Running Your Own Ghost Investigation?

Quirkz writes "I am a skeptic, but have friends and family who swear by their ghost stories. I have access to a supposedly haunted house and been tempted to run a proper scientific investigation. My first question is what sorts of tools or measurements would make for sensible metrics to test during a hunt? Temperature change seems to be a common one, but the other devices you'll see ghost hunters use seem pretty random. The second question is what kinds of results would it take to be 'interesting'? Baseline readings at several presumably non-haunted locations seem to be obvious requirements for comparison. Once you have those, what kinds of results would it take to convince a skeptic there's something unusual going on, or demonstrate that there's not? I don't have much hope of changing the minds of those who believe, but it would be satisfying to at least be scientific about it."

Comments

Proton Pack

[Anonymous Coward]

You definitely need a proton pack: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pack

Re:Proton Pack

[sqldr]

well, there's actually a really easy way to tell if your house is haunted:

it isn't.

Re:Proton Pack

[clarkkent09]

I wish I had such gullible friends and family. Tell them you can find the ghost but only once they provide you with the hardware components for your ghost detector: . Then just sort of attach them randomly together, wander around the house for a while and say you didn't find any ghosts. It's a win-win situation.

Re:Proton Pack

[icebike]

He wanted to be scientific in his investigations of ghosts.

All the randomly wired together equipment in the world won't help him prove a negative.

Evidence of Absence is only possible when the subject and the location and the time window are well defined (zero marbles in the glass jar at this instant).

But since he can't pin down the definition of a ghost (let alone measure it), there is no point in worrying about the location (plane of existence?), or time frame. Nothing he could produce would satisfy his septics.

So he arrives here asking what he can measure to be "scientific about it", to which we can only ask:
          Be scientific about WHAT?

Any random forked stick should do until he answers the above.

Re:Proton Pack

[sumdumass]

What makes you think they are delusions?

Seriously, I mean the scientific approach wouldn't be that they are delusional, it would be that no evidence has been presented to you. Unless you can scientifically explain away whatever they presented as evidence for their beliefs, the best you have is that you aren't convinced. Not that they are delusional.

The concept of a haunting has been around for quite some time. Some of it probably is misinterpreting facts and a mind running creatively wild, or purposeful lies designed to influence behavior of some sort. But you can't say all or every single claimed instance is because you simply do no know the facts or have the ability to test them. And as we all know, the lack of evidence does not mean it's impossible, it only means it hasn't been proven yet.

Re:Proton Pack

[magarity]

I rarely post on Slashdot, but I will for this.

What are you babbling about?? I see your posts all the time.

Re:Proton Pack

[mmarlett]

Well, what this really is a chance for him not to so much apply the scientific method but rather to teach the scientific method. He already has a hypothesis: his family is full of crap. What he needs is for his family to come up with the testable hypothesis. Have them do the work to prove the ghosts. Set up controls, double blinds, etc., etc. The goal is not to prove the non-existance of ghosts, but to make the family shut up about it. And it's totally possible to work with them in such a way that it sucks all the fun out of the make believe and teaches them that, really, they cannot prove their claims even to themselves. He, however, should stick to trying to help them prove what they believe. But they have to be able to articulate what they believe in some way. But that is their problem, not his.

Re:Proton Pack

[williamhb]

Parent++.

I don't see how playing into your families delusions helps them or you? Why not hunt for the Easter Bunny with them, or Santa... or setup a trap for the tooth fairy.

Slightly funny anecdote, but childrens' belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is entirely scientific. Every time, they conduct a falsifiable experiment (put out a cookie / tooth that might not be consumed / taken) and every time they come back with a positive result. They even do peer review, asking their fellow peers (children) what their results were (what they got from Santa), and even validate the experiment with respected and more experienced experimenters of the past (their parents, who swear blind that the results are genuine). They are only thwarted because there really is a grand world-wide ongoing conspiracy to interfere with their experiments and falsify their results.

Re:Proton Pack

[shawb]

While I personally agree with you, that line of reasoning will not convince believing friends and family that the house isn't haunted.

That's okay, though. Because a thorough scientific investigation will not convince believers either. The slightest wobble in any of your readings will be read as a haunting. Lack of wobble in the readings will be read as a haunting. A complete failure to find any evidence of ghosts will be taken as evidence that the ghosts do not want to be found.

And then there's a good chance that your work and or words will be taken out of context in a way that seems to support ghosts, but will be worded in such a way that a FORMER SKEPTIC now BELIEVES!

Basically, don't do it.

Re:Proton Pack

[nabsltd]

Part of the scientific method is to give up after a while.

Where, exactly, in "observations, hypotheses, predictions, and experiments" does it say "give up"? Until a phenomena is explained, you aren't following the method if you give up.

There has not once, ever, been a scientifically valid positive result from a single test for ghosts. Further research in the area, after this much overwhelming evidence, is useless.

See, this is where you don't understand "scientific method". The hypothesis in this case comes from the poster's family:

There is supernatural phenomena ocurring in that house.

This was based on observations. What the poster wants to do now is predict and experiment. The iteration of these processes is called "the scientific method".

