TechStuff Classic: Ghost Hunting Tech

It's time for a text Stuff classic. And this one actually comes as a recommend a from carry on Twitter, who said that I should really revisit one that I did way back in twenty ten. See back on February first, two thousand ten, we published an episode titled ghost Hunting Technology. Chris Pallette, my original co host, and I walked through the various gadgets and technologies used by ghost hunters, and we explained what that technology actually is foreign and how

it works and what it's supposed to do. And I talked a lot about how the use of such technology is misguided when it comes to, you know, putting it towards ghost hunting, and that it's based on faulty reasoning, and the big thing is that it really boils down to ghost hunters operating as if ghosts are already a known fact, like that they four fact exist, and then they explain how tech behaving in some particular way supports that fact and counts as evidence of their being a ghost.

But we haven't established that ghosts are a fact, so you can't point at anything and say it's evidence that a ghost exists. You've got to prove the ghost exists first, and then through lots of different, you know, experiments determine what elements point to whether or not a ghost is present. You can't just say that light is flickering, therefore ghost.

That's not how science works. Anyway, since we're on all Hallow's eve Eve, I thought it would be good to run this as a classic episode, and you can hear how ten years ago I argued for critical thinking. And when the classic episode is over, I'm gonna have a few more things to say about the topic of ghosts. So please stick around because there's more to come. Anyway, enjoy this classic episode. I don't know that we have a ghost of a chance of getting through this without

you losing it, but we should try. I ain't afraid of no ghost, so you may have already guessed what our topic is, but it comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. List listener mail comes from Will from Austin, Texas, and he says, Hi, guys, I just recently started subscribing to the podcast and always have it playing in my car to and from work. I am in the I T field, and even though I feel like I have a somewhat firm grasp on some of the concepts that are discussed, it is always nice to

have something explained in a visual manner. There's which is odd for an audio podcast, right you know that maybe he senses that there's something I am curious about which seems to be all the craze right now, and that is all of the different ghost hunting shows on TV

right now. I'm a sucker for them myself and end up watching them somewhat intrigued with the technology that they use, the things they catch within the infrared spectrum, the e m F meters and e m F pumps that they used to attract entities, and the digital recorders used to capture what is called e v P electronic voice phenomenon. From what I understand, there's nothing hard and fast that says E m F detectors are legitimate for detecting levels

of magnetic activity. So it would be really nice to hear y'all talk a bit about the technology used in TV shows like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Labs, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal State. Thanks will Well, I think we're going to have a spirited discussion. Yes, I'm going to rattle my chains, you know. I will say that that my wife is a fan of a lot of these shows, um, and I have only watched bits and pieces of them, so I am

less familiar with them. But um, one of the things that I found out when I started getting into this is that, uh, they're not using a whole lot of high tech gadgetry in order to investigate the paranormal and a lot of stuff off the shelf. What little they're using, they're using incorrectly. Okay, I'm going to preface this by saying I'm going to preface this by saying I am a skeptic. And when I say skeptic, I don't mean

someone who automatically denies whether or not something exists. When I'm saying skeptic, I'm talking about a person who requires there to be some sort of empirical evidence that something exists before I just go ahead and accept it. And as far as ghost hunting goes, there is such an enormous lack of empirical evidence that any of this is doing anything that I find the whole industry that has

sprung up around ghost hunting to be infuriating. And I really do mean that, because, Okay, folks, if you want to type in e m F detector into any search engine, I guarantee you that at least one, if not several, of the main results that pop up first, are going to be about ghost hunting equipment. And here's the thing. They don't detect ghosts. I mean, there's no proof that they detect ghosts. There's no proof that ghosts even affect elector of magnetic fields, which is what e m F

detectors and meters are designed to detect. There's no proof that a ghost exists number one. And then there's no proof that if they do exist, that they affect these fields. So why would using this tool be an indication that there is a ghost present? Well, that's uh, that's sort of the whole thing is that I mean, is that people are using these people are using these devices um in hopes of finding something, and in many cases it's either in disproving the existence of a an entity in

the room or proving it. I mean it's not it's not. Hey, let's stick a tape recorder in the room for an hour. And it drives me nuts because why would this device, over any other be a good indicator that there is a presence in the room. That's what. That is the point where I'm already having my first problem with the whole ghost hunting thing is that it's like you arbitrarily assigned ghosts this ability to do something based upon I don't know what, and that somehow watching a little needle

move indicates that there must be something here. You can just as easily say, hey, let's take this metal detector and will run it over the ground and every time it beats, that's where a ghost is. Because I mean, there's you just you're making up the rules as you

