Running Your Own Ghost Investigation? 810
Quirkz writes "I am a skeptic, but have friends and family who swear by their ghost stories. I have access to a supposedly haunted house and been tempted to run a proper scientific investigation. My first question is what sorts of tools or measurements would make for sensible metrics to test during a hunt? Temperature change seems to be a common one, but the other devices you'll see ghost hunters use seem pretty random. The second question is what kinds of results would it take to be 'interesting'? Baseline readings at several presumably non-haunted locations seem to be obvious requirements for comparison. Once you have those, what kinds of results would it take to convince a skeptic there's something unusual going on, or demonstrate that there's not? I don't have much hope of changing the minds of those who believe, but it would be satisfying to at least be scientific about it."
Proton Pack (Score:5, Funny)
You definitely need a proton pack: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pack [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
And a name change. If you really want to find evidence of paranormal emanations?
I suggest "Venckman"...
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
it isn't.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent++.
I don't see how playing into your families delusions helps them or you? Why not hunt for the Easter Bunny with them, or Santa... or setup a trap for the tooth fairy.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think they are delusions?
Seriously, I mean the scientific approach wouldn't be that they are delusional, it would be that no evidence has been presented to you. Unless you can scientifically explain away whatever they presented as evidence for their beliefs, the best you have is that you aren't convinced. Not that they are delusional.
The concept of a haunting has been around for quite some time. Some of it probably is misinterpreting facts and a mind running creatively wild, or purposeful lies designed to influence behavior of some sort. But you can't say all or every single claimed instance is because you simply do no know the facts or have the ability to test them. And as we all know, the lack of evidence does not mean it's impossible, it only means it hasn't been proven yet.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:4, Insightful)
Lol.. There was not once, ever, been a scientifically valid positive result for a transistor or digital signal, until- wait for it- someone went off on a wild goose chase and discovered that basis for what makes 90% of technology possible today.
But hey, I would say that ghosts and the supernatural simply hasn't been scientifically tested. It may be because they aren't real, but then again, how do you scientifically test something you can't scientifically understand? But in the cases where they were tested, it either turned out to be something else and a product of someone's imagination or simply a no show for the spirit. About the only way it could be tested is if there was more knowledge of it and that's only going to be possible if people continue to examine the supposed haunting.
Anyways, back to your "Further research in the area, after this much overwhelming evidence, is useless" comment, So what if it's useless? What if the so called haunting turns out to be some plumbing in bad shape and the investigation find it before it ruptures and ruins the entire house. What if it turns out to be a pedophile sneaking in and watching children sleep and they simply haven't been able to catch him because he hides his tracks so well so they blame it on being haunted. Surely if his investigation turns anything remotely like that up, it wouldn't be useless.
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Great, you understood my point. It had to be someone wasting their time on something that didn't have any 'scientifically valid positive result' in order to get the first one.
No, not
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Part of the issue in "scientifically investigating" ghosts is the nature of the question itself. If we assume that a "ghost" is something that conforms to the popular definition of the word, i.e. the disembodied consciousness of a particular human who is by conventional understanding "dead," and if we further assume that the ability or propensity of a ghost to make any observable change in the environment of the living is constrained by both external (e.g., availability of energy in some form) and internal
I don't think that works (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree.
There has not once, ever, been a scientifically valid positive result from a single test for ghosts. Further research in the area, after this much overwhelming evidence, is useless.
You don't have any evidence there. You have a lack of evidence. Lack of evidence isn't proof of anything. If you lose your car keys and look for them in the kitchen, the living room, the basement, and the bathroom and don't find them - that doesn't mean that your keys no longer exist.
The problem with supernat
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Things that exist have EVIDENCE.
Actually, proving or disproving that statement is pretty much the crux of this whole debate. Can you prove or disprove that everything that exists must have evidence of it's existence, without falling into the circular logic of simply saying that the evidence is what demonstrates existence?
The whole deal with the supernatural is that the scientific method falls down, because the believer can always either 1) claim the force at work is only detectable by "sensitive readers", not giving off any normal measure
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If a ghost can be heard, this means it must be able to make air vibrate. You can make recordings of vibrating air (sound), film optical manifestations etc. even if you don't know or understand what *caused* these physical manifestations of t
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"Supernatural" means "cannot be explained by currently known laws of physics", doesn't it?
I just wanted to add emphasis to that part of the sentence, for the benefit of those who profess to know what Science is, but actually don't.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the scientific method is to give up after a while.
Where, exactly, in "observations, hypotheses, predictions, and experiments" does it say "give up"? Until a phenomena is explained, you aren't following the method if you give up.
There has not once, ever, been a scientifically valid positive result from a single test for ghosts. Further research in the area, after this much overwhelming evidence, is useless.
See, this is where you don't understand "scientific method". The hypothesis in this case comes from the poster's family:
This was based on observations. What the poster wants to do now is predict and experiment. The iteration of these processes is called "the scientific method".
There may or may not be anything supernatural happening in the house, but without following the steps, no one will ever know exactly what is happening in the house (if anything). In particular, if the observers are not delusional, then something is happening in the house. Whether it is supernatural or not can only be determined by (drumroll, please)...the scientific method.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent++.