There may or may not be anything supernatural happening in the house, but without following the steps, no one will ever know exactly what is happening in the house (if anything). In particular, if the observers are not delusional, then something is happening in the house. Whether it is supernatural or not can only be determined by (drumroll, please)...the scientific method.

Re:Proton Pack

[babblefrog]

To be more accurate, you both *remember* seeing the same thing at the same time.

Burden of proof.

[Seor Jojoba]

It seems like a mistake to go to some place and look for the absence of an anomaly. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. You will never prove that ghosts don't exists in a house. Maybe they will be there tomorrow when you aren't around. Maybe you don't have the proper equipment to detect one.

Re:Burden of proof.

[Monkeedude1212]

The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim.

This.

As a scientist you should never discount an idea without first reviewing the facts. Facts are much more powerful than any first hand accounts of people who say they saw, felt, heard, or smelled something.

The typical ghost hunting equipment is a Video Camera, Flashlight, Thermal filter for the Camera, and Magnetic field detector.

However, I have never once seen any footage that couldn't have been explained by high school physics, or shown to be anything more than a hoax. And you likely won't either. If you are a skeptic, you should not be afraid to wander the dark hallways and should be able to determine that any odd readings are actually coming from a logical source that most people are too afraid to check into.

I remember watching one show, and they were absolutely surprised that this "one pipe" was giving off a lot of heat and this "other pipe" was giving off some weird Magnetic field. I dropped my jaw as it was obviously a central heating pipe (no doubt with hot water flowing through it) and an Electrical conduit, no doubt powering the lights upstairs. I then hit my head against the wall when they said it was clear evidence of something weird going on.

Re:Burden of proof.

[Culture20]

My wife saw a ghost hunters where they were in the woods when something flashed across the screen (black and white night vision). They replayed it a couple of times. My wife showed it to me, it was obvious to me on first viewing that the silhouette was a deer that finally decided the idiots where too close and sprinted out of there. The freeze frame left no doubt it was a deer, but the ghost hunters could only say 'something' was out there.

Just because they were hunting ghosts doesn't mean they couldn't find a unicorn.

Re:Burden of proof.

[jonbryce]

The problem is that the statement "there are ghosts" is not falsifiable. There isn't an experiment you can perform that will prove they don't exist. Maybe the experiment scared them away, or they just didn't turn up etc.

The statement "there are no ghosts" is falsifiable. It can be proved wrong by demonstrating the existence of the ghost.

Re:Burden of proof.

[RsG]

An interesting thing I read a while ago suggested that some of the supposed symptoms of "hauntings" are actually mundane, infrasonic phenomena. To wit, if a location has a source of sound waves not far below the boundary of audible frequency (machinery, pipes, ducts or even just free flowing air through the right structure) people and animals will react to the noise with alarm, even though we can't hear it. This has been suggested as one possible mechanism whereby certain animal species react in advance to seismic phenomena. It's possible a person could enter a room with a sustained infrasonic hum and attribute their instinctive sense of alarm to a malevolent presence.

So I'd suggest that guy who asked slashdot get microphones and recording equipment that can pick up on sound below 20 Hz. I've no idea where or how you'd get this equipment, or whether this would be a viable option for an amateur sceptic on a budget, but it's worth looking into.

If you find a recurring sound in a location where supposed "hauntings" have occurred, try to locate the source. It might be the problem can be solved by calling a plumber instead of an exorcist.

Re:Burden of proof.

[smbell]

From what I've read (Google finds some stuff) infrasonic vibrations cause feelings of fear and 'of being watched'. They can also affect vision to cause blurs or 'ghostly images'. I don't have any direct experience, but it's been the explanation that seems to make the most sense to me.

Re:Burden of proof.

[Bodrius]

The problem is that we keep taking colloquial statements from non-scientific people we disagree with and pretending they are properly stated hypothesis to build a strawman so we can feel better about our intellectual superiority.

Finding 'what the heck is going on here?' is the most basic of scientific endeavors, yet the comments here overflow with predetermined conclusion on the theological question of ghost-existence, with a notorious absence of interest in any actual facts or potential evidence for the 'haunting' phenomena. This reflex is precisely why so many non-technical people think science is just like a 'secular faith with its own beliefs'.

To pick an arbitrary example, no doctor would work like that and claim its scientific:
- hey doc, I spent all day in the rain and got a flu...
- you're an idiot, you can't get the flu without being in contact with the virus. Now get out of my office unless you can really prove you got it from standing in the rain!

Instead, the doctor would extract the core of what the patient (not assumed to be a doctor or a scientist) actually means ('I feel bad, like when I've had the flu before'), interrogate the patient for the facts and details (symptoms, timelines, contact with other sick people), and translate that into a useful hypothesis for the disease and its cause... and at least go through the process before yelling hypochondriac.

Of course "there are ghosts" is not a useful scientific hypothesis.It's actually not a question of falsifiability, but specificity: 'ghosts' is not defined well enough to even get to the falsifiable part. Like 'god' most people in a conversation don't mean the same thing with that word, and a *lot* of people won't mean the same thing at different times in the same conversation.