go along. You can't do that. What you have to do first is established that there is such a thing as a ghost, and then determine whether or not a ghost is able to affect an electromagnetic field, Because then you could say, okay, this tool will detect this thing. That's the way science works. People. You don't sit there and assume something is true and then try and find a way to justify it. Here's how it works. You observe some sort of phenomena, You try and create an

explanation for that phenomena. You then test your explanation. If your explanation holds after multiple tests done by multiple people under multiple situations, and it still holds true, then you can say you know something. You can't just say, hey, this needle move, therefore there's a dead person in the room. What. No, that's not how it works. I joked that we could call this podcast how critical thinking works. Honestly, people, critical

thinking is so important. If you don't use critical thinking, if you just swallow that the needle moved, therefore something is in this room, then I don't know what to tell you. Okay, well, let's uh, let me breathe, let's back away from that from that edge. We're gonna have to stay with this edge because we have to talk about what E m F detectors actually do. Well, that's the thing, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Let's opinion aside.

Let's talk about this stuff that actually works what opinion. Sorry, I'm just well, that's but that's the thing, though, there are other people who claim that they have heard and seen things using this equipment. Countless I'm saying, and I

don't know I have. I have no doubts that there I have no doubts that there are people out there who truly believe that they have experienced something that is inexplicable, just as I have absolutely no doubt that the things they experienced were completely explicable because they did not have the necessary facts or ways of determining those facts at

their disposal at the time. And also, these events tend to become more um outlandish or or perhaps we should say, more extravagant over time as we think back and we tell stories over we tend to elaborate and and I'm not even saying people are are fibbing or anything like that. They could completely believe in what they're saying. There are stories I've told where I've gone back and looked at something, you know, like like a video of a performance I was in and realized that the story I tell is

not matching up to reality. But in my mind, that's exactly the way it happened. We all do this. It's just in case I think what it's done is spawned an entire industry. Well, you know, you're right that there there is no empirical evidence. There's nothing in scientific journals that indicates that any of these pieces of gear that we're going to talk about has any ability to really find a ghost. There's nothing in any scientific journals about

it that I was able to find in my research. Well, but the first step, of of course, is the fact that there's no scientific evidence for a ghost. So you can't be device could find something. That wouldn't be the point. But I looked, Um, I'm glad you did. But and you know what I found out. What's that some one of the culprits behind the idea of using electronics to try to find spirits or you know, some kind of paranormal activity Thomas Edison. He actually said that, Um, and

I didn't get the quote. I should have gotten the quote. But basically he said that he believed that there was a way to create an electronic instrument that if a ghost existed, would be that the instrument would be capable of detecting it, some sort of ghost detector to lice. Now, he he never built anything like that, and he never That doesn't necessarily mean that he believed in ghosts, because actually he said he didn't know whether or not they existed.

If they didn't exist, there should be a way to detect them, is what he was saying. And of course I actually saw quotes from him in a couple of places. Um, but it's kind of funny to imagine that, you know, I'm sure that that some people said, Okay, well, let's

try to build something that will detect a ghost. And if you believe that a ghost, if it exists, is creating some kind of field um magnetic or electrical, or you know, giving off some kind of signature in another plane that you cannot see, then you might try to use things like infrared cameras or e m F detectors or ion density detectors to try to find something that would indicate why you feel cold when you walk in

this room. That just it seems so strange to me, because you could just as easily say, you know, I believe ghosts exist, but the only people who can detect them are female, left handed redheads. I mean, that's just as valid a point as saying ghosts must exist therefore they give off some sort of electromagnetic field. I don't want to haunt you with the threat of ads, but it's time for us to take a quick break. I'm

sorry again. Well, this is one of those things that that surprised me when I started doing the research was that, um, the people who have been doing this for a while basically take a plain old tape re quarter and a camera and a notebook and they go in and they sit down and they try to find, you know, see if they see anything unusual. They take pictures, um and

try to make notes of anything they don't get. They don't buy a lot of fancy and there are plenty of um who who do this in the hopes of finding some sort of proof of of that there are such things as ghosts, but who are also very intellectually honest, and they they objectively look at each and every indicator and determine whether or not there is a physical explanation

for it or not. And in those cases, I think you'll find that most of those ghost hunters have so far come up zero percent on the ghost and a percent on some sort of physical explanation. Yeah, but that's not again, let me make this clear. That's not to say that ghosts do not exist. I can't say that. There's no way that I could say that ghosts do not exist and be honest with myself about it. I don't know. What I can say is that there's no empirical proof that they exist, and until there is, I

