hello" right behind me, in the hall. I figured my husband came home early and looked out the front door. Nope. I looked around for someone in the front or back yard. No one there. Because I was so busy, I really didn't have time to stress over it. But a few weeks later, we had a repairman working on the furnace. I was working in the hallway removing old wallpaper. He came to me, looking a bit shaken, and asked if my husband came home. He hadn't, so I asked why. He said he heard someone talking right behind him. Because he looked genuinely scared, (and I needed the new furnace to be installed) I said it must have been the radio. A month or so later, we had an alarm system installed and once again, one of the workers asked if anyone else was home because he heard someone talking right behind him. So I was beginning to wonder if we had a spectoral housemate. Late one night I was awakened to a dog yipping. It sounded like it was in the house, but didn't sound like my dog. I went downstairs to find my dog sleeping soundly. I went back to bed and again, heard a dog's high pitched bark. So I went back downstairs, where my dog was still asleep. Then I clearly heard my neighbor's voice telling the dog to shush. It turns out we have a culvert in front of the house, and pipes leading to to water main. It acts just like a speaking tube, and if my neighbors are in the right place, their voices carry right into our basement. Because the basement is a big cement rectangle, it acts like a resonance box. Had I not persisted in finding the cause, I could have easily believed my house is haunted.

Today, many people aren't aware of how household appliances function. At one time, more schools offered basic shop classes and people didn't have to rely on calling in plumbers and electricians for minor repairs because they could do it themselves. As for me, I have no clue how to fix most of the technology I use on a daily basis. If this computer goes kaput, I will have to call a tech. If my clothes dryer dies, I will have to call in a repair man. My auto mechanic skills are limited to adding windshield wiper fluid and checking the oil level. (Or more accurately, asking my husband do it, ha ha). My point is, when odd things happen in our tech-saturated environment, it's ridiculous to conclude it they paranormal without taking time to analyze and better understand our surroundings.

Technology is all around us, firmly entrenched in our daily lives. We tend to forget that it is prone to glitches. Lights flickering most likely are due to a wiring issue. It's a good idea to call an electrician, instead of an exorcist. TVs and radios have alarms or preprogrammed settings that sometime inadvertently get set and cause the device to seem like it has mind of it's own when it turns on or off by itself. Older TV remotes (like those still found in some hotels) operate on radio frequencies, so if a TV turns on or off in your hotel room, it doesn't necessarily mean it's haunted. People don't take the time to understand how their cameras work and what causes common artifacts like lens flares, orbs, and light streaks. Pretty much everyone has a cell phone these days. They also come with quirks. Sometimes they call or text programmed contacts "by themselves". While this is a common glitch (it happened with one of my first cell phones) which can occur for different reasons, there are people who still jump to the conclusion a ghost is involved.

Then there is a byproduct of some of our technology: electromagnetic fields. As I've discussed before, there are studies suggesting that EMFs can cause Experience Inducing Fields, can produce auditory, visual and tactile hallucinations, and even the feeling of a "presence".

Increasingly, it seems like a lot of people, including the cast of that paranormal show, are becoming unfamiliar with natural sounds from wildlife and buildings as well as those created by our surrounding technology. So when lights flicker or a noise that seems out of place is heard, they jump to the conclusion that something paranormal is going on. Before we look for answers about the supernatural realm, we should strive to have a better understanding of the natural one first.