I don't see how playing into your families delusions helps them or you? Why not hunt for the Easter Bunny with them, or Santa... or setup a trap for the tooth fairy.
Slightly funny anecdote, but childrens' belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is entirely scientific [blogspot.com]. Every time, they conduct a falsifiable experiment (put out a cookie / tooth that might not be consumed / taken) and every time they come back with a positive result. They even do peer review, asking their fellow peers (children) what their results were (what they got from Santa), and even validate the experiment with respected and more experienced experimenters of the past (their parents, who swear blind that the results are genuine). They are only thwarted because there really is a grand world-wide ongoing conspiracy to interfere with their experiments and falsify their results.
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Re:Proton Pack (Score:4, Interesting)
If you see something you can't understand or explain, science to the rescue -- that is, if you can come up with a testable hypothesis, which is damned hard in these cases.
I've seen a "ghost" twice, both in very old houses. As Scrooge told Marley, "you could be a bit of undigested beef", but in the first case that was impossible. I was still married and the kids were babies, we were poor, living in a tiny house right next to a railroad track. Something woke my ex and I up at the same time, and a dim light seemed to come down the hall. Both of us saw a thin woman with dark hair wearing an antique dressing gown.
We thought it was a burglar. She ran in to check on the kids, and I went down the hall after the woman -- who was gone, simply not there, and there was nowhere she could have hidden. There's no way two people are going to hallucinate the same thing at the same time; that's even more far fetched than the spirits of the dead walking the earth.
The second time I was home alone sitting on the toilet, and a woman walked up to the bathroom door, startling the hell out of me. The odd thing was, I seemed to startle her as well -- then she vanished.
The second could have been a trick of the light, digestion, etc, but the first was inexplicable. Maybe sometimes one can see into a paralell universe, or into a different time or something? maybe a wormhole opened up? There's really no way to tell.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
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Really. And you know that how exactly? From your own scientific investigations? It's amazing to me that geeks and scientists equate "ghosts" with deception, fraud, and religious hocus-pocus.
Which is fair I guess. We've all had issues we've been immovable rocks on, our feet firmly planted in ideological surety. And there's certainly been more than a bit of dubious evidence presented. But that's as fair to the subject at hand as saying cold fusion is a fraudulent idea because two guys claimed they could do it
Re:Proton Pack (Score:4, Funny)
Once you're sitting in your apartment with someone, and suddenly a candle flies several feet off a shelf as you're looking at it
(insert adorable kitty pic here)
I can has midichlorians too?
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
That's okay, though. Because a thorough scientific investigation will not convince believers either. The slightest wobble in any of your readings will be read as a haunting. Lack of wobble in the readings will be read as a haunting. A complete failure to find any evidence of ghosts will be taken as evidence that the ghosts do not want to be found.
And then there's a good chance that your work and or words will be taken out of context in a way that seems to support ghosts, but will be worded in such a way that a FORMER SKEPTIC now BELIEVES!
Basically, don't do it.
That's why ghosts don't like skeptics! (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever wondered why skeptics never find ghosts? It's because, basically, skeptics are annoying people and ghosts don't like to hang around them. Too much negativity, and not enough good-looking cheerleader girlfriends, and especially not enough of the dumb ones who say "let's leave the rest of the party in the well-lit living room and go make out in the abandoned upstairs wing of the house - we don't need to bring a flashlight."
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Scientific theories are never proven. They make predictions and those predictions are tested. They can be disproven, but never proven. A theory that is not disproven may still be superseded by one that makes additional predictions, or makes the same predictions but with a simpler model.
No scientific theory is ever proven, however. A theory may be accepted, in that no serious attempts are being made to disprove it because all of them have failed, but it may be reevaluated or discarded in the presence
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wanna play!
I wish I had such gullible congressmen and congresswomen. Tell them you can find the terrorist but only once they provide you with the funds for your terrorist detector. Then just sort of attach them randomly at airports, pat-down / grope anyone that walks through them for a while and say you didn't find any terrorists. (Implying that it's keeping the terrorists away.) It's a win-win situation.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
He wanted to be scientific in his investigations of ghosts.
All the randomly wired together equipment in the world won't help him prove a negative.
Evidence of Absence is only possible when the subject and the location and the time window are well defined (zero marbles in the glass jar at this instant).
But since he can't pin down the definition of a ghost (let alone measure it), there is no point in worrying about the location (plane of existence?), or time frame. Nothing he could produce would satisfy his septics.
So he arrives here asking what he can measure to be "scientific about it", to which we can only ask:
Be scientific about WHAT?
Any random forked stick should do until he answers the above.
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what this really is a chance for him not to so much apply the scientific method but rather to teach the scientific method. He already has a hypothesis: his family is full of crap. What he needs is for his family to come up with the testable hypothesis. Have them do the work to prove the ghosts. Set up controls, double blinds, etc., etc. The goal is not to prove the non-existance of ghosts, but to make the family shut up about it. And it's totally possible to work with them in such a way that it sucks all the fun out of the make believe and teaches them that, really, they cannot prove their claims even to themselves. He, however, should stick to trying to help them prove what they believe. But they have to be able to articulate what they believe in some way. But that is their problem, not his.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ignorance. A scientist who says they found no ghosts doesn't say ghosts do not exist. A scientist does not know what a ghost is, so it is impossible to say they exist or not. Only that they were not found.