just don't believe in them. So, but let's talk about let's talk about the what electromagnetic field meters do. What you're designed to do. So these are devices that, as you would imagine, detect fluctuations in electro magnetic fields, and various things can create fluctuations. Usually it's some sort of electronic device, because, as you've probably heard us talk about before, electricity and magnetic fields are closely related. You can induce

one using the other. So these detectors, what they're designed to do is to detect fluctuations in the field, mainly for electrical purposes, and so you might detect a fluctuation around electronics where you might have something that's not properly grounded. It's really an indicator to tell you, Okay, wait, the wiring in my house isn't as good as I thought it was, and I need to have this looked at or the shielding on this this power cable is clearly not as strong as it needs to be, and that's

why I'm getting interference with my other electronics. That's what's meant for um it's and what what drives me nuts as seeing companies that are selling e m F meters which do have a legitimate useful application and they're saying it's a great e m F meter slash ghost detector then drives me crazy because again there's no proof that it's actually detectually detecting bathing other than electromagnetic fluctuations that

could be explained by wiring or magnets or whatever. And in fact, I saw one site and I'm not going to name the site, but I saw one site they had a frequently asked question section and said what reading am I looking for on this gadget and said a reading of two to seven milligos may be due to spirit activity? How do you determine that? How did you just say that, Oh, if you get a measure of two to seven, that means there's a there's probably a ghost there. This it's made up out of whole cloth

because there's no basis effect behind it. But at any rate. E m F meters are legitimate tools for electricians, not necessarily for ghost hunters. And maybe ghosts do affect e m F fields somehow, or I shouldn't say e m F fields because now I'm repeating part of the acronym. But maybe they do have some sort of effect on electromagnetic fields. But without any evidence to back that up,

we can't say for sure. And it turns out that in most cases, in fact, I would have would probably argue all cases whenever you use a meter and the bill needle is starting to go around and find a hot spot, there's probably just a wiring issue that would explain it. Um. Yeah. Another another item that I saw that it's more higher tech I guess, um, would be the ion density counter. Yes, and that could be used

for a lot of things. Um. What it does is it tries to detect the number of ions in a cubic centimeter of air, and it can be used to detect things like rate on um, whether there are combustible vapors in the area, electrical arcs. Right, very legitimate uses, UM, and this really uh plays into the whether you know, into the skeptics view of whether or not this gadget would be useful in detecting any paranormal activity. You would have to assume first that whatever the paranormal activity is

gives off ions. Well, that's number one. I thought that was assumed at this point. I'm I'm spelling it out, okay, because there's here's here's why I spell that out. I think there are a lot of people who use these devices who have no idea what the device is truly meant for, or at least was originally meant for. It's a good point, and they don't understand what it really

means when they get a reading off these devices. So I know it sounds like I'm going super basic on this, but it's really to drive home the point of there are legitimate uses for these devices that have nothing to do with ghost hunting, and if you keep that in mind before we move on to the whole ghost hunting thing, it helps explain away a lot of the quote unquote anomalies that you might find. I'm sorry, I interrupted you,

Please go on. Well, the thing about an ion detector or eye in density detector is the air has to be very very still around it, so it's a particularly sensitive device and lots of things can affect the reading on it. So like a draft, Yeah, a draft will affect the reading. And you know if a draft comes in, um, you know, you might say, oh wait, the needles moving. Yeah. It turns out that a lot of ghost behavior can be explained by poor zelent around the window. Sounds like

a joke, but it's really true. No, no, no, it's but it's it's funny because you know, just apparently just the slightest thing will um, you know, it really needs to sit still and be left alone for a while for it to be to give off an accurate reading of whether or not there are a lot of ions in the area, and of course the whole if there were ghosts, would they give off ions? So there you are. You're talking about devices that are very sensitive and can

easily give off false positives. That's another problem, and that it's very easy to interpret a false positive as evidence of some sort of supernatural activity, when in fact it may just be that there was a breeze that blew by and that's what affected the reading. Um. Knowing how to use this equipment properly eliminates a lot of the doubt around the equipment, all right, So what else. Um, well, you know, then some people actually have been using Geiger counters, apparently,

because which is designed to detect radiation exactly. Again, there's no I don't think a lot of them do. And I haven't heard, but I saw that in a list of equipment that you might here with you. I mean, if if a ghost is able to affect electromagnetic fields, why wouldn't a ghost be radioactive? I mean, why wouldn't ghosts be able to create jello out of thin air? I mean, we we could just go ahead and keep on attributing stuff to go all day long. And you know, again,

