Ghosts- for some, the word alone is enough to send a shiver down their spine, and for
others it's just silly superstition.
The question of whether ghosts are real or not is directly tied to our beliefs of what
happens when we die- is the human body all there is, or is there a more supernatural
element to our ultimate fate?
Interestingly all of the world's major religions agree on the existence of ghosts, and they
are mentioned numerous times across various religious texts.
While in Christianity the 'holy spirit' is considered a vital part of the holy trinity
and not an apparition in the common understanding of the word, there are still numerous occasions
where in the Bible, ghosts are mentioned.
The disciples for example famously fear Jesus when they encounter him walking towards them
on water in the middle of a storm, asking if he is a ghost.
Whether you believe that the events of the bible happened or not, what is clear is that
the authors themselves believed in ghosts, and in fact a belief in ghosts is found throughout
every major culture, dating back to the dawn of history itself.
Today modern science has given us many explanations for phenomenon we traditionally considered
to be ghosts.
Dancing lights which humans believed for millennia where spirits or playful sprites have been
shown to be a rare phenomenon known as ball lightning.
Mental illnesses and even mass psychological delusions, along with our hardwired and extremely
powerful pattern recognition talents have explained away a great deal of ghostly sightings.
Just recently, the discovery of the effects of extremely low frequency sound waves on
the human body helped explain a great deal of ghostly phenomenon.
These sound waves are too low for the human ear to perceive, but some scientists believe
that we have been evolutionary hardwired to recognize their physiological effects on our
bodies and associate these sound waves with extreme danger.
That's because many predators, such as roaring tigers, can let loose with ultra-low frequency
sound waves.
Researching the idea that ELF waves were responsible for much of our belief in ghosts, scientists
discovered many pieces of modern equipment causing ELF waves.
Things such as air conditioning units and industrial fans, when fitted improperly, could
cause ELF waves, and it just so happened that many of these units were discovered in traditionally
'haunted' locations.
Yet there is some evidence that can be hard to dispel, and with the propagation of video
recording devices throughout society, the massive piles of ghostly videos and photographs
that turn up every year beg the question: is every video and photograph a hoax or a
misidentified phenomenon?
Could there be any truth to the ghost question?
Exhibit A: Haunted Hospital, 2016
In our search for evidence of the paranormal we tried to stay away from footage captured
by television shows or which were produced by popular online outlets.
Our theory is that these people have a great deal to gain from fabricating ghostly evidence,
and with TV, well if ratings are low why not have a crew member kick a can across a dark
room as proof of your ghost?
With that in mind, we turn to a ghostly video captured in Honduras in 2016.
The background story is that hospital staff had complained of a ghostly apparition at
what is believed to be the School Hospital Universitario.
Because most ghosts have tragic origins, a doctor was said to have committed suicide
in the building years ago, and now his ghost can be seen haunting the hallways.
He is also said to cause lights to flicker in rooms where patients are staying, and to
move physical objects such as carts.
The video appears to be shot through a window looking into a hallway, and we can clearly
hear the sound of a door opening, followed by a short figure peeking out of the doorway
before hesitantly stepping into the hallway.
It appears as if the figure is translucent, though the grainy nature of the video makes
it hard to tell.
We asked our in-house photography and film production expert on his opinion on this video,
and he said it was curious, but not very definitive.
One point he makes though is that the ghost does seem to be genuinely translucent, which
can be achieved easily for a home video editor with a double exposure shot.
That technique relies on shooting the same scene twice, once with your actor in it and
once without, basically just an empty frame.
Then in editing, you stack the two scenes on top of each other and make the scene with
your actor in it transparent- voila, you now have a bonafide ghost.
However in this video there is a great deal of movement, which would require motion tracking
to accomplish the technique and much more technical knowledge on the editing side.
Certainly not impossible, but time consuming.
For our expert though the biggest tell for him that this may be faked is the odd movements
of the figure itself.
The figure seems to duck out of the doorway twice, and look directly at the camera, before
finally stepping out in full and disappearing.
This not only seems like intelligent behavior, but for our expert it begs the question of
why a ghost is acting in a manner we ourselves find so creepy?
Psychology is often a better tool for debunking ghost videos than technical expertise, and
for our expert this ghost seems to behave too perfectly the way we expect ghosts to
behave, in a spooky and inhuman manner.
Exhibit B: Ghostly Soldiers
Our next video is notorious for being considered one of the greatest ghost videos ever captured.
It's made the rounds both on tv and on the internet for almost two decades now, and odds
are you're probably familiar with it already.
The video in question was shot by a family visting the Gettysburg battlefield in 2001,
when they were touring one of the bloodiest sites of the entire battle.
So, what does our expert think about this one?
Well, this one he says has him stumped.
There was certainly video editing software available to the public back in 2001 to create
the various apparitions seen in this video, but at the time it would have required a fairly
powerful and purpose-built computer.
This video begs the question of what are the odds that this family had such a setup, and
the technical expertise to pull off the edits needed, and lastly, for what gain?
Tom Underwood, who shot the video, has been interviewed several times, and has no discernible
technical background.
For our expert the best proof comes once more from the human element, rather than the technical
element.