A true scientist would attempt to define characteristics of ghosts and non-ghosts, and be able to measure differences between the two. Science has not been able to define a ghost, so science does not know what to look for. Science knows what not to look for, but does not know what to look for.
As you s
Re:Proton Pack (Score:5, Funny)
I rarely post on Slashdot, but I will for this.
What are you babbling about?? I see your posts all the time.
A good dose of: (Score:2)
Gullibility,
Not sure who sells that online....
Re:A good dose of: (Score:5, Informative)
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Does anyone else find it humorous, and somewhat telling, that the GOP uses the commercial TLD?
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so does my church and the local rotary - most folk people think it means "computer" not "commercial"
Alternative response: The Democrats don't because selling their BS would be against their socialist beliefs.
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Re:A good dose of: (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, imagine if misinformation got mixed with politics!
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Not sure who sells that online....
I believe that would be The Drudge Report...
Burden of proof. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:5, Informative)
The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim.
This.
As a scientist you should never discount an idea without first reviewing the facts. Facts are much more powerful than any first hand accounts of people who say they saw, felt, heard, or smelled something.
The typical ghost hunting equipment is a Video Camera, Flashlight, Thermal filter for the Camera, and Magnetic field detector.
However, I have never once seen any footage that couldn't have been explained by high school physics, or shown to be anything more than a hoax. And you likely won't either. If you are a skeptic, you should not be afraid to wander the dark hallways and should be able to determine that any odd readings are actually coming from a logical source that most people are too afraid to check into.
I remember watching one show, and they were absolutely surprised that this "one pipe" was giving off a lot of heat and this "other pipe" was giving off some weird Magnetic field. I dropped my jaw as it was obviously a central heating pipe (no doubt with hot water flowing through it) and an Electrical conduit, no doubt powering the lights upstairs. I then hit my head against the wall when they said it was clear evidence of something weird going on.
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster [wikipedia.org]
At this point, there has been enough claims without evidence to simply say "I don't think they exist, and you are free to show me evidence contrary", and then explore from that point. Going out to that town's resident "ghost house" on a whim to try to prove one thing or another isn't science. He might as well go to the ocean and prove there is or isn't sea monsters. In both instances, the net result won't be Science®, and isn't even good, interesting or unique pseudoscience.
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the statement "there are ghosts" is not falsifiable. There isn't an experiment you can perform that will prove they don't exist. Maybe the experiment scared them away, or they just didn't turn up etc.
The statement "there are no ghosts" is falsifiable. It can be proved wrong by demonstrating the existence of the ghost.
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The problem is that the statement "there are ghosts" is not falsifiable. There isn't an experiment you can perform that will prove they don't exist. Maybe the experiment scared them away, or they just didn't turn up etc.
The statement "there are no ghosts" is falsifiable. It can be proved wrong by demonstrating the existence of the ghost.
Technically not quite true. Follow it through - how do you demonstrate the existence of the ghost? You have to demonstrate that the supposed "ghost" could not have had a mundane (physical) explanation, and bugger we're back to proving a negative again. "There are no ghosts" is not practically falsifiable because any falsification itself cannot be falsified (and thus can never be accepted).
This sort of issue is always going to devolve to a philosophical argument. The reason being that strict materialsim
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that we keep taking colloquial statements from non-scientific people we disagree with and pretending they are properly stated hypothesis to build a strawman so we can feel better about our intellectual superiority.
Finding 'what the heck is going on here?' is the most basic of scientific endeavors, yet the comments here overflow with predetermined conclusion on the theological question of ghost-existence, with a notorious absence of interest in any actual facts or potential evidence for the 'haunting' phenomena. This reflex is precisely why so many non-technical people think science is just like a 'secular faith with its own beliefs'.
To pick an arbitrary example, no doctor would work like that and claim its scientific:
- hey doc, I spent all day in the rain and got a flu...
- you're an idiot, you can't get the flu without being in contact with the virus. Now get out of my office unless you can really prove you got it from standing in the rain!
Instead, the doctor would extract the core of what the patient (not assumed to be a doctor or a scientist) actually means ('I feel bad, like when I've had the flu before'), interrogate the patient for the facts and details (symptoms, timelines, contact with other sick people), and translate that into a useful hypothesis for the disease and its cause... and at least go through the process before yelling hypochondriac.
Of course "there are ghosts" is not a useful scientific hypothesis.It's actually not a question of falsifiability, but specificity: 'ghosts' is not defined well enough to even get to the falsifiable part. Like 'god' most people in a conversation don't mean the same thing with that word, and a *lot* of people won't mean the same thing at different times in the same conversation.
But the people saying 'there is a ghost in this house!' are rarely trying to build a scientific hypothesis, or are even trained to do that either. They apply 'ghosts' as a shorthand for 'something weird is going on' and a blind jump of faith to a lot of cultural baggage of 'stuff people have said in the past was related to similar weird stuff', as a way to communicate that 'unknown' experience through a common meme. Much like people have always done when other stuff happens and they guess at some pattern: health and sickness, weather, economic hardships, magnets, etc - and people are often wrong when they do that, but that doesn't mean there was no phenomenae to feed those memes in the first place.
