We’ve got several flavors of Ghost Hunters, Destination Truth, Beast Hunters - I’m sure there are others. I don’t usually bother to watch because the one or two times I have, they don’t end up finding anything.
Have any of these shows ever actually found anything compelling? I’m guessing no, or else it would have made it to the regular news. But even assuming nothing incontrovertible, I could imagine them having at least stumbled on something notably weird.
And even if finding something ghostly is impossible, I could imagine the cryptid ones turning up something interesting - it’s not unknown for new species to turn up from time to time.
Have you seen an episode where something compelling actually ending being found? I’m willing to even count compelling debunkaries - I know there was an episode on a boat where they caught someone trying to hoax their camera.
We watch Destination Truth in the hopes that they will fall off a cliff or something [dang, they almost fell off the Great Wall of China sigh Sooooo close!] but mainly for amusement value. I once pointed out to a friend about one episode they were going after some critter that was a daylight critter by bumbling around in the jungle at night. shrug You really can’t get much when you are only on site essentially for 12 hours. Most people after cryptids spend weeks or months, sometimes even years combine an area. And for ghost hunting, humans have a mind that looks for patterns, so what we see and hear we try to make comprehensible by seeing or hearing something when it is really random noise, a funny shadow or reflection. At least Ghost Hunters is very frank about most things being camera artifacts, dust particles, random insects flying past and odd reflections of light and shadow. The only part of their stuff I would quibble is the EVP - they crank up the gain so damned high thy are interpreting distortion most of the time. Ah, and mrAru also reminds me about their boat work- he points out that metal hulled ships get an electrical charge build up that periodically needs to be degaussed - this could cause a lot of the odd happenings and whacked readings on equipment.
I saw one where one of the guys yells out into a dark room, “Are there any evil spirits in here?”
No evil spirits responded, but they kept looking for some anyway.
Having never watched, I’m willing to put money on the answer, “They’ve never found anything requiring supernatural explanation, but find occasional things that are ‘unexpected’ or ‘really weird’ – just enough for the hosts to say, ‘that really freaked me out’ once or twice a week.”
The Ghost Hunters they filmed in the Stanley Hotel was interesting (if they weren’t faking things). Of course, I live about 40 minutes from the Stanley, and have been there many times, and it definitely IS a really creepy place. We like to bring out of town visitors up there without telling them anything and see what they have to say. Almost every one has said that mentioned feeling odd there, and almost always in the same places in the hotel.
I mean, none of the things they are looking for exist, so they can’t actually find anything. I’ve seen a few Ghost Hunter shows and it’s mostly just sounds and spooky feelings.
I never watch any of these shows on a regular basis but I find them sometimes when I’m surfing. One is hysterically over-the-top with a guy basically yelling at the “ghosts”. One time it was a theater supposedly haunted by John Wilkes Booth and he actually went into “You were a gutless murderer!” rant. (Why JWB would haunt any theater other than perhaps Ford’s [which would still be a strange choice since he got out of there as fast as his good leg could carry him] I’m not sure, but it’s good to know that this guy was against the Lincoln assassination.)
Another seems more “real”. The reason I say that is because at the end they basically say “nothing here that can’t be explained by passing cars and an old building”, which I thought was very unusual since the “killing Lincoln’s bad, m’kay” guy would have found three demons and a poltergeist and possible evidence of mass infanticide there. I figure it must have much lower ratings.
Does anybody have any clue what the names of these shows are?
I believe the former (the shouty, hysterical dude) is Ghost Adventures, on the Travel Channel.
The latter (the “real” one) is likely Ghost Hunters, on SyFy.
As for findings, Ghost Hunters has had a couple instances where the only explanation I could come up with was “they faked it.” Which, frankly, is probably more likely than “ghosts did it.”
That being said, if I were on a show like, say, MTV’s Fear (is that still on?), I’d probably be scared shitless, even if nothing supernatural happened. I like to think of myself as a rational, scientifically minded person, but in a dark, unfamiliar room of a decaying building, I have a VERY active imagination. And frankly, no ghost or apparition can be scarier than that.
There are things other than ghosts that can happen in such places as well- everything from homeless people who hid when the studio inspected it to deathtrap floor rot to stepping on a junkies syringe that was in a dark corner, etc… I’m guessing the production company employees who do the pre-check on these place probably didn’t graduate with honors from the CIA “How to do a clean sweep of an area for all possible dangers” seminars.
If any of these shows actually discovered any real evidence of genuine supernatural phenomona, you wouldn’t have to ask the question because it would be the biggest, most significant news in all of human history. Bigger than the moon landing.
Wow! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the overwhelming ratio of threadshitting to actual content but I was. I mean, as an atheist and scientist, I sympathize with the knee jerk reaction to a thread with this title but I would like to think that Dopers would be more measured in their responses. So let’s be clear, I’m not your average ‘believer’, so your snappy comments are wasted on me. More on this later…
Boo. Shame on you. I get it, but, boo.
Well no. Did you actually read the OP??? Even if you are predisposed to disbelieve ghostly things (I am too) that still leaves open cryptids, aliens, interesting debunkings, and finding weird things on camera that aren’t supernatural. Did you really think you were positively contributing to the thread?
Um no… see above.
OK so let’s clarify. I’m a skeptic. And as a skeptic, I’m reluctant to weed through several supernatural/whatever based reality series, to skip the fluff and get to the nougat. The few I’ve seen have tended to either 1) explain away things as magnetic fields or whatever (yay!) 2) be a discovered hoax 3) be inconclusive 4) have some intriguing bit of whatever, but not enough.
So let’s pretend I’m the grandson in Princess Bride - tell me the ‘good parts’ version.
This could be, ideally, good evidence of supernatural or whatever. (Unlikely, and amusingly parodied by South Park).
In the case of ghosts, an interesting story about debunking or hoax. Or… sometimes they find something interesting on infrared or whatever. I really don’t expect them to find a ghost. But it would be interesting if they discovered and documented the source of the infrared - an animal or homeless person or whatever. Although I don’t expect them to find an actual ghost, it’s still disappointing if they find some weird anomaly that is very strong, but then aren’t able to determine it’s origin.
In the case of cryptoids, well, that’s not supernatural, so eventually I’d expect them to come across an endangered or rare species despite their limited methods.
In the case of something like “fact or faked” that’s more like mythbusters so really the results are open ended.
But even in the case of 100% negative, surely some episodes of some series came up with something interesting in one way or another.
So seriously, I’m not a n00b who believes in random shit. But, I’d think that five plus television series renewed for several seasons would eventually come up with something interesting in some respect. So quit the shitting and chime in with the interesting.
Ghost Hunters usually finds ordinary explanations for what the home owners are experiencing or they don’t experience anything at all.
A few times they experience something they can’t explain. They do sometimes record a ‘voice’ or video a ‘figure’ that vanishes. Well, they do sometimes say, it’s a ghost, but they mostly say, we experienced some stuff but we aren’t sure this place is haunted. They don’t only do old abandoned buildings. They seem to do mostly homes and buildings that are in use.
The seem to be the calm/level headed of the ‘hunter’ shows out there.
They beat the hell out of the one with the brits who see demons everywhere and claim that wherever they are for that episode is “the most haunted place in <wherever> they have ever seen” :dubious:
And the 2 guys in Ghost Adventures did their first episode ever at the Goldfield Hotel and these are definitely the screamy guys =)They claim a brick flew by itself, whic by watching is totally bogus. Look at the trajectory.