my metal detector example earlier on its completely valid. I mean, if you're gonna just grab whatever tools and use them to this purpose, why not a metal detector. I mean, we've we've seen motion sensors being used as a ghost hunting material as well. Um, lots of stuff can trip motion sensors, and I wonder if a ghost would trip a motion sensor. I mean, I don't understand how the I don't understand the set of rules that ghosts apparently obey. That's part of the problem is that if they trip

motion sensors but not other things. I mean, how does that work? I find it a kind of confusing night vision goggles too. That's that's actually a question I have, and maybe maybe somebody can answer that for me. And you know, I don't want to sound like I'm making fun of any of these shows, but if the ghosts can be seen in the lighter that, I mean, why are all these shows shot in the dark? Let me

explain that, because I really don't know. I have a I have a good reason for the whole dark ghost thing. That has everything to do with psychology, all right, and actually there's some physiology here as well. So at night, you're in you're you're at your house. At night, you settle down to go to sleep, and you hear a strange noise. At night, your house tends to be more

quiet than during the daytime. People have settled down, right, everyone's in bed, so noises that would normally be covered up by just the activity in your house during the daytime are no longer covered up. Your your mind is still alert. So you're laying in bed and you're thinking, is there someone moving around the house. I just heard a creaking noise I could just as easily be the sound of your house. Settling. Uh, it could be the sound of a board warping slowly, just boards do warp

over time. Sometimes they make noise. Sometimes it's like a low moaning noise, which might sound familiar to people who are familiar with the whole ghost mythology thing. Um, so that's part of it. Is just that that's the physiological part of it. But psychologically it's that you know, Uh, nighttime, that's when we're not concentrating on anything else. Our mind can completely focus on these events. And humans like to create patterns out of things. They like explanations for things.

And if we can't easily explain it by something that we're really familiar with, it's very easy to jump on the unfamiliar supernatural train and say, oh, well, this must have been caused by this paranormal activity. So you'll see similar things, like if you look into the clouds and you see a human face, it's because humans like patterns. We find patterns and stuff all over the place. That's actually called a paradolia is what's referred to as so

paradolia is where we start seeing patterns and things. We usually actually paradolia specifically about faces, being able to recognize faces and things like the water. You know, you might look into some muddy water and say, oh, my gosh, I just saw a face looking back at me. That wasn't a reflection, it was actually a face. Because we see these things, our mind creates a pattern and we

convince ourselves that we've seen something that wasn't necessarily there. Uh. The same sort of thing happens when we hear noises. We start to our brains start to to fill in gaps, and as a result, we add information there that wasn't necessarily there. Originally, the spirits are quiet, but the advertisers aren't,

So we're going to take another quick break. I would argue that this is also the case when you're talking about the whole electronic voice phenomenon stuff where you've taken a recorder and you you listen to the sounds that have been left on that recorder and you start to

try and pick stuff out. You'll find a lot of sound files out there where people will claim, oh, if you listen carefully, you'll hear a woman crying in the background, where you'll hear someone saying something that you just can't quite make it out, or maybe you can even sort

of make out a few words. I would argue with a lot of those, it's just random noises that our brain kind of pieces together and tries to make sense out of, because we don't really like random well, um, you know, they say, or at least the information I got when I was doing some research on it, indicated that people who are engaged in ghost hunting activities will tell you that they don't hear these sounds when they're actually in the room, but when they go back and

listen to the tapes, something has made that noise appear on the track. And of course the a lot of people who disbelieve that say that, you know, this is what's called I t C instrumental transcommunication, which is UM or no, that's what the proponents say that that's what it's called. They're trying to talk to you via the recording UM, and the people who are against to say, no,

that's electrical interference. Something is you know, making these noises pop up um on your uh, you know, on the tape recorder, on your digital recorder that you used to to do this and it's a flaw um. But you know, they people stared at computer screens trying to analyze the wave form, looking for the patterns again, You're looking for them again. It's just I think it's just our desire to be able to organize the universe in a way that makes sense to us. And I mean, that's that's

what science is all based on. It's trying to understand the universe. It's just that science takes a very specific procedure to do so, whereas things like the Ghost Hunters, they leap to a conclusion without necessarily having the proof to back it up, and then they're looking they're kind of looking for the proof after the conclusion, or they're taking anything that happens as some sort of evidence for the conclusion they've already arrived at. But that's more fun.