Maybe an investigation finds nothing more than construction defects, bad insulation, gas leaks or defective electronics - if it was fun enough to spend the time, so what? Maybe it finds something more surprising than the usual (without requiring theological explanations).
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*This*
I see so many of these sophomoric types on the internet. I avoid "skeptics" and atheist groups because of it. These people discover no new knowledge. They just cut down some person's ridiculous view and then puff their chest out like they are Socrates.
What a tiresome bo
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting thing I read a while ago suggested that some of the supposed symptoms of "hauntings" are actually mundane, infrasonic phenomena. To wit, if a location has a source of sound waves not far below the boundary of audible frequency (machinery, pipes, ducts or even just free flowing air through the right structure) people and animals will react to the noise with alarm, even though we can't hear it. This has been suggested as one possible mechanism whereby certain animal species react in advance to seismic phenomena. It's possible a person could enter a room with a sustained infrasonic hum and attribute their instinctive sense of alarm to a malevolent presence.
So I'd suggest that guy who asked slashdot get microphones and recording equipment that can pick up on sound below 20 Hz. I've no idea where or how you'd get this equipment, or whether this would be a viable option for an amateur sceptic on a budget, but it's worth looking into.
If you find a recurring sound in a location where supposed "hauntings" have occurred, try to locate the source. It might be the problem can be solved by calling a plumber instead of an exorcist.
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If this is indeed the cause of many such "hauntings", there should be more investigation into this, and some equipment made to quickly and easily identify these infrasound problems as the culprit. Just because there aren't any real ghosts involved doesn't mean there's not a problem: if a not-quite-perceptible sound is causing people to feel strange feelings in certain locations, that's a problem that should be corrected, or else people won't want to use those buildings. With proper equipment to identify t
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I know you're just joking, but you might have stumbled onto something.
Most elephant speech is infrasonic. If such frequencies do make people nervous, then why aren't we more nervous around elephants? (Or are we?)
Every time I think I see an unexplained elephant in my room, *I* get nervous!
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Exactly.
If you really want to tackle this problem, ask the people with the stories what "proof" they have that ghosts are haunting the place, and then formulate an experiment that can test for that proof. Or, if it's transient phenomena, do the detective work to come up with any alternate hypotheses. Them saying that "it must be a ghost" really just means that they lack knowledge that would allow them to explain it any other way. You will definitely not be able to "disprove" it in any other meaningful way.
M
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The typical ghost hunting equipment is a Video Camera, Flashlight, Thermal filter for the Camera, and Magnetic field detector.
There's actually no such thing as a thermal filter for a regular camera. There are certainly infrared filters, but they are near infrared bandpass (like conventional night vision), not thermal (far) infrared. Capturing thermal images requires a specialized sensor and optics - regular glass can't be used.
That having been said, if the author of TFQ has the budget, they can certainly bu
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:5, Funny)
My wife saw a ghost hunters where they were in the woods when something flashed across the screen (black and white night vision). They replayed it a couple of times. My wife showed it to me, it was obvious to me on first viewing that the silhouette was a deer that finally decided the idiots where too close and sprinted out of there. The freeze frame left no doubt it was a deer, but the ghost hunters could only say 'something' was out there.
Just because they were hunting ghosts doesn't mean they couldn't find a unicorn.
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds more like your girlfriend was mad at you.
Re:Burden of proof. (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like a mistake to go to some place and look for the absence of an anomaly. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. You will never prove that ghosts don't exists in a house. Maybe they will be there tomorrow when you aren't around. Maybe you don't have the proper equipment to detect one.
Perhaps not, but if you really do detect anomalous activity that you are unable to explain, it would help falsify the notion that we are able to explain every possible activity that can take place in an empty house. Of course that wouldn't prove that there are ghosts, that people survive death in some kind of non-corporeal form, or anything like that. However, it would lend credibility to the notion that there may exist forces that science has not yet understood, that there are phenomena we may be no more aware of than people who lived a thousand years ago were aware of radio waves. As you say, finding nothing unusual wouldn't make it any easier to prove a negative, but if something were found that cannot easily be explained by known phenomena, that would be interesting.
I can see how some people would consider it worthwhile to conduct these experiments. Honestly, I would be a bit disappointed if it turned out that we already know about every possible physical force and/or physical process that could exist in the universe. As long as such experiments are scientifically sound, I see nothing wrong with them.
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Before anyone runs around talking about ghosts they need to step into the real world. That house you live in is constructed of several thousand components, and several dozen different materials. Concrete, steel, Brick, Stucco, Wood (even different species and the fineness of the grain affect the rates), Wire, and even the carpet pad and carpet expand and contract at different rates under thermal pressure. Every single building in the world has thermal zones with differing temperatures and combined with seas
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The Standard Model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model) and General Relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity) pretty much cover all the physical forces you are ever likely to encounter. To be fair we don't have a ToE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything) yet, but the two separate frameworks have been wildly successful at describing and predicting all of the physics that have yet been observed.
They explain what they explain, but they don't contain proof that they, th
Blah blah blah (Score:2)
Why not just make it up? That's what Andrew Wakefield did to "prove" MMR vaccines gave children autism.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to bother doing a serious investigation. Do what they do with all those horrid son-of-blair-witch-project TV shows do and just bullshit.
