Ghost Hunting: Levels 6-10

I was pretty psyched to start the Ghost Hunting profession.  But like all the other career paths, I had kind of lost interest by the time I got to Level 8 or so.  The great thing about the new professions is that you get to play your Sim as they work.  The sucky thing about the new professions is that you have to play your Sim as they work!  It's a dilemma.

Ghost Hunting levels 6 through 10 are not too different from the first 5 levels.  Strangely, Sunset Valley began to be plagued by more high-level hauntings, and fewer of the "suck up the floaty ghost" kind.  I found my Sim being sent out more often to "Banish Angry Spirits," a pastime which does carry a slight risk of getting your ass kicked by a ghost.  Which is hilarious, by the way!

I grew exceptionally tired of the incidents where you have to scan for the ghosts first.  Then the game makes you play a version of "cold… cold… ice cold… warmer…" with the little messages you get.  Are the ghosts in this room?  No?  How about the next room?  This is the opposite of a challenge.  Much like the tomb "adventures," this just feels like grinding to me.

At Level 6, you get a new uniform.  This is a slick outfit, black with piping in a shade I call "X-Files Green."  At Level 8 you get a better Banshee Banisher, although I couldn't really tell the difference in performance.  At Level 10 you get the "Spirit Positioning Device," which kind of works like the Collection Helper, but with spirits.

The Spirit Positioning Device promised the most potential for fun.  It gives a pushpin display on the town map, showing where you can find spirits.  Just click on the pushpin to send your Sim to that lot, then scan for spirits, suck them up, and sell them at the Science Lab for extra cash.  

In practice, it doesn't work quite that smoothly.  One thing you start appreciating about gems and seeds is, they don't move around!  It seems like half the time when I get to the lot, the spirits have already wandered away.  Or a homeowner gets alarmed and starts chiding my Sim for "behaving inappropriately."

One strange thing I noticed is that after my Sim hit Level 10, the experience meter reset to zero.  Almost as if there are more than 10 levels!  Can that be possible?  One thing I can say for sure is that after you hit Level 10, if you max out the experience bar again, the Mayor throws you a little party!  

As you can see in the picture above, my Sim was called to a gathering in front of City Hall.  Other Sims threw ticker tape, and brandished protest signs with his professional logo on them.  (I guess they're the opposite of "protest signs," whatever that would be.)  Then the Mayor gave my Sim the "Key to the City," which appeared in his backpack.  Neat, right?!

The Physics of Cold Spots: Part 1 of 2

Cold spots are one of the hallmarks of a haunting.  Any ghost hunter worth the title will carry some sort of thermometer for testing the temperature of the air.  Many people report that the ambient temperature drops when ghosts are present (or about to be present).  The standard explanation is that the spirits are drawing the energy from the air in order to manifest.  But what does that mean, and is it plausible?  

The phenomena of cold spots is well-known enough to be featured in television shows like Supernatural and movies like The Sixth Sense.  Just before a ghost appears, things get chilly enough that you can see the actors' breath.  There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence regarding cold spots.

A lot of "cold spot" accounts can be written off as a case of misidentification.  I know that I frequently mistake feeling hungry for feeling tired.  I think "Man, I'm really tired!"  But then I eat something, and magically I am no longer tired.  

Imagine then how easy it is to misidentify a physical sensation under stressful circumstances, like investigating a hallway where you just heard footsteps, even though you're alone in the house.  Under these terrifying situations, it's understandable that people could mistake the physical characteristics of fright - like the hair standing up on your neck and arms - for being cold.  

I immediately write off any accounts of cold spots where the cold spot is no colder than the ambient temperature outside.  Let's say it's 75 degrees inside a house, and 58 degrees outside, and a researcher measures a drop inside from 75 degrees to 62 degrees.  That's not a cold spot - that's a draft, straight up.  It may be a strange, irregular draft, or it may be a blob of cooler air from someone having opened a door earlier.  But it's not ghosts.

We're used to thinking of the air inside a house being pretty much the same temperature.  But if you start paying attention, you will notice it's not as homogenous as you think.  As you move through your home, you're constantly moving between pockets and zones of different temperatures.  You may never even notice - until a ghostly experience puts you on alert, and sharpens your attention.