Oh my gosh. Okay, it's a good note on the table between us. But I think I think that's the point. I think that's the point of doing all of this stuff, is that you know, they like to go out and investigating and they're hoping that they'll find something, and some

of them just make a lot of money. There are people who depend upon this kind of belief system in order to make a living, and some of them are true believers and some of them are not and it doesn't matter to the ones who are not Actually, you know, the ones who don't believe in it, they don't care that, you know, there may or may not be anything to it. Um. Before we sign off on this, this whole thing, we

should also probably talk about photography and orbs. Are you familiar with the whole orb phenomenon, The glowing balls and supposedly indicate that there is a spirit present um. Actually, what it really indicates is just a bad flash. It turns out digital cameras have the flash located a little too close to the lens. That's why you hardly ever

see any kind of orbs in a professional photograph. Because professional photographers keep the flash well away from the lens, you don't tend to get this weird um orb effect which often it's not always, but often caused by the flash reflecting off of something in the photo, whether it's a reflective surface or dust or water vapor um, the flash tends to reflect the light is bouncing back at the lens and it shows up as an ORB in the photo. Also lens flare. That's the other really big

common cause of these orbs. It's not necessarily that uh, you know, the the your ancient ancestor is trying to make contact with you. It's that your digital camera kind of sucks. Okay, so uh And people might say, well, why why is it blurred? Well, that's probably because we don't tend to hold still very well. Whenever you're taking a photo of your shutter speed is is fairly slow.

Then Uh, even though the flashes on and off in a second, the fact that your hands are moving while the cameras taking the photo can cause a blurring effect. And that's why some of them aren't perfect orbs. They just look like a little blurry motion. Um. And there are other things that can happen as well. I've seen video tape where people said, look, this must be some

sort of ghost. You see the form that passed in front of the There was one of a gas station or it looked like a weird blue form passed in front of the the the the the gas dispensers, and I was thinking, um, no, that actually was probably a

bug that was on the lens of the camera. And uh, as soon as I thought that, I started to do some research, and I started looking at other people who were really good at at analyzing video, and that seemed to be the prevalent theory that there was something on the actual camera lens, and so it made it look like it was much larger than it was, and it made it look like it was passing in front of

the background as opposed to the foreground. So, uh, there's lots of ways that are our brains will trick us into thinking we've seen or heard or experience something that may not be the case. Well, I think until until

people get more scientific, they'll probably continue messing around with it. Yeah, I just I think of it as someone who just grabs a bunch of unrelated tools and they don't understand really what they're meant for, and they're using them for something totally different, and they think that that's somehow valid um.

And again, someone may go out there today and prove definitively the ghosts exist and that they just they exhibit certain behaviors, but to this date, they have not done that, and it's more like just people flailing around arguing that they're their methods are valid without any any way of backing it up. Which is why I go berserk, because there's just there's so much money being made out there by these people that it's just not we could be

putting that that effort, that thought into actual science. That would be great. And that was the classic episode of tech Stuff about ghost hunting technology. Now I want to say a few more things before we sign off, because, as I recall, I actually haven't listened to this rerun. I find it hard to listen to myself. I remember doing this episode even ten years ago, but I also remember getting kind of head up about it. So I want to clear a few things up first. I want

to say I happen to love ghost stories. I think they can be really fascinating and genuinely creepy. When I was in school, I checked out every single book in the library about ghosts and you know, spooky folklore. And some of my favorite movies are ghost story movies, like The Changeling that was a film from nineteen eighty. It's one I really love, despite the fact that the third act goes off the rails. Uh. I love the sixth sense,

I even love the others. One of my favorite things to watch right now are let's play videos of people playing a game called phasma Phobia. And in that game, you play as a ghost hunter. You use some of the technology we mentioned in this episode to try and track down and identify ghosts. It looks like it's great fun. Sadly, it looks like it's also best played with groups of friends, and that would mean I need to convince friends to play with me. But that's my own, you know, burden

to bear. But in all these cases we're talking about works of fiction or folklore. It's it's no more real than a fairy tale or a vampire story. So I think you can enjoy spooky stuff while also remaining skeptical of real world manifestations of that spooky stuff. I can enjoy a horror game or a movie without leaping to the conclusion that there are real world ghosts out there.

I certainly haven't seen anything remotely coming close to actual evidence that ghosts exist, or that the phenomena that's been observed to be ghosts can't be explained by a more mundane cause. Heck, I don't think you can even say that if such a thing as ghostly activity exists, I don't think you can necessarily link that to the concept of a ghost, as in an entity that represents a dead person. None of that is all I mean, it's

just fantasy. There's no science behind it, So have a happy Halloween, you know, enjoy some spooky entertainment, but be comforted that, as far as science has been able to determine, ghosts are only within our own imaginations. So thank you for listening. If you have anything you want to add or you want me to cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know on Twitter. The handles Text Stuff hs W, I'll talk to you again really soon, and Pleasant Nightmare is Happy Helloween. Text Stuff is an

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