How to best troubleshoot "ghost" activity

[xjx388]

I really like Soapy Sam's idea of having them document everything with photos and video and I've personally found that to be an effective way of debunking. Just tell them that, for the next three days, you want them to document every occurrence with photos or video. They can set-up a simple time-lapse with any web cam, they can have cam-corders set-up, they can carry their camera phones at all times, whatever. It's also important that they document every occurrence with who is in the house at the time and where they are. I think they will be surprised at how little actually occurs and how many of these occurrences are easily explained now that they are being vigilant.

Another idea, since the kitchen seems to be the focus of the "activity," is to set up two cameras (to cover all angles) in that room that record for long hours and let the family go about their business. You can even set up some bait for the "activity" by leaving glasses and spoons on the counters. My bet is that no glasses will fall, no spoons will spin and no ice will shoot from the fridge while the cameras are on.

You don't need an investigative group or fancy equipment, you just need a couple of cameras and some common sense.

 

[AdMan]

It's the 14 year old practicing his magic.

What's funny is that poltergeist "researchers" have noticed the correlation between weird phenomena and the presence of potentially mischievous teenagers, but they still "found that the agents were often children or teenagers, and supposed that recurrent neuronal discharges resulting in epileptic symptoms may cause recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK), which would affect the person's surroundings."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poltergeist#Psychokinesis

Yeah, right. Occam's razor, anyone?

 

[baron]

What's funny is that poltergeist "researchers" have noticed the correlation between weird phenomena and the presence of potentially mischievous teenagers, but they still "found that the agents were often children or teenagers, and supposed that recurrent neuronal discharges resulting in epileptic symptoms may cause recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK), which would affect the person's surroundings."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poltergeist#Psychokinesis

Yeah, right. Occam's razor, anyone?

Researchers have even caught these children cheating and still made excuses, such as OK, they hoaxed this event but surely they couldn't have hoaxed this one. Look at the Enfield case where two of the kids admitted to hoaxing and were caught on camera, and the fiasco with the 'spirit voice' which was produced only when the researchers weren't looking. The researchers concluded that this evidential explanation of cheating was not sufficient to explain everything and that paranormal forces were still at work.

 

[Cuddles]

I’m including this info because I believe something electrical is causing their occurrences.

Really?

1. Empty vase on counter slid about 12 inches. Checked the vase and counter and ensured that both were complete dry so condensation was not a cause.
2. A glass “flew” off the counter but didn’t break when it hit the opposite wall. When she picked up the glass and examined it she did not find any chips, breaks, fractures or scratches on it. She put the glass in the sink and walked away. When she came back to the sink and picked up the glass to examine it again, it broke in her hand but the breaks were in “U” shapes on opposite sides of the glass rim. The rest of the glass remained OK.
4. Her husband put a spoon down on the counter. While his back was turned he heard a scraping sound. When he turned back he saw that the spoon was pointing in the opposite direction.

How exactly could something electrical cause any of this? Out of six examples of "strange" activity you've prevented, at least half clearly have nothing to do with electricity, so I don't really see how your belief about it being power lines is any more reasonable that their belief that it's ghosts. Neither claim actually fits the observations.

It's also worth noting that a few hundred yards isn't actually very close to power lines at all. I live maybe 30 metres from some, and a lot of other people live much closer than that. If the stray field hundreds of metres from power lines was capable of destroying dishwashers and throwing glasses across rooms, you can be sure people would have noticed it before now. It also doesn't make sense that a few hundred metres away the field would be strong enough to do all this, but a few hundred metres plus the width of a room it isn't. So yeah, forget the power lines. Some of the things could be caused by electrical faults, but not by distant power lines.

As for more specific explanations:
1. Not enough information. Had the vase just been put down, or maybe just touched by something and we're supposed to be surprised it moved so far? Or did it just spontaneously move when no-one was near it and any movement at all is surprising? What kind of surface was it on? What's the base of the vase like?

2. "Flew"? As in it jumped into the air all by itself, or someone dropped/knocked it and was surprised how far it went? If the latter, I don't see anything surprising about this at all. Dropping isn't exactly a controlled action so things often end up where you're not expecting, and things don't always show obvious damage when dropped even if they are actually seriously weakened. I've had several instances of apparently undamaged glasses breaking, and I expect most other people have as well. Unless they're claiming it took off by itself, I just don't see anything interesting about this one. And if they are claiming that, the part where it later broke still isn't interesting.