As for the explanation that the spirits draw energy from the air in order to manifest.  This is possible, although incredibly inefficient.  You can tell it doesn't work very well just based on the fact that we don't do this!  Just look at how expensive it is to cool your house with an air conditioner.  

If it was possible to extract heat from air and use it as energy in any meaningful way, you wouldn't have to plug in an air conditioner - it would be able to suck energy from the air to run itself WHILE it cooled your room!  As awesome as that would be, it's not the way the world works.

In the next article, we will take a look at the Peltier effect, and why it may or may not be what ghosts are using.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Kansas Poetry (Patrick)

Kennedy's FBI Files

The FBI under the Freedom of Information Act released some of its files on the late Edward Kennedy, the long serving member of the Senate, considered the most effective senator ever. He is a historic figure. He was a leading voice for American liberalism, and as such was never popular with the right-wing. One right-wing newsletter this morning, after scanning over the files, focused on what they could find that gave a voyeur's glimpse of Mr. Kennedy's private life, and the morning right-wing electronic acid sheet concluded that the great man was a man-whore, a man who slept around, who drank too much and who enjoyed the company of two many women.

The files the FBI released yesterday on Edward Kennedy dealt mainly with threats on his life. Mr. Kennedy was a magnet for all kinds of kooks, malcontents, nuts and insane persons who wanted to do him harm. Besides reporting on the many threats against Mr. Kennedy, others are pulling from the files, for what ever reason, the bile that they can to make a headline that can drive a story, that can draw eyeballs to themselves and to their output. Why? To carry on a political assassination of the man in the grave? To toss dirt on his reputation?

In the play Julius Caesar, a great man has been assassinated. Shakespeare wrote these lines for his character Mark Anthony to deliver at the funeral -- "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with --."

In this case let it be with Mr. Kennedy. It is left to those among us who remember the good that Mr Kennedy did, to remember him for the good that he did.

Beached Shoes With Feet Inside

Imagine you're taking a lovely stroll along the beach one day, when you encounter a running shoe lying on the sand.  Inside: a decomposed human foot.  Hard to believe, but seven such feet have been found on the beaches of the Pacific Northwest to date.  

The first two feet were found only a week apart, on islands in the Strait of Georgia, in August of 2007.  Both feet were left, and male, and encased in running shoes.  The first was found on Jedediah Island on August 20th, and the second was found in a Reebok shoe on Gabriola Island on August 26th.  Authorities were baffled, and the public was titillated and a little bit scared.  

Only a few months before, the trial of Robert Pickton, the Vancouver, BC pig farmer and prolific serial killer had begun.  The trial was still in motion when the first two feet were found, and many people jumped immediately to the conclusion that the severed feet were the work of a serial killer.  Since Pickton's victims were all female, and he notoriously fed his victims' remains to his pigs, it was assumed that these feet were the hallmark of a second serial killer active in the area.  

Foot #3, a man's right foot, washed up in a Nike shoe on Valdes Island on February 8, 2008.  

Foot #4 was found in a New Balance shoe on Kirkland Island just a few weeks later, on May 22nd.  This was the first female foot to be found.  

Foot #5 was a man's left foot, found on Westham Island on June 16.  This one was later matched with Foot #3, from Valdes Island.

Foot #6 was a man's right foot, found in a trail shoe on the Washington coast, off the Strait of Juan de Fuca on August 1, 2008.  This was the first foot to be found outside Canada, although it wasn't too far from the others.

Foot #7, a woman's left foot in a New Balance shoe, was found on the Fraser River on November 11, 2008.  This foot matched the woman's right foot, #4, which was found on Kirkland Island.

Foot #8 was found on October 27, 2008.  It was later identified as being that of a man who had been reported missing.  Foul play is not suspected, "due to the circumstances of his death."

Confusing the issue was a hoax foot, which was planted along the Campbell River.  This was an animal's paw, tucked into a sock inside a shoe.  Why anyone would try to pull a prank like this is anyone's guess, really.  Ha ha!  Whatever.