How about (Score:5, Funny)
Bring some common fucking sense, and a stick to hit those who didn't bring any?
Edison Phone (Score:2)
Wrong location (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wrong location (Score:4, Informative)
Whats next? Creationism research questions? (Score:2)
Ghost investigations? Nothing else in the queue for the front page today?
Dear Slashdot, I have family and friends that believe the Earth is 6,600 years old, what tools do I need to prove them right?
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Urgh, that's not how it works.
It might have a 4.5 billion years half-life - that's just the statistical average speed. Any one atom could randomly decay at any time immediately after it was created.
Get the believers to make... (Score:5, Insightful)
...an objectively testable prediction. If you can't get them to make such a prediction quit wasting your time.
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Most ghost stories aren't "I saw it this one time, and then it never appeared again"... they're more along the lines of "every morning between 2:00am and 4:00am I hear footsteps coming from the attic", or "an apparition appears regularly at the top of the stairs".
That kind of ghost story is very easily testable... you just have to set up your instruments to record it, wait for it to happen again, and then find an explanation for what you saw.
Proper preparation (Score:3, Insightful)
If TV is any guide, make sure sure to practice your reflexes: you must be able to scream in terror at the slightest sound, movement or smell. Also, cultivate your sense of paranoia, because how else will you see the ghosts behind every action? Plus, go down to the hardware store and buy every piece of random electronic testing equipment, because any sensor will detect ghosts if you look hard enough...
Take a cue from ghostbusters (Score:5, Funny)
The Ghostbusters [wikipedia.org] also use equipment to hunt and find ghosts, such as a PKE meter, Ecto-Goggles, and a Ghost Sniffer. A PKE meter is a handheld device, used in locating and measuring Psycho-Kinetic Energy, which is a unique environmental byproduct emitted by ghosts. The device's most prominent feature are winged arms that raise and lower in relation to the amount of PKE detected while a digital display gives an exact reading for the operator. The Giga meter is a device similar to the PKE meter, featured in Ghostbusters II. As explained by Egon in the original script, the Giga meter measures PKE in GeV, or giga-electronvolts. Ecto-Goggles, sometimes known as "Spectro-Visors", are a special pair of goggles that visually trace PKE readings. They are particularly useful in helping its wearer see normally invisible ghosts and it can also be used to assist in tracking ghosts within a visible field of search.
but I have friends and family ... (Score:5, Funny)
wouldn't be easier just to change both friends and family?
Brain Recorder (FMRI, PET scanners) (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd recommend something like an FMRI or PET scanner which can determine when you're perceiving something (i.e. don't measure the house, measure yourself).
Since ghosts don't seem to show up on recordings in any reliable, repeatable way, it suggests that if they do exist they directly project their energy into the brain, rather than manifest physically. So you'd need to detect the perception, rather than the physical anomaly itself (which probably doesn't exist).
An easier and cheaper idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Get your relatives copies of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World".
I'm normally a skeptic but... (Score:5, Funny)
A megaphone and a pair of ears (Score:4, Funny)
Just shout, really loudly, "HEY GHOST!".
If you hear "HEY HUMAN" then shout "MARCO?". If you hear "POLLO!" go find the source of the sound.
If it's your friend, laugh. If it's nothing, lather-rinse-repeat. If it's a ghost, you'll see it. Then ask it to follow you home.
What the hell else are you going to do? Temperature change? Wind. What the hell, it can change by ten degrees in an hour quite easily.
Like everything else in english, you have to answer one question: what's a ghost. Define the term, circle the nouns, and look for them. Then underline the verbs and see if the nouns are doing the verbs. Since when does anyone define a ghost as something that can change temperature. That's just a lot of hot air -- maybe from the ghost.
Bring a sense of humor! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hunting for ghosts can be fun, exciting, educational (if you like history) and perhaps a healthy outlet. As a skeptic myself, my wife and I really enjoy staying in supposed haunted hotels. We have stayed in several, and most of the hotels are old, beautiful, and historic. We haven't found a ghost yet, although we have had some weird things occur that seem odd. It doesn't matter at the end of the day (or night) that some poltergeist or level 5 free form book stacking apparition hadn't come into our room. What did matter is that we did something fun and cool together.
Now, some people will try to make you feel stupid for wanting to explore a house that has supposed strange goings on, but in reality these same people would have subscribed to Pluto being a *real* planet, or the Earth being flat, or of the aether theory. They also can't explain why the two Voyager spacecraft haven't reached the Heliopause, or what exactly *is* dark matter. They don't have those answers do they? Did anyone see it coming that the periodic table was changed? In short not very many things are nailed down as far as being immutable. Perhaps supposed hauntings are vibrational in nature and related to another plane of existence. Perhaps 'hauntings' are a great demonstration of the phenomenal power of the human mind, or maybe hauntings are really just an example of the power of the human mind and its propensity to create stories in an attempt to rationalize an event whose mechanism is unknown to the witness.
What I *do* know is that irregardless of all those things, we don't even take cameras, or really even poke about the haunted hotels we stay in. We just have fun and learn a bit of local history wherever we happen to be. In ending, life is full mystery and fun, and maybe indulging in a bit of fantasy and romance in a world that seems hell bent on destroying every legend, myth, and bit of intrigue that's left out there isn't so bad after all..