3. I don't know how ice dispensers are supposed to work (why do Americans seem to be so obsessed with ice anyway?), but again there's more information needed. They shoot across the room in the sense that they're flying through the air, or in the sense that they come out slightly faster than expected and slide along the floor? As for why they come out at all, it could be a mechanical or an electrical fault. Has an engineer actually checked the fridge and tried to fix it, or at least explain what's wrong with it? If not, why not?

4. Again, needs more information. He put the spoon down and immediately turned his back and heard it spinning, or he turned his back and heard it a few minutes later? For the former, not really interesting at all. Sometimes things slide/spin/generally move around if you're not careful putting them down. For the latter, again not particularly interesting. I'm constantly thinking I placed things differently or even losing them entirely, even if I've only been holding them just a few minutes earlier. The exact placement of a spoon isn't the kind of thing people tend to may that much attention to, so the most likely explanation would be that he simply remembered it wrong.

5. Simple bad luck is an option, or there could be some electrical fault. If your description of the wiring in 6. is correct, the house electrics certainly sound rather dodgy. Lights are almost always on a separate circuit from appliances, so to have that not be the case in two different rooms suggests there could be some issues. Have they actually had anyone check it out? Did they even have anyone check out the second and third dishwashers?

6. Dogs being scared in a thunderstorm is not at all unusual. Lights going out in a thunderstorm isn't unusual. And the things you say are on the same circuit as the lights generally shouldn't be, so that's something to check otherwise the whole thing is completely unsurprising (also, it's recommended to turn off things like TVs and computers anyway during thunderstorms since their electronics can get damaged). As for the "dark shadow", the middle of a thunderstorm in a room with dodgy lights is going to be one of the best times for seeing funny shadows, since who knows what light sources there are going to be at any given time.

So yeah, obviously we can't give any solid explanations here, but some of these things just don't sound interesting at all, while the others really have far too little information available. And remember, it's no good asking for that information now, since they will be sure to remember things in a way that supports their beliefs. Not because they're dishonest or stupid, but simply because that's the way the human brain works - if you don't know all the details, it fills them in itself in a way that fits with what it already thinks it knows. The only way to get more information is to wait until things happen again and make sure to record them properly at the time. Preferably with video or pictures, but at the very least write everything down as soon as it happens. I'd definitely recommend doing that before getting people to wander around their house, especially since it doesn't seem to be particularly regular.

 

[Learjet]

...I will admit that I have never seen any of this activity...

Which may or may not have happened quite the way it was explained to you, trustworthy they be or not.

 

[Halfcentaur]

I understand, but the person who states that ice cubes flew across the room, or a glass flew across the room knows that it did not happen, and that he/she is lying, unless it was propelled by a magic trick string. In your position I would concentrate on trying to figure out that scenario, rather than going along with their fantasies.

Or they are deceiving themselves, which is more likely than intentional deception, because almost everyone does this. I remember jumping to paranormal conclusions myself, and have seen it many times. It's not lying, it's the suppression of skepticism in favor of the slight possibility of something, similar to someone hoping something happens. People may fall back on "why would I ever want to be haunted by a ghost?"

Because it's the sort of thing you only see happen on movies and television shows. It's supposedly rare and something many people live their entire lives wanting to see. It's also evidence to them of life after death. And who really wants to just disappear and never see their loved ones again when they die but the most jaded among us?

Now in this situation you have an entire family who are all prone to this self deception and desire to experience something strange, and they are feeding off each other's enthusiasm and confusion. It get's to where any little thing is included in their idea of this "case". Children are frequently portrayed as somehow living in a different world from adults, so the phrase "Her youngest son (14 years old) says he has seen stuff but doesn’t like to talk about it" relies on this presupposition that is a classic theme in this old and archtypical plot line.

This is why this is not really something you can deal with OP. You're just going to come off as a cynical or jaded skeptic to them, unless they are very willing to look at themselves in a light the average person isn't usually willing to.

Your best solution is to innocently and with subtlety make harmless suggestions about what is reasonable and possible. But you're in territory where people are going to be taking skepticism itself as a personal attack on their credibility, their sanity, their sense of competence, and their desire to experience something people live their whole lives wondering about.

If these people are reasonable and logical, over time this will fade away and become a strange harmless anecdote they speak of over the years less and less.