As to why this keeps happening, scientists found that the feet of a sunken corpse will quickly be "disarticulated" by the work of crabs and other aquatic scavengers.  Once the foot is separated from its body, a running shoe is buoyant enough to carry it a long distance on ocean currents.

The real surprise is that the shoe thing only started in 2007.  Presumably feet have been washing up in running shoes for decades, at least since the early models of Air Jordans and Reeboks became popular.  The consensus of the RCMP and the researchers involved is that this is a combination of coincidence and increased public awareness of disarticulated human feet in running shoes. Although naturally, not everyone is convinced!

Celebrity Paranormal Project, "Mad Ray"

Once again, the show (I assume) invents a character.  Because ghosts aren't exciting or scary enough; we need an actual bad guy that we can focus on.  The show's intro says that "Mad Ray Golina prowled underground tunnels and stalked staff members.  When he committed suicide to avoid a lobotomy, they thought the violence would end.  It didn't."  Awesome!

We return to "Warson Asylum," the show's alias for Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut.  Having just watched the Ghost Hunters episode where they investigated the same location, it was interesting to compare and contrast things directly.  I mean, for one thing, there is no need to tell a bogeyman story about a crazy man in the tunnels.  The tunnels are scary, end of story.

This time on deck we have an NFL linebacker Jeremiah Trotter, actress Traci Lords, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, American Idol star Kimberly Caldwell, and "While You Were Out" host Evan Farmer.   (Traci Lords looked absolutely fantastic, by the way.  How does she do it?)

In the first investigation, Kimberly Caldwell and Gilbert Gottfried are sent through the tunnels to an empty storage room.  The narrative is that a security guard found a homeless guy living there, who claimed to be Ray Golina.  But later the guard learned that Golina was dead, and he had seen a ghost.  Dun dun dunnnnnn!!!

Gottfried's investigative style is unorthodox, to say the least.  HE IS THE LOUDEST GHOST INVESTIGATOR I HAVE EVER SEEN.  GILBERT GOTTFRIED NEEDS TO USE HIS INSIDE VOICE.

They get a ridiculously fake heat signature, but I was curious as to how it was created.  It was a clear human silhouette, which seemed to react to their presence by moving around.  Is it possible to project a picture of heat?  Or had the producers simply tampered with the FLIR camera ahead of time?  Hard to say.

In the next investigation, Traci Lords and Jeremiah Trotter go down into the basement to investigate the tunnels themselves.  Lords initially chickened out and refused to sit in a patient's wheelchair, which I thought was pretty funny.  She did eventually work up the nerve to sit in the chair, at which point the show fell back on its "recreate the circumstances" schtick.  Trotter pushes Lords down the hallway in the wheelchair, which is just plain absurd.

The best part of the episode is when Lords asks Trotter, "Was I a terrible partner?"  Trotter answers, with 100% heartfelt sincerity, "No, you did a great job."  I really liked him for that.

This episode's Freak Out Award goes to Kimberly, who is sent up to the dormitory with Evan to try some spirit writing.  The show splits them up, noises are heard, and Kimberly completely loses her head.  I really felt for her - the poor thing ends up standing in the dark with her face buried in her hands, screaming for her partner.

In the fourth investigation, Lords and Trotter go up to the attic.  Lords is sent up alone, and is instructed to hang a bell from a chain in the room where Mad Ray supposedly killed himself.  According to the show, this bell is the "ghost catcher," and it will chime whenever a ghost passes by.  This is new to me, although I found a mention of it on a Tripod website.  (Warning: autoplays MIDI "Stairway to Heaven")  Just goes to show, you can learn things from the oddest sources.

Paranormal State, “Hide & Seek”

Now that Ghost Hunters has gone on its mid-season break, I was casting around for some more entertainment.  Having never watched Paranormal State, I picked an episode at random and sat down to see what it had to offer.

 

Ghost Hunters has really become the benchmark for TV shows about ghosts.  I tried hard to set aside all of that, and watch Paranormal State on its own terms.  I was moderately successful at this.

