I’ve seen a couple and it’s my opinion they’re shows about nothing, using a portable camera sometimes with night-vision, some scientifc measuring-type of equipment and some incredibly bad and repetetive dialogue.
“Damn! Did you feel that just now?”
“Hello? Are you there? No one wants to harm you, can you show yourself?”
“Oh Gosh! I just felt a chill across my face!”
“If you’re there could you make a noise?”
And sometime in the show, looking at the monitor, “Yep! I see it. That definitely wasn’t there earlier!”
And their faces are so serious! They look really scared to be in that house or that one.
And then, at the end, a synopsis and discussion to somehow lend some credence to what they have just accomplished.
Okay, yeah I believe in the supernatural, but not as described in this “Barnum and Bailey” sideshow way. And so many!
Sorry, but there’s nothing conclusive in what I was watching.
WHat offends me is that they are on channels that are ostensibly about education – ‘fighting ignorance’, and all that. Nothing wrong with a good ghost story; just don’t try to pass it off as ‘scientific’.
How come ghosts only show up when it’s dark? And only in scary houses or abandoned mental hospitals?
How come there isn’t a scary ghostie hanging out in my office at 2:00 in the afternoon? Do ghosts haunt houses built in the 80’s? Weird how they never show up at your dentist’s office.
Also, do we really need a fake ghost show on Animal Planet?
It is the same thing with that stupid Monsterquest show and some other one where they look for aliens and secret government whatever. Anyway, I admit watching for a few minutes every once in a while and then I remember if they had actually found something interesting, I probably would have heard about it elsewhere or they would be promoting the hell out of it. I mean, it is not like somebody is going to get definitive proof of sasquatch and the only publicity it is going to get is on some retarded “History” channel show.
Not true. Ghost Hunting and “Most haunted… (whatever)” have become a year-round feature on cable.
Pepper mill and MiiliCal are big fans of these. I actually like the Travel Channel shows, because in the guise of talking about ghosts they actually give you a lot of geography and history. Talk about “Education by Stealth”…
The SciFi – forgive me — SyFy channel and the Discovery Channel ones, though, with their IR scopes and thermal cameras and audio recorders and such are another story. The Skeptical websites are convinced that they’re just cynically faking it and making it up. The IR camera shots look as if they were invented for these shows – the green cast and the errie reflection, especially from eyes, give the entire thing an air of spookiness. There’s a little history thrown in, and occasionally they do find natural explanations, but I distrust all the positive results (moving chairs, unexplained images on the thermal camera, and all those auditory manifestations) that they get.
Their incessant reliance on “EVP” is goofy. Electrostatic Voice Phenomenon or some such three-letter acronym.
It’s always on digital recordings - probably because analog recordings aren’t subject to dithering and quantization errors, and it’s always some little blip of noise. The “investigators” go bonkers and start running around crowing “Holy crap! It said ‘I like split peas!’ That’s proof!”
One time on the show with the plumbers in New England, they actually got something on an analog recorder that they didn’t get on their digital equipment. They found that a BIG DEAL. The sound repeated - over and over and over and over and…
Without timing it, I’m pretty sure the length of the sound was about 1 and 7/8 seconds. They were recording the tape player’s own spool! :smack:
I watch all those shows. My favorite of the current crop is “Ghost Adventures” on the Travel channel, the one with the three screaming 30-something frat boys. You could make a drinking game out of it; just take a shot every time one of them says “Duuuuuude…”
I neither believe nor disbelieve in ghosts; they can be real if they want to, or not, it’s none of my business either way. I have fun watching the shows, though; they sometimes manage to bring the spooky, and it reminds me of being a teenager and cruising the woods at night with my friends, telling local “true” ghost stories and scaring the crap out of each other. That’s how you find out who your real friends are; they’re the ones who hear something moving around in the underbrush and DON’T fling you towards the noise as they bolt back to the car.
[sub]Seriously, I had the car keys - what were they planning to do if I got eaten by a grue?[/sub]
My sister took a “ghost tour” somewhere and emailed photos with mysterious orbs floating in the rooms. My daughter responded with “I’m pretty sure that’s dust in the air.” They looked just like the ghosts we had in the basement when we finished sanding the drywall…
Anyway, I don’t watch these shows. I’m too embarrassed for the idiots making them and even moreso for those who believe it.
There’s some kind of haunted house/ghostbusters show on the Discovery Channel all day long, some weekdays. I’ve come to the conclusion that these things are cheap to make and are better than infomercials or dead air during the day.
I never thought they were really encountering ghosts, but I believed that they were genuinely looking and that they really thought they were really encountering ghosts. Then I saw this
Speaking of drinking games; take a shot on “Ghost Hunters” everytime someone says, “Did you hear that?” and you’ll be shitfaced in a half hour. Nevermind that the audience can’t hear anything other than the ambient soundtrack and whatever else crap they might be doing. I guess at least in their defense they aren’t pretending to be psychics. Paranormal State even has an iPhone app that allows you to fake an EMF spike, and the “auto” setting spikes and declines based on time and whatever angle you hold your phone. Pretty much all bullshit. Ever notice how the definition of EMF spikes change? Sometimes they say that a high EMF reading means that there is energy (usually electric) nearby that ghosts can use to manifest, other times they insist that high EMF readings mean that ghost activity is happening. So they set the EMF meter on the ground and ask the spirits to come near and make the meter respond to their questions…well, turns out that the walkie talkies that they use will set off the EMF meters on cue if need be. Not too hard to fake a ghost hunt. Probably a lot of people posting here could do as well or better.
Still, it’s fun to search around a dark old house on Halloween. Just bring a regular compass (it theoretically will do the same thing as an EMF reader, it’ll go crazy if there are high EMF readings) and some sort of voice recorder, and maybe sit around and tell scary stories or something.
Don’t want to say TOO much, but my sister has appeared on many episodes of one of these shows. From our conversations, she stated that everything was on the up and up, as far as her end of things (the hunting itself) was concerned.
Top rated comment: “After that coat pull and fake EVP, I watch Ghost Adventurers. It’s an amazing show. They always pick up activity, and they keep it real. Yup, Ghost Adventures is the BEST paranormal show on TV. Who agrees with me?”
Yeah, that’s the problem here. Well sure, THIS one is fake, but that other one is real ghosts! Most of the comments seem to be flame wars between the silly ghost shows.
I always like when they try to get all high tech with weird meters. I wonder where they get those things. Did the high end one you bought get proven by the ghost detecting labs to detect ghosts 20% better? When the engineers were doing the R&D, how’d they go about comparing different types of ghost detection? I wonder if they killed orphans in the basement and then recorded it on multiple prototypes.