If they are prone to buying into far fetched scams, you're risking insulting them. But if you think they are going to be scammed, I'd say it's worth it if you care about them.

Tact is everything in this case.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Researchers have even caught these children cheating and still made excuses, such as OK, they hoaxed this event but surely they couldn't have hoaxed this one. Look at the Enfield case where two of the kids admitted to hoaxing and were caught on camera, and the fiasco with the 'spirit voice' which was produced only when the researchers weren't looking. The researchers concluded that this evidential explanation of cheating was not sufficient to explain everything and that paranormal forces were still at work.

When I was six years old my grandfather died. During that time period, my parents were fighting one night and my mother was upset, probably she had been beaten as it happened often. I was in one of my depressed "black" feelings as I called them at the time, and my mother was comforting me while I was crying.

I was really into ghost stories and paranormal activity, scouring over the Time Life collections and whatever else the library had, so I was thinking a lot about my grandfather and the afterlife.

As my mother was rocking me to sleep, I decided to tell her a lie. Both to indulge my own hopes and fantasies, and to offer her some comfort and something to take her mind off the domestic violence and the death of her father.

I told her there in the room with us was the spirit of my grandfather, smiling and waving to us both. She shed a tear and told me I was making up stories, but I insisted and described things in great detail.

For years whenever this came up I maintained by story, almost coming to believe it. But finally in my teenage years I admitted to her the truth.

Ghosts are fun and exciting and can offer people a sense of hope in some contexts. It's always amazing to me when I hear someone ask "why would they make it up?"

Especially with small children.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I will admit that I have never seen any of this activity

Exactly. Case closed.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

1. Empty vase on counter slid about 12 inches. Checked the vase and counter and ensured that both were complete dry so condensation was not a cause.

Keep in mind that memory is an odd thing. Oftentimes you remember something cool and memorable and then, upon revisiting it, you see that it had grown in your mind and wasn't as awesome in reality after all.

So it's quite possible the vase slid a short distance due to some natural cause, and then the memory just grew from there.

3. Ice cubes “shoot out” of the refrigerator ice cube dispenser. They don’t just fall out like when the dispenser lever is pressed but actually “shoot” across the room.

Ice expanding as it freezes, for then to be catapulted out when there's not enough room for them?

4. Her husband put a spoon down on the counter. While his back was turned he heard a scraping sound. When he turned back he saw that the spoon was pointing in the opposite direction.

Gravity can do that to spoons. Other than that, anecdotal.

5. Since the house was built they have been though four dishwashers. Each one just stops working for no reason (motor is not burned out, wiring is OK, lights come on, etc, but they just don’t work).

Were they the same dishwasher model? Have other customers buying the same dishwashers reported similar problems?

6. During a recent strong thunderstorm the lights went out in the kitchen and the adjoining family room (the rest of the house lights stayed on). The odd thing was that the TV in the family room was still working (it is on the same circuit breaker as the lamp) and the clock on the microwave oven in the kitchen was still working (it is on the same circuit as the kitchen lights).

Are you sure about this?

Her dogs (which had been laying by her feet because of the thunder) started growling and barking and then ran upstairs. When she flipped the switch to turn on the kitchen lights they would not turn on. She said she noticed a “dark area” in the air in the kitchen which she described as a “shadow”. She said she yelled out in frustration that she was “tired of this BS” and the lights just turned on by themselves. The dogs would not come down for almost an hour.

Keep in mind that the dogs could have been reacting to her distress, rather than the events themselves. Dogs are sensitive creatures, and terrified humans can easily scare them, maybe to the point where they think they're in danger and run away. Just a hypothesis.

 

[tsig]

Well there is a device that can diagnose a problem with a dishwasher. It's called a DVM, digital volt meter. It is used in conjunction with a skilled repairman who understands how the dishwasher works, and does not assume ghost like causes from the get go.

You seem to be making a lot of assumptions that have no bearing on actually repairing an electrical device. Things break, appliances fail. This is not unusual, but to have that many fail is just bad luck. Again, there is always a reason why a failure occurs. It just depends on whether a particular repairman is clever enough to figure it out. "Motor looks ok" means nothing.

That's true motors seldom show their true emotions so it could feel bad and you'd never know.