In a hoaxed video the camera always seems to know exactly where to be and when, so that
later the digital effects can be put in the right place, but also so that the scare is
maximized.
If a video seems like the camera perfectly lands on the phenomenon it's recording, odds
are that it's as staged as a hollywood production, complete with a shot list for the best coverage.
In this video though the camera is constantly searching for the phenomenon, and multiple
times manages to miss it by pulling away from it, or pans in the direction of the phenomenon
after it has already passed out of sight.
There's a very real human element to this that lends credibility to the video.
The dialogue between the family is also a big clue, as most people are terrible actors-
but especially children.
The child in this video sounds genuinely scared and slightly in awe, as well as Tom himself
who sounds just a little bit panicky.
These are all very real emotions, and incredibly difficult to fake without going over the top.
At no point does this video give us a huge reveal, or anything more than fleeting glances,
and ironically that may be the best evidence yet to its authenticity.
Exhibit C – Happiest, Most Haunted Place On Earth
Our next video is also quite popular, and made quite the splash when it was released
in the early 2010s.
The video shows a figure strolling through various parts of Disneyland in the middle
of the night, even walking straight through a solid fence.
The ghost is picked up by multiple cameras, and was shot on a cell phone by a security
guard recording the monitors themselves.
Is Disneyland haunted?
What does our expert think?
Well, this video has already actually been debunked, and has been proven to be an accidental
ghost.
The figure in the video was actually a leftover artifact from the security tapes, which are
re-used constantly to save money.
Much like in the double exposure technique we explained earlier, the figure was nothing
more than the image of a previous employee, likely a janitor, shot well before the new
recording.
Faulty and low quality tapes are to blame for this ghost, not paranormal phenomenon.
Our expert points out though that people should really have been clued in to the inauthenticity
of this video simply by the way the figure moves.
It's far too fluid and, well, normal, for it to be a ghost, which would make it the
first ghost ever recorded to so smoothly move across hundreds of feet of winding pathway.
Exhibit D – Screaming Hotel Ghost
In 2012 a video popped up on the internet purporting to be footage from a hotel security
camera capturing a ghostly interaction between a security guard and a ghost locked in one
of the hotel's rooms.
The story goes that guests had been complaining of screams coming from an empty room, and
so a security guard was soon dispatched.
Throughout the video you can hear the man who is supposedly head of security talking
to a guard he's sent to check on the room, as well as with his emergency dispatcher.
The guard gets to the room and you can hear the sound of ghostly screaming over the radio.
The guard appears physically shaken, but then proceeds to enter the room- only for a ghostly
figure to leave the room after he enters.
Inside he finds the furniture in the room upside down, the shower running, and the carpet
torn up.
Spooky stuff, take a watch!
So, did the dead check in and never check out of this haunted hotel?
What's our expert think?
To him, this video immediately screams fake.
The camera set ups are almost perfect, with the main camera used in the video just so
happening to be located directly outside the door to the room in question.
Our expert has worked security in Las Vegas casinos before, when he worked video surveillance
and escorted VIPs to and from events.
As he puts it, the camera in question serves no other purpose but to watch the hallway
directly in front of the haunted room, this is not how security cameras are placed.
They are placed so they can cover large stretches of hallway corridors at a time- functionally,
this camera serves no security purpose... unless you're faking a ghost video.
The second biggest tell however is the fact that the ghostly screams can be heard in the
video.
This means that the screams were either recorded by the security camera, or transmitted over
the guard's radio as he approached the room.
Hallway security cameras in budget hotels such as this one do not record audio, in fact
you may find a camera that records audio only outside of VIP rooms in the most expensive
suites at a Las Vegas casino.
This means then that we're supposed to believe that the screams are being broadcast over
the radio.
That would require the guard to key his mike the entire time though, and would make it
impossible to communicate with him.
Lastly, the biggest tell that this video is fake is the fact that the guard then proceeds
to enter the room by himself.
It is routine security procedure for security officers to enter a potentially dangerous
room in pairs at a minimum, no officer ever- unless it was clearly a medical emergency-
enter a room with screaming coming from it by himself.
But what if he thought it was a medical emergency?
Well, there's the fact that the room was empty, with no guests on the register, at which point
the guard should have simply checked the door knob to make sure the room wasn't broken into.
After that, the guard would simply wait for law enforcement to arrive- this is standard
procedure.
For our expert, the video is a fake.
But you don't have to take it from us- others have investigated this video and discovered
that the uploader is actually a filmmaker with some low-budget horror movies under his
belt.
This in effect plays out like a horror short, and again, is just too creepily perfect to
be considered real.
So do ghosts exist or not?
Well, we showed four different videos in this episode, with one being an obvious fake, one
being an accidental fake, one possibly being fake but possibly being real, and another
that our own expert has confidence is more real than fake.
For him, he only believes what he can confirm himself, but perhaps ghosts are really all
around us and as our world is filled with more and more cameras, evidence of their existence
continues to grow.
What do you think about ghosts, are they real or not?
Have you ever seen a ghost?
Would you like to see us examine more ghostly videos?!
Let us know in the comments!
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