Just be sure to use a fast film (Score:5, Funny)
I'm gonna bite on this one like it's serious. (Score:4, Informative)
Temperature change - it's not a very reliable metric for a reading in free air. A cool breeze from a natural cause can rapidly change your readings. Less than ethical 'spiritual investigators' could even deliberately open a window or run water and not record that part on video, and abandoned old houses are very likely to have large openings that allow large drafts - the typical 30 years abandoned house has holes big enough for stray cats or raccoons to get in and out.
So, would you get better data if you shielded a temperature probe from drafts, and placed it against a sizable thermal mass like a concrete wall or granite mantle-piece. What if you measured a 20 degree change in seconds on a heavy thermal mass object with a sensor that was protected from other sides by a sealed Styrofoam shell, while you had strips of light paper hung nearby in many directions to indicate possible drafts? You're not just looking for a change, but a change whose type and magnitude makes it less likely there's a sufficient natural explanation.
Noises - Turn on the faucets and see if you can produce a natural water hammering noise. Make sure to include ones down in the basement or outside the house. Open chimney flues. Open or close furnace or air conditioning vents, even if they appear not to be hooked up to the main system any more. Try different settings in many combinations. Check water even if the water is supposedly completely turned off, as sometimes a little trickle is leaking, and it will build up to normal pressure and cause transient effects that you can't reproduce unless you let that pressure build up for days again. Do a survey of all the rooms, including closets, and look for evidence of nesting birds, rodents and other possible organic sources of odd sounds. You know all those movies with the wind blowing scratchy old tree branches across the shingles? Look for real possible cases of those. Watch for ways somebody could try to sneak up close to the house and deliberately hoax you, because anyone trying that will probably use noises. That doesn't mean, of course, that any noise you still can't explain is supernatural.
Lights - A good camera could record a mysterious light accurately, much more accurately than a cheap one. Old fashioned film cameras might reveal things that don't show to digital ones, and vice versa. You might even be able to mount multiple types of cameras and/or film stocks so you could trigger them all at once and get interesting comparison photos. A simple prism can spread out the spectrum of a strange light on a flat wall, you can get a test light source that has known peak frequencies to 'calibrate' the prism so you aren't just reporting that the peak looked vaguely greenish, and a really strange spectrum that can't be from something like car headlights or a flashlight reflecting around might be pretty good evidence, or at least guide you in going further next time. A camera can record color much too faint for you to see, so photograph those faint specta with long exposures. Imagine if the spectrum you photograph is almost monochromatic, with only a few sharply defined peaks, and those are not on wavelengths that match any commercial laser pointer or specialty florescent bulb or other such source. Or what if a polarimeter reveals the odd light is elliptically polarised? A pair of polarised sunglasses and a bit of cross polarising filter you can rotate before them is a pretty cheap piece of test gear.
Electronics. Old fashioned CB radios or kid's walkie-talkies might be less hypersenitive to interference than your modern devices. Experiment to find ways to communicate with helpers that don't seem subject to odd noises. What does your digital display look like when its signal is glitching from normal causes? What does your radio handset sound like as you and your helper walk farther and farther apart outdoors, until one of you walks under a highway overpass? If there is something really strange going on, you won't know it because systems are experiencing normal failures, but you might just spot something really interesting if the failure mode ISN'T one of the normal ones.
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Good post, parent. Thanks. Adding my 2c:
Set and setting always seem to be important when investigating these vague psychological artefacts. If you go in there armed to the teeth with your ghostbusting equipment and attitude, you're not going to see anything.
I suggest attempting to induce the experience. Watch ghost vids on youtube, a horror flick in the cinema just prior to entering the haunted house or tell ghost stories while you're there. Do it at night and don't turn the lights on, bring a lot of candle
Creeping Mysticism (Score:5, Insightful)
I had noticed that reason and critical thinking were fading in the world of late, but I never thought that the rot would get so bad that the foremost geek site on the internet would be giving credence to this sort of rubbish. What the hell were the editors thinking? What should I even have to say that ghosts don't exist and that this "investigation" may as well be looking for invisible green unicorns?
As a society, we're reverting back to superstition and ignorance. We've even given up on even imagining a better future [vgcats.com].
The only question I ask is: where did it all go wrong? When did the world abandon progress?
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And since when is any question that involves acquiring a handful of curious gadgets inappropriate for slashdot?
Re:Creeping Mysticism (Score:4, Interesting)
Progress= People have to be scared of less things, feel too cold or too hot less often, get a comfortable amount of sleep, can satisfy their various primal hungers (food, water, sex, knowledge) with less effort and consequences... everyone gets to explore their own concepts of the universe without artificial limits or interference from authority(as long as its not hurting someone elses... this gray area will always be there), you and you're loved ones dying less often (or never except due to extraordinary circumstances). The idea of an Utopia may be unattainable but didn't come to be out of nothing. (Progress= more like the star trek universe.) I'm not being facetious here. I really believe what I just wrote.
