Something I’ve wondered about…

Something I’ve wondered about…

You may also like...

16 Responses

  1. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    I always introduce controlled conditions during investigations and actually record any activity rather than fish for, or try to stir up a paranormal experience with pseudoscience.

    When I approach a case I investigate the reported experiences associated with that case and try to work suitable controls into the experimental design of the investigation. I often wonder whether some ghost hunters are just interested in “proving ghosts are souls” and trying to generate evidence for this at every opportunity and any so called haunted location, regardless to what has been experienced there. They then tend to shoe horn these experiences into their pet theories.

    There are too many different groups, all operating to different standards, with different agendas.

    However, there are genuine researchers looking into the science behind hauntings. There is a whole field of interest for example, looking at the witness experience and possible environmental effects on the brain that may lead in some cases to haunting like phenomena.

    What about EMFs? Although by no way conclusive and not always possible to validate, you have had people like Dr Michael Persinger, Dr Chris French and Dr Jason Braithwaite looking into these weak fields, their effects on the brain whether they could be responsible for some haunting type reports.

    Infrasound and it’s relationship a reported haunting was looked at in 1998 at Coventry University by Vic Tandy and Dr Tony Lawrence, who wrote a paper called “Ghosts in the Machine” for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

    You also get fields such as Anomalistic psychology? “The study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal without the assumption that there is anything paranormal involved”

  2. BaronIveagh says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…

    I was aware of the weak field experiments;

    I too try to approach anything unusual strictly from a data gathering perspective.  The problem is that as I’m gathering data about something anomalous that most people interpret as ghost hunting, And in all honesty, we’re doing field work, where the possibility of error is fairly large even among highly trained professionals.

    I’ve had this idea floating around in my head to prove that something is going on, that these anomalies are at least real, despite not understanding the underlying cause of the phenomena, by creating totally controlled laboratory conditions in a haunted building. 

    Basically, my idea is to place unmanned observation equipment into a totally sealed building and just roll camera, as it were, to try and eliminate humans from the equation entirely and hope for reproducible results. 


    Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

  3. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…

    Taking away the human element is an experiment that can be done and I thinkk has been done.  There is certainly equipment available to monitor a location remotely though I am personally an avocate of needing a human presence there to experience the phenomena though.

    We tend to investigate claims of experiences, therefore removing the human element aren’t we changing the conditions in which the experience occurred?

     

  4. BaronIveagh says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    The problem is that by introducing a ‘human element’ into the equasion, we take the objective and make it subjective.  I’d just like to conclusively proove once and for all that ‘something’ out of the ordinary is occuring.  What the cause of this is would depend on what evidence was found.. 

    Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

  5. Mysteryshopper says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    [quote=BaronIveagh]A thought occurred to me today as I had to listen to someone harangue me that ghost hunters were the snake oil salesmen of the modern age:  I’m not overly familiar with any ‘hard’ scientific studies of the phenomena.[/quote]

    If you are simply ‘ghost hunting’ then there does not seem to be any obvious science involved. If, however, you are intereseted in the question, why do people report ghosts and what are they, there is a lot of science you can do.

    Multi-instrument kits have been left for prolonged periods in haunted locations (like Tony Cornell’s SPIDER – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cornell), however little of interest was found. I believe that is because people are an essential part of the paranormal experience. Instruments can tell you if there is anything unusual about a ghost hot spot but they rarely record anything of interest on their own.

  6. Mysteryshopper says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    Another repeated post …

  7. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    [quote=Mysteryshopper]Another repeated post …[/quote]

    Sorry about that.  It is not the greatest forum software.

  8. BaronIveagh says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    Of course, the implication of that would be that human being serve as a catylist of some sort.  Then again, i what I’m reading here about SPIDER is true, the device was fairly primitive.  

    What I had in mind was more elaborate, including total EM imaging of the structure, with overlapping veiws of IR, UV, and visible spectrum recorders for about a year.

    There’s a house in Gettysburg that I actually have in mind for this, if I could ever get funding for it.  100% of the people I’ve talked ot that have lived there (about 20) say they’ve had some sort of experiance, including full appritions, noises, smells, time shifts, and TK activity.  Only thing I saw when I visited for about a half hour was a door open on it’s own, admittedly, but…

    Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

  9. Mysteryshopper says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    I think you should go ahead with your project, if you can. All new research is always welcome.

    I have some queries – what is EM imaging? Is this something to do with electromagnetism? If so, how does your imager work?

    You talk about imaging ‘the structure’ – is that the whole house or a part of it? Wouldn’t there by privacy issues?

    I actually videoed a door opening on its own on an investigation once. However, close examination showed that a draft was responsible and the latch was weak.

  10. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…

    I think this would require an extensive site examination first, becoming familiar with drafts, loose window frames, noises from chimneys etc, in all differant weather conditions.  This way you would be in a better position to identify the natural noises etc that your instruments might pick up.  The effect of vibrations from traffic outside may also be an issue. 

    Analysing all the recordings would be a mammoth task.

    I remember one time a team got very excited about shadow forms moving around a room they were monitoring.  It turned out to be a moth between a light bulb and light shade.  Not having a human available to investigate such things as they happen may cause problems, unless

     

  11. BaronIveagh says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    On the Imaging: Unfortunetly, EMIR is not sensitive enough for this application.