 

[Cainkane1]

I hope someone can help me to find a legitimate, honest organization to investigate unusual events at my friends’ house. They are thinking “paranormal”, I’m thinking “just haven’t found a rational explanation yet.” Either way, I’d like to have a reputable group check it out before my friend calls Ghostbusters® (or whatever scam artists are ghost hunting today).

First a little background on the area: our subdivision is less than 10 years old and is located in former farm fields southwest of Chicago. The ground was leveled and new soil trucked in and graded. They had the house built and have been the only owners. They were one of the first families to move in to the subdivision. Their house backs up on some trees and more plowed fields plus high tension power lines are running behind them a few hundred yards away. I’m including this info because I believe something electrical is causing their occurrences.

Now the “events”. All of them happen in kitchen which is located in the back of the house (closer to the power lines):
1. Empty vase on counter slid about 12 inches. Checked the vase and counter and ensured that both were complete dry so condensation was not a cause.
2. A glass “flew” off the counter but didn’t break when it hit the opposite wall. When she picked up the glass and examined it she did not find any chips, breaks, fractures or scratches on it. She put the glass in the sink and walked away. When she came back to the sink and picked up the glass to examine it again, it broke in her hand but the breaks were in “U” shapes on opposite sides of the glass rim. The rest of the glass remained OK.
3. Ice cubes “shoot out” of the refrigerator ice cube dispenser. They don’t just fall out like when the dispenser lever is pressed but actually “shoot” across the room.
4. Her husband put a spoon down on the counter. While his back was turned he heard a scraping sound. When he turned back he saw that the spoon was pointing in the opposite direction.
5. Since the house was built they have been though four dishwashers. Each one just stops working for no reason (motor is not burned out, wiring is OK, lights come on, etc, but they just don’t work).
6. During a recent strong thunderstorm the lights went out in the kitchen and the adjoining family room (the rest of the house lights stayed on). The odd thing was that the TV in the family room was still working (it is on the same circuit breaker as the lamp) and the clock on the microwave oven in the kitchen was still working (it is on the same circuit as the kitchen lights). Her dogs (which had been laying by her feet because of the thunder) started growling and barking and then ran upstairs. When she flipped the switch to turn on the kitchen lights they would not turn on. She said she noticed a “dark area” in the air in the kitchen which she described as a “shadow”. She said she yelled out in frustration that she was “tired of this BS” and the lights just turned on by themselves. The dogs would not come down for almost an hour.

I will admit that I have never seen any of this activity but she has always been a stable, rational person. Her husband is a down-to-earth, no-nonsense guy and has seen these things. Her youngest son (14 years old) says he has seen stuff but doesn’t like to talk about it. Her sister had never seen anything when she visited but said she always gets “chills” when she is in the kitchen.

I know this all sounds like a load of crap or something from an episode of Biography Channel’s “My Ghost Story”. I would just like to see if anyone can recommend an honest logical group in the Chicago area that could help us figure out why their house is having these things happen. Thank you.

I think "hauntings" are caused by electrical activity too. I was watching some paranormal show and a man claimed he had a "ghost machine" He said that since ghosts tended to drain batteries he would convert regular electricity into the same electricity that batteries use. He did this with what appeared to be an electric train transformer.

This caused swirling dust which drifted around the room. He said this was a ghost but you could tell it was magnetic dust and nothing supernatural. Since ghosts so called often appear during lightening storms its my guess that people who believe in the ghost nonsense mistake whirling dust for a spook.

Add hallucination and fear and voila. You got a ghost.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I've had loose wires in outlets that made the lights work sometimes and sometimes not. If you walked by one outlet, it would be just enough vibration to either turn it on or off. Not every time consistently, but it was pretty weird to see it happen and if you believed in ghosts instead of believing in electricity it would probably scare you.

 

[12AX7]

2. A glass “flew” off the counter but didn’t break when it hit the opposite wall. When she picked up the glass and examined it she did not find any chips, breaks, fractures or scratches on it. She put the glass in the sink and walked away. When she came back to the sink and picked up the glass to examine it again, it broke in her hand but the breaks were in “U” shapes on opposite sides of the glass rim. The rest of the glass remained OK.

I'd be interested in examining the wallner lines on that glass.

 

[C_Felix]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtyNeMazZY8

 

[bookitty]

I can't speak for the glass flying but the breakage is pretty common. As a bartender, I'd have one normal looking glass break while I was washing it at least once a week. It happens pretty quick and if you're in the middle of a rush you can slice up your hands before you see that it's broken. I looked at the glasses while washing them but rarely saw any flaws. Glass is fragile in weird ways.