 

Paranormal State occupies that strange middle ground on the continuity between “totally real” and “totally fake.”  From what I gleaned online, the homeowners are real people, the investigators are real investigators, and the scenes are not “creative re-enactments.”  That being said, the people on screen seemed very stiff, and their dialogue often seemed forced.  Not unlike what you might see on, say, Unsolved Mysteries.

 

The conceit of the show is that Penn State’s Paranormal Research Society travels around the countryside to investigate hauntings.  College kids?  Really?  I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering what these kids were studying, and whether they were skipping class for this.  Shouldn’t they be at home writing papers or something? 

 

The youth of the players also works against their credibility.  For me, anyway.  But then again, I’m 38.  Apparently the show is meant to target a younger demographic. 

 

In this episode, the team investigates a spooky Victorian house in Indiana.  The family has had a lot of odd things happen after they started renovations.  (The discerning ghost hunting-watching audience will note that renovations often kick up ghosts, along with plaster dust.)  I’m not very convinced by reports of electrical problems in a house that old, but whatever. 

 

The house, which was used by smugglers during the Prohibition era, is really awesome.  It’s chock full of secret compartments, mysterious basement rooms, a lot of odd history.  And all the upstairs rooms have locks on the outside, which is a little disturbing.

 

About halfway through the episode they drag in a psychic.  “I’m feeling trap doors,” she says, waving her hand over the basement where we know there are trap doors.  Was she prepped?  Everything she says is far too pat.  She gives a story about a little girl lured to a secret basement room, where she died.  The homeowner explains that during the renovations she found a collection of a little girl’s things in a hidden room.

 

The psychic also says she senses George (an evil old man) and Abigail (who is maybe the little girl, or maybe a schoolteacher, I wasn’t quite sure).  A team-member proceeds to the local library, where she learns that an Abigail did live in the house.  As did a George, who ended up being committed to a mental hospital for “a nervous disorder.”

 

This was all way too pat for me.  Particularly coming from a psychic, you know?  Psychics are never that accurate.  I smell pre-show prepping.

 

At any rate, this was a reasonably interesting episode.  Nothing very spectacular happened in the way of evidence, although a team-member did have some kind of scripted psychic meltdown at the end as the team tried to coax Abigail to move on into the light. 

Ghost Hunters, "Norwich State"

This episode marks the end of the first half of the sixth season.  Ghost Hunters is going on that mid-season break that seems to take foreeeeeeeever, which makes me sad every year.  Chrissy's comment reminded me that I hadn't reviewed this episode yet (slacker!) partly because it took a while to digest.

TAPS sent us out with a bang this year, by investigating Norwich State Hospital.  This is the same location which was featured in a Celebrity Paranormal Project episode I recently watched, titled "Pearl."  The Celebrity Paranormal Project episode aired in 2006, and in that time some clean-up has apparently taken place at the hospital.  The big pile of stuff in the stairway was cleaned out, for one thing.  But the drifts of paper in the administration area are still there.

Norwich State Hospital is an excellent example of the down side of ghost hunting.  This property has been severely damaged by amateur ghost hunters and trespassers.  Haunting though their resulting photo galleries may be, this irresponsible behavior has caused a lot of destruction, both intentional and accidental.  

It's also entertaining to compare the props and artifice and complicated schemes and "missions" of Celebrity Paranormal Project with the simplicity of Ghost Hunters.  Setting aside TAPS'impressive experience and scientific mindset (recently praised by Discover Magazine as "the best science show on TV"), you get far better television out of sending two people out into the darkness.  

It's the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid.  Amy Bruni and Kris Williams standing in a silent empty hallway is a thousand times more engrossing and unsettling than an entire episode of celebrity machinations and fakery.

When it comes to ghosts, less is more.

Which brings me to my only criticism of this episode: the Syfy channel needs to knock it off with the "sinister" soundtrack.  I had to listen to Jason and Grant's "ghost dog" clip three times before I could finally figure out which noise they were talking about.  And the overall atmosphere is completely spoiled by the soundtrack at several points.  If I'm straining to hear the slightest noise along with the investigators, it destroys the experience for the soundtrack to add DUMM DUMMM DUM BOING CRASH BANG.