    However…

    About a year ago in Shanghai at the world conference on non-destructive testing, someone put forward a way to rapidly image the electromagnetic fields of a conductive substance, to a few milimeters below it’s surface.  Since, if I followed thier paper correctly, this does not require the material to a single physical peice, and there appears to be no real limit to the size beyond resistance, the possibility of using large amounds of aluminum dust as a medium to monitor and map the entire floor of a room for changes in the electro magnetic field in real time occured to me, since an EM anomaly passing through the material would produce a measurable alteration in the EM feild of the dust.

      The problem of course, with this idea is that you’d have to wrap the entire building in an airtight plastic, which would reduce the draft issue.  I’ve discussed the idea with some building contractors and I’m told that there is a commercial plastic that is produced for this purpose.

    The problem with ‘going ahead’ with this is the not insignificant price tag.  On the whole to set up em imaging + cost of enough thermal and video cameras to cover all rooms + plastic + buying the property (since I doubt a landlord would be too happy sealing a building for a year) and we’re allready on the far side of 1.5m dollars US.

    So If I ever win the lottery, you’ll be hearing the results of the expariment… otherwise…

    Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

  12. Mysteryshopper says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    [quote=BaronIveagh]About a year ago in Shanghai at the world conference on non-destructive testing, someone put forward a way to rapidly image the electromagnetic fields of a conductive substance, to a few milimeters below it’s surface.  Since, if I followed thier paper correctly, this does not require the material to a single physical peice, and there appears to be no real limit to the size beyond resistance, the possibility of using large amounds of aluminum dust as a medium to monitor and map the entire floor of a room for changes in the electro magnetic field in real time occured to me, since an EM anomaly passing through the material would produce a measurable alteration in the EM feild of the dust.

    [/quote]

    Do you have a link on this technology, please?

    [quote]The problem with ‘going ahead’ with this is the not insignificant price tag.  On the whole to set up em imaging + cost of enough thermal and video cameras to cover all rooms + plastic + buying the property (since I doubt a landlord would be too happy sealing a building for a year) and we’re allready on the far side of 1.5m dollars US.[/quote]

    Might it not be worth starting small and working your way up?

  13. BaronIveagh says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    http://www.ndt.net/article/ndt-slovenia2009/PDF/P37.pdf

    This seems ot be the latest version.  I admit, Em scanning is not my field, and they seem to be leaning toward a small, hand held unit that can be manually moved over the metal surface to detect flaws, but I belive that another application of this technology might be a large version that covers an entire area.  Though reading this new information, I might have to go from aluminum dust to aluminum foil.

    Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

  14. Mysteryshopper says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    [quote=BaronIveagh]This seems ot be the latest version.  I admit, Em scanning is not my field, and they seem to be leaning toward a small, hand held unit that can be manually moved over the metal surface to detect flaws, but I belive that another application of this technology might be a large version that covers an entire area.  Though reading this new information, I might have to go from aluminum dust to aluminum foil.[/quote]

    I’m not clear about what you are trying to find with such scanning equipment. Are you looking for object movement? If so, your video cameras would pick that up.

    Using these scanners would soak the entire area in strong magnetic fields permanently. This would change the environment completely, completely swamping any potential EIFs for instance. For all we know it might even disrupt or stop any paranormal haunting activity. Wouldn’t it make more sense to measure the electromagnetic environment in situ rather than disrupt it so completely?

  15. BaronIveagh says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    The problem is that using current technology there’s no way to create accurate, real time EMI of such low power fields unless you have a spare very large array that Nasa can set up on site. 

    What I’m looking for is mobile, persistant anomalies in the EM field in the house.  If I understand this paper right, in theory something like that would cause the image that it takes to change.  Since most other reliable portable EMI technologies require fairly strong fields to make images, or are not in real time, this would have the appearance of a possible viable alternative.

    In practice, I belive that you could reduce the power of the field this generates significantly.  This application they’re using it to look for subsurface anomalies in thick metal, whereas what I would be looking for would be the field distorting under another EM fields influence.

    Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

  16. Mysteryshopper says:

    Re: Something I’ve wondered about…
    You say you’re looking for persistent mobile EM anomalies. However, this probe appears to work by inducing eddy currents in conducting objects. So it looks at the magnetic fields induced by those eddy currents and maps any distortions caused by flaws in the material.

    If there was a magnetic anomaly between the probe and a metallic surface, I guess it might show up as ‘something’ on the display. However, since the equipment is trying to image flaws in the metal, I doubt it would show what the anomaly itself looked like. And any actual flaws in the metal would further confuse the picture.

    You could deduce as much information – that there is a magnetic anomaly present – just using a couple of magnetometers. What is more, the magnetometers would give you figures for the anomaly because you could compare it with the permanent ambient field in the room. You wouldn’t get a picture, of course.

    An ideal set up, in my view, would be a regular array of magnetometers all being monitored continuously. It should be possible to turn their readings into a model of the field lines with some not particularly complicated maths. This could be done with software to generate a 3-D view. It’s possible that someone has already written the relevant software, or the individual bits of it.