The last place I shared with a roommate was spooky. It was a two-story Spanish style townhouse built in the 20's. Because taller buildings had gone up around it, and there was very little ambient electrical lighting, it had dark spots. Areas which were always shadowed. Two places were particularly creepy - the top of the stairs because it looked like the light from the rooms on either side should illuminate it and a spot in the kitchen which was blocked from both outdoor and electrical light by an island counter.

We had also been told that the kitchen is where the previous tenant had died after falling, cracking her hip and not being discovered for three days. She apparently owned the building and had lived there since it was built.

Also in the kitchen - an old wooden door which led down to a small cellar with old rusty unused electrical meters, some plumbing and a dirt floor. It was lit by a single bulb in true "don't go down there!!!" style.

Basically this place was gagging for a ghost. After 2 months of living there it had one. Every single odd occurrence from a misplaced fork to cats running down the stairs was attributed to "the shadow." It didn't help that some genuinely strange things happened - locked doors blowing open in the middle of the night, heavy sounds like footsteps on the stairs which woke us up at the same time, a woman's scream cut off quickly coming from the kitchen. (Although I have a sneaking suspicion that was cats, raccoons or both getting into the cellar from outside.)

When we moved in, the idea of ghosts were just entertainment. By the time we moved out we were ghost-hunters. Looking back, it all seems pretty silly. The locks on the doors were very old and not stable during the best of times, cats act weird every day, the place was not insulated and we had neighbors with stairs on both sides. There was a perfectly logical explanation for everything but the subliminal spooky made everything seem significant.

 

[sloinker]

I would get an electrician to check for wiring errors in the kitchen. It's possible you are supplying 220 volts to the dishwasher and refrigerator either full time or intermittently. That would be ok if you were in England but us Americans like our outlets at 115 volts and 60 cycles.This overvoltage possibility would have the effect of causing premature failures of electronic components and may indeed cause the ice dispenser to become more vigorous while dispensing. The most logical reason for the ghost occurences is going to be something mundane most likely. Hire an electrician and see if the paranormal goes away.

 

[tynan]

What it is with ghosts and trivial acts of mischief ? Why are they so taken with shoving dinnerware around, you'd think they'd have better things to do.

 

[Sati1984]

What it is with ghosts and trivial acts of mischief ? Why are they so taken with shoving dinnerware around, you'd think they'd have better things to do.

We don't know how ghosts work, so it's possible that they don't want to throw forks and stuff around intentionally, but somehow what they do manifests as physical dinnerware flying and other assorted occurrences.

Of course, this is just a load of nonsense, but you can't logically argue against ghosts. Since even if they exist and are logical beings, we don't know the logic of the whole thing.

Not like your "they sure have better things to do" argument was a particularly logical one

 

[tynan]

Not like your "they sure have better things to do" argument was a particularly logical one

How quotes work:

When quoting someone you generally select the relevant part of what someone has said, reproduce it verbatim and place quotes around it - it's less useful to reword the thrust of what someone has said (which can often be misleading), fortunately the magic of cut and paste means people only need misquote if their intention is to misquote.

 

[cj.23]

Researchers have even caught these children cheating and still made excuses, such as OK, they hoaxed this event but surely they couldn't have hoaxed this one. Look at the Enfield case where two of the kids admitted to hoaxing and were caught on camera, and the fiasco with the 'spirit voice' which was produced only when the researchers weren't looking. The researchers concluded that this evidential explanation of cheating was not sufficient to explain everything and that paranormal forces were still at work.

I have read most of the Enfield stuff, and talked to both sides of the SPR investigation team, and I'm still no wiser. I'm with Grosse and Playfair in it was not all the kids doing stuff: I simply have no idea what actually happened there though. One day I really should write a full assessment of the case on Polterwotsit, but seriously, at this remove it's getting increasingly hard to know what actually happened. Still Janet has been interviewed a lot more recently, and Guy is still with us, and the Channel 4 documentary "Interview with a Poltergeist" was well worth watching. If you google it's on YouTube etc, and well worth the effort.

Now poltergeist cases happen to be my academic specialty - yes seriously - though I write quite a bit on apparitions - but honestly, I would not be certain of anything about Enfield: but I certainly could not dismiss it either.

cj x