Re:You've got to be kidding me (Score:5, Interesting)
- Less of a nut job than you think
Re:You've got to be kidding me (Score:5, Informative)
OK, well then go ahead and bring some common types of detection gear. Bring a digital camera (DSLR would be best, but bring the most sensitive you've got.) If you can find one, bring an EM detector. Perhaps bring a multi-band radio, one that has a manual squelch so you can hear the static, and with a portable antenna. Maybe an optical distance thermometer. And bring a video camera.
Also bring some experimenting supplies. Aluminum foil and wire would be good. Duct tape and some tripods will be useful, as will a few ordinary tools (a multi-tool knife/pliers thing would probably suffice.) Various clear plastic bags. If you can, get different color LED flashlights to look at things under different colors of light. Plain white paper. A box to put stuff in.
Go over how each of the things you brought detects something, then amplifies the results so you can see it. The camera detects light with a CMOS sensor, and does so in 1/60th of a second; the EM detector detects lines of magnetic flux with a coil of wire, etc.
Explain how every sensor has its limits. For example, a light switch is a sensor of human fingers. It doesn't switch itself, a person has to push harder than the internal spring to toggle the lights. The light switch can't detect humans that don't press hard enough, but the lack of flipping doesn't prove there's no human there. Note also that the lack of flipping doesn't prove there IS a human there, either. Then take out the camera and explain how the CMOS sensor has a similar threshold, and requires a certain amount of light. Anything below that threshold proves only that there wasn't enough light.
If a camera sensor has no light at all when you press the shutter, you'll find that the sensor is not perfect, and not all the cells are exactly pure black. The differences in the individual cells will show up as variations in black.
Set the camera to RAW mode, or to the highest resolution possible. Change the ISO setting from "Auto" and set it to the highest possible value. Set the aperture as closed as possible (high F stop) and set the shutter speed as fast as possible. Fully obscure the camera lens with aluminum foil and take a couple of pictures, then magnify one of the pictures on the computer screen until you can clearly see distinct pixels. Notice how even though no light should have reached the lens, some of the pixels are brighter than others. Compare this to the other pictures you took of the covered lens, and look for differences between them. They might all be the same, or there might be some variations.
Then take the still-foil-wrapped camera and put it someplace cold for a while, and take another couple of pictures of blackness once it chills. Finally, warm it up to body temperature and take another set of pictures. Compare all three temperature pictures, and look for differences. You might find something like the cold sensor pictures have a more consistent level of black, while the warm sensor pictures have less consistent black. Or the other way around.
When you're bored of the camera, pull out the EM meter. Make various coils with the wire, and see if they affect the readings. See if having one end of the coil grounded makes a difference. See if grounding both ends makes a difference. See if having a person hold one end makes a difference. See if it makes a difference if the person is also running a video camera. See if it makes a difference if your cell phones are on or off. If you find a spot in the house with a strangely high EM reading, make a shield of aluminum foil and hook the wire to it and ground the other end, and see if that can change it.
Try various things to reproduce anomalies you may have seen on the TV shows. Come up with hypotheses, and create experiments to confirm your suspicions.
Ghosthunting 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
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The obvious question is: What observable phenomena would indicate the presence of "ghosts"? He mentions heat changes, but... why? Why would ghosts radiate heat? It's just as plausible to suggest that ghosts would radiate the smell of cookies or high-energy X-rays. On the other hand, if you observe the smell of cookies (or heat or X-rays), why would that be evidence of ghosts, rather than evidence of free-floating midichlorians or of demons or of ley lines rendered unstable by global warming?
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I also love how they carry around highly sensitive EM field readers and assume the spikes in the readings are ghosts - meanwhile carrying around tons of electronic recording and communication devices (like cellphones and digital cameras).
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Also, check the temperature outside, and the wind. Try to monitor the the traffic of the nearest roads, to bear in mind how much sound there is. You want to record any information that affects our senses of sight, hearing, and touch.
If you find a correlation, then you still won't be able to prove anything, but you will be able to strengthen a hunch.
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
not much of a skeptic are you.
I forgot that these days, skeptic means "don't ever investigate anything and for bonus points, display contempt for those who do".
The summary is a good example of what real, healthy skepticism is. It boils down to "I don't think I will find anything, but I don't actually know that until I look, so here is the experiment I want to conduct." Is it the lack of presumption and arrogance that offends you? Does the presence of open-minded people willing to look for evidence, even of things they don't actually believe in, make you feel uncomfortable with your narrow-minded worldview? I'm guessing that's where the contempt comes from.
Re:wow (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh BS. This is just another endless troll of mankind. If you launch an investigation into the FSM stalking you, you'll end up with the exact same conclusion as the end of it and it would be whatever your bias was prior to entering the project.
This is just another form of intellectual masturbation except it's the supernatural that gets them off. If there was actual reproducible evidence to be found, you'd think one of the humans from any generation who was pursuing "spiritual enlightenment" would have co
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting unusual effort and resource into investigating something that you have very good reason to suspect is complete nonsense, is not good.
In a perfect world, a skeptic would be free to test absolutely everything, from the existence of ghosts, to periodically making sure that newtonian mechanics and basic chemistry still remain valid, and that science hasn't all changed over night. Out here in the real world, we have to prioritise our time onto things that have a better chance of being valid.