The minimalism of Ghost Hunters is its best strength.  I found myself contemplating this truth after the hair literally stood up on the back of my neck when Amy Bruni and Kris Williams emerged from the creepy tunnel into an undocumented falling-down hospital.  No amount of special effects wizardry or action-packed paranormal CGI sequences could match the simple moment when Bruni and Williams realize they have no idea what building they're in, but that it's almost certainly haunted.  

I chose to be deliberately vague with this review, because I don't want to spoil any of the specifics.  If there's only one episode you watch this season - possibly ever - it should be this one.  I will say that I think every TAPS member completely loses his or her cool at least once during the investigation, which is a pretty impressive feat for a little ol' abandoned mental hospital.

EVP: Electronic Voice Phenomena

Every paranormal show worth its snuff eventually whips out the EVP sessions.  What is EVP?  Is EVP a real thing?  Well… it depends!

The term stands for "Electronic Voice Phenomena," and describes sounds - usually voices - which can be heard on electronic recording media, but which were not heard at the time.

The term covers any kind of electronic recording device, from a video camera to an MP3 recorder and everything in between.  Back in the day, EVP used to be recorded on 4-track tapes or on mini cassette recorders.  These days, most EVP are recorded on digital recorders like mini-DV or hand-held MP3 recorders.

Let's say you're in a haunted location, and you have an MP3 recorder sitting on the table beside you.  At the time, you don't hear anything unusual.  But later when you listen to the recording, you hear a voice.  That's an EVP.  (If you had heard it at the time, it would just be "a voice.")

The theory among believers is that spirits can somehow interact with recording devices more easily than they can interact with us out loud.  Many people believe that spirits are electrical in nature, that they are able to manipulate electrical fields easily.  This is what explains cold spots - the spirits are drawing energy from the air in order to manifest, which makes the air cold.

If you have an easier time manipulating electrical fields than you do resonating the air to make a noise, then you will find it much easier to "talk" at an electronic recorder.  Physical recording devices like cassette tapes record using magnetic media, which are easily manipulated with electricity.  Digital recording devices rely on electrons, which are probably even easier to manipulate in that sense.

The problem with EVP recordings is that they are often so vague and open to interpretation.  If your dead uncle Phil wanted to say hello, don't you think he would say "Hello"?  Instead of "mumble mumble hiss"?

Although it is theoretically easy for spiritual energy beings to affect an electronic recording device, it's also easy for other electrical interference to do so.  Even in the absence of ghosts, a recording device can pick up snatches of radio waves, television broadcasts, HAM radio chatter, CB radios - you get the picture.  We are awash in unseen electrical interference, any of which could easily lay down a brief recording on a handheld MP3 player.

One thing you will notice is that an EVP session's playback often has the volume greatly boosted.  I guess you have to crank up the volume in order to hear those whispers!  This only adds to the likelihood that the EVP is simply an electrical artifact.  

If you listen hard enough, with the volume loud enough, you can hear all kinds of things on an otherwise-empty recording.  This is particularly true of physical media like cassettes, if the cassette is being re-used.  It is also true of digital recorders, because the previous recording isn't always fully erased.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user John-Morgan

Celebrity Paranormal Project: "The First Warden"

I have to say, Celebrity Haunted House Paranormal Project (watch it on Hulu) makes a great summer night popcorn show.  I guess there were only six episodes that aired back in 2006, which is kind of a shame.  

This episode featured Olympic ski racer Picabo Street, Baywatch star and supermodel Michael Bergin, actress Mariel Hemingway, actor Joe Piscopo, and Real World: Chicago start Tonya Cooley.  Of these, Picabo Street turned out to be the hard-core believer, while Joe Piscopo was the laid back skeptic.  In fact, Piscopo seemed actively bored at several points during the show.

As usual, I spent a lot of time trying to peer behind the curtain, so to speak.  I have become convinced that the actors aren't "in on it" in any sense.  Their reactions are far too convincing, and I think the show as a mechanism for producing watchable television would only work if you kept up the façade with the stars as well as the audience.

This made it all the more interesting when at two points, the actors threatened to tip over the apple cart by accident.  