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I think *something* is going on that we don't yet know about. If there were only the occasional nutty person who claimed to see strange things, I'd say he/she is probably just a
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LoB
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you investigate the flat Earth theory? Do you investigate the geocentric theory? Do you investigate spontaneous generation? Do you investigate alchemy? ARROGANCE!
Ah, another person tries for the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps my response will demonstrate why this is what you are doing.
First I'll say that the word "ghost" isn't a terribly great word. It implies that any strange phenomena are caused by dead people who still retain some kind of non-corporeal existence. The actual cause of such phenomena could very well be some not-yet-discovered natural force that has nothing to do with people at all, living or dead. What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them. Using loaded words like "ghost" is therefore inappropriate, not to mention it's fodder for belligerent narrow-minded people who just want to demagogue something instead of contributing anything useful because they knee-jerk upon hearing a loaded word.
Moving along... Do I personally investigate those things you mentioned? No. The first three have been thoroughly falsified. Regarding alchemy, if you conducted a scientifically-sound experiment that claims to have produced conclusive evidence, I'd be willing to entertain that evidence so long as it's understood that the burden of proof is entirely on you and your methodology needs to be both sound and available for examination. If you can meet those conditions then I say go for it.
This is the part you seem to have a hard time with. I have seen abundant evidence that the Earth is spherical. That's why I see no point in investigating a flat-Earth theory. It is falsified by the knowledge that the Earth is spherical combined with the knowledge that spheres are not flat. I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.
Your mistake is that you think the two ideas are on equal ground. You cannot recognize and appreciate the difference between a thoroughly falsified notion and the truly unknown. That's why what you call "skepticism" is just narrow-minded arrogance, not unlike religious zealotry. It makes a mockery of the healthy kind of skepticism that says "show me the evidence".
You can cower behind that narrow-mindedness if it helps you protect your worldview from the terrible (to you) risk of being altered to accept new possibilities if that pleases you. Just understand that others like me are perfectly comfortable saying "I really, truly don't know, therefore it doesn't make sense to form a passionate belief about this subject."
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I sincerely doubt that anything involving quantum computing would have been looked into if everyone bought into this false definition of skepticism. Or, heck, breaking the sound barrier? Taming/making fire?
Science won't go anywhere without people like you and Quirkz. People with a healthy world-view, but also a sense of curiosity. Respect, man.
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What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them.
Yes, and lucky charms might really be made by leprechauns, but I see no point in wasting time looking into it.
We know that every time we've looked into ghost stories, they've turned out to have a mundane explanation or to be complete bullshit. If this guy wants to go out and have some fun with his friends and family, great, have at 'er, but let's not pretend that there's any chance of him actually discovering something new.
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Just throwing up your arms and complaining about how he has the gall to actually try to gather some data is unproductive no matter what philosophy regarding the matter you subscribe to. If this ghost story he wants to investigate has a mundane cause it probably won't be found by him standing around bare-ha
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"I see no point in investigating a flat-Earth theory. It is falsified by the knowledge that the Earth is spherical combined with the knowledge that spheres are not flat. I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified... Your mistake is that you think the two ideas are on equal ground."
Indeed, they are not on equal ground -- The "ghost" issue is one of those unfalsifiable notions. It's not well-defined and is routinely asserted to have no te
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However I think you're being too harsh to the post you're replying to. You say:
The actual cause of such phenomena could very well be some not-yet-discovered natural force that has nothing to do with people at all, living or dead. What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them.
But the fact is that, quite simply, the case against ghosts and other supernatural phenomena, including a completely open-ended and nebulous 'unknown force of nature' is actually incredibly robust at this point in science. To explain this point in greater detail, I will defer to a better writer than me, and link to a bl
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How could I possibly "prove" that 'ghosts' don't exist to you, give me some scientific way to "prove" that 'ghosts' don't exist, and I will do my best.
It is nearly impossible for me to disprove make believe notions that exist only in the confines of your skull. If you thought that invisible undetectable purple elephants dance on every strand of hair on your head, this would also be very hard for me to disprove.
The weight of proof should rest on those making extraordinary claims, claiming there are invisible non-corporal humans running around is an extraordinary claim.
I never once said that anyone should prove a negative. Therefore, a better "how" question would be: how could you so thoroughly misunderstand my post?
I fully agree that the person claiming ghosts are a real phenomena is the person who need to provide evidence. The post to which you replied was an explanation of why I would be willing to examine such evidence.
When I explain why I would be willing to consider serious evidence, I am at a loss to explain how you could interpret that as a denial that cla
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Alchemy is real, in 1941 mercury was transmuted into gold in a nuclear reactor. I believe lead to gold has been done with a linear accelerator.
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Sure do, and there was plenty of scientists that investigated turning one metal into another. In fact, we can do it in small quantities. Scientists are investigating the rotation of the solar system and all disproving the Geocentric universe all the time too.
What the GP failed at and you caught was the fact that once something is disproved because something else is true, we don't need to go back and retest unless we are looking for a better understanding of what is true. We just use the proper explanation o
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Check for the presence of Dihydrogen Monoxide on the person who saw or felt the presence of the ghost.
I have done extensive tests. Every person who has been exposed to a real ghost has traces of Dihydrogen Monoxide on their eyes.
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The only things that can't be explained are the impossible. Fortunatley the impossible never happens.