In the first incident, Picabo Street is standing outside a room while Michael Bergin is inside.  Street's attention is drawn down the hall by a small noise.  She then feels something brush past her bare arm, and hears footsteps going down the stairs.

I think you could make a pretty good case that this is a genuine phenomena happening because this staged show is taking place at an actual haunted location.  Can you imagine how frightening it would be, to be a crew member sitting in one of the distant rooms in the dark, waiting for your cue to slam a door or move some stuff to fake ghost activity, only to hear shuffling or whispers in the dark behind you?  

In that sense, staging effects is really gilding the lily.  This episode takes place at Tennessee State Prison, which has a long and storied history of cruelty.  (It was also used in filming The Green Mile, but that's neither here nor there.)  It's not only spooky at night, but there are a lot of reputable accounts of ghost activity.

At any rate, we watch Picabo Street pan her flashlight down the hallway, clearly conflicted.  Her "mission" is to stand there and not abandon Bergin (who by the way is terrified).  And I suspect the producers have been pretty strict with the actors about not venturing off the stated path.  But Street obviously wants desperately to investigate.  

In the end, she stays put.  Probably a wise career choice, but disappointing for the viewers.

In the second incident, Joe Piscopo and Mariel Hemingway are sent down to Cell Block 3.  The story calls for one of them (Piscopo) to be caged up out of sight, while the other (Hemingway) has to investigate the third floor catwalk.  

Awfully convenient that the show splits up the two actors like this.  Hemingway says she sees and hears someone on the stairs behind her.  Was it a show intern, carefully kept out of Piscopo's sight?  Piscopo seems clearly exasperated when Hemingway returns, like he can barely keep from rolling his eyes.  Did he see something, or just suspect they were all being had?

Orbs!

I love orbs.  They glow, they fly, they are completely mysterious - what's not to like?

Admittedly there is ONE thing not to like about orbs, and that is their tendency to be mimicked by floating bits of dust or flying insects.  One reason I really like "Ghost Hunters" out of all the paranormal investigations out there is that Jason and Grant almost always rule out "evidence" of orbs for this reason.

Cameras don't work the same way our eyes do, which is why a lot of people see a glowing spot on a picture and assume that it's an orb.  If you have ever noticed lens flare effects, those shiny dapples that happen when you point your camera too near the sun, the same effect is at work with "orbs."  

On video, "orbs" can appear to dance and move across the screen.  Typically these are simply dust motes floating around with the various drafts and air currents we never notice ourselves.  Orbs can also zip past or bob and weave in a distinctively powered fashion.  These are insects, which are more often caught on camera as "rods."  The technical term for this habit of dust and insects to reflect light and appear on camera is "backscatter."

In very rare cases, orbs may be something else.  In all the episode of "Ghost Hunters" I have watched, I can think of only one case where Jason and Grant allowed a bit of evidence to stand.  The light was definitely being emitted from the object (in other words it was definitely glowing strongly, and not just reflecting ambient light).  The light had a weird purplish cast.  And the orb zipped past very quickly in a straight line, which isn't characteristic of the motion of an insect.

Better evidence of orbs is from first-hand accounts.  People can see flashes of light in their eyes, which often arises from stress or a micro-migraine.  This can also happen if you glance directly at a lightbulb and glance away, as most people know from an ill-timed glance directly at the flash of a camera!

But there are many credible cases where all these factors can be ruled out.  Often because there are multiple witnesses.

Now admittedly, a lot of these orbs are probably instances of St. Elmo's Fire.  This is a kind of floating ball of charged plasma, which usually happens during thunderstorms.  It is usually a violet or bright blue color, and it forms off the tip of pointed things - like a ship's mast, during a lightning storm.

Will 'O The Wisp is another culprit.  This is an ethereal flickering of light that happens around bogs and other bodies of water.  Every culture has projected their own beliefs upon this phenomena, which is usually seen as being the spirits of the dead, of the otherworld, or of Faerie.

In truth, it is caused by swamp gases which spontaneously combust at very low temperatures, and give off a strange greenish flame.   It could also be simply a reflection of ambient light upon a barn owl, as detailed in an article with the wonderful turn of phrase, "luminosity in Barn Owls."

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Lighthelper :)

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