But the people saying 'there is a ghost in this house!' are rarely trying to build a scientific hypothesis, or are even trained to do that either. They apply 'ghosts' as a shorthand for 'something weird is going on' and a blind jump of faith to a lot of cultural baggage of 'stuff people have said in the past was related to similar weird stuff', as a way to communicate that 'unknown' experience through a common meme. Much like people have always done when other stuff happens and they guess at some pattern: health and sickness, weather, economic hardships, magnets, etc - and people are often wrong when they do that, but that doesn't mean there was no phenomenae to feed those memes in the first place.

Maybe an investigation finds nothing more than construction defects, bad insulation, gas leaks or defective electronics - if it was fun enough to spend the time, so what? Maybe it finds something more surprising than the usual (without requiring theological explanations).
 

How about

[plover]

Bring some common fucking sense, and a stick to hit those who didn't bring any?

Wrong location

[Quasar1999]

Take the people who believe they're in a haunted house and send them through an MRI to see what part of their brain is damaged. Don't waste your time in the supposed haunted house, the feeling of a 'presence' and 'ghosts' and any other paranormal crap is all in the person's head. So start there.

Re:A good dose of:

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Try here and here.

Get the believers to make...

[John Hasler]

...an objectively testable prediction. If you can't get them to make such a prediction quit wasting your time.

Take a cue from ghostbusters

[HockeyPuck]

The Ghostbusters also use equipment to hunt and find ghosts, such as a PKE meter, Ecto-Goggles, and a Ghost Sniffer. A PKE meter is a handheld device, used in locating and measuring Psycho-Kinetic Energy, which is a unique environmental byproduct emitted by ghosts. The device's most prominent feature are winged arms that raise and lower in relation to the amount of PKE detected while a digital display gives an exact reading for the operator. The Giga meter is a device similar to the PKE meter, featured in Ghostbusters II. As explained by Egon in the original script, the Giga meter measures PKE in GeV, or giga-electronvolts. Ecto-Goggles, sometimes known as "Spectro-Visors", are a special pair of goggles that visually trace PKE readings. They are particularly useful in helping its wearer see normally invisible ghosts and it can also be used to assist in tracking ghosts within a visible field of search.

but I have friends and family ...

[porky_pig_jr]

wouldn't be easier just to change both friends and family?

An easier and cheaper idea

[Platinum Dragon]

Get your relatives copies of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World".

Re:wow

[causality]

not much of a skeptic are you.

I forgot that these days, skeptic means "don't ever investigate anything and for bonus points, display contempt for those who do".

The summary is a good example of what real, healthy skepticism is. It boils down to "I don't think I will find anything, but I don't actually know that until I look, so here is the experiment I want to conduct." Is it the lack of presumption and arrogance that offends you? Does the presence of open-minded people willing to look for evidence, even of things they don't actually believe in, make you feel uncomfortable with your narrow-minded worldview? I'm guessing that's where the contempt comes from.

I'm normally a skeptic but...

[makubesu]

there have been times where I've wandered these parts late at night in lonely topics, and I swear I've heard the cries of the negative karma posters, screaming for revenge. They say their souls will not rest until they've compensated for their sins in life. On nights like these, they say you can see their cold remarks beckoning from the mist, trying to pull you into hell with them...

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Quirkz]

Honestly, I thought it sounded like a fun way to spend a night with some friends, and figured I should do something more than sit in the dark asking "What's that noise?" every few seconds. I'm a geek at heart, so why not take some readings, record some data, and find out what kinds of things (weird temperature pockets, magnetic fields) are all around us that we just don't notice most of the time?

- Less of a nut job than you think

Just be sure to use a fast film

[mark-t]

Ghosts can be quite amiable to being photographed, but you don't want to end up in a situation where the spirit was willing but the flash was weak.

Re:wow

[WinstonWolfIT]

Well the true skeptic will doubt the disbelievers too.

Re:wow

[geckipede]

Being willing to consider evidence which doesn't fit your world view is good.

Putting unusual effort and resource into investigating something that you have very good reason to suspect is complete nonsense, is not good.

In a perfect world, a skeptic would be free to test absolutely everything, from the existence of ghosts, to periodically making sure that newtonian mechanics and basic chemistry still remain valid, and that science hasn't all changed over night. Out here in the real world, we have to prioritise our time onto things that have a better chance of being valid.

Re:wow

[causality]

Do you investigate the flat Earth theory? Do you investigate the geocentric theory? Do you investigate spontaneous generation? Do you investigate alchemy? ARROGANCE!

Ah, another person tries for the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps my response will demonstrate why this is what you are doing.

First I'll say that the word "ghost" isn't a terribly great word. It implies that any strange phenomena are caused by dead people who still retain some kind of non-corporeal existence. The actual cause of such phenomena could very well be some not-yet-discovered natural force that has nothing to do with people at all, living or dead. What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them. Using loaded words like "ghost" is therefore inappropriate, not to mention it's fodder for belligerent narrow-minded people who just want to demagogue something instead of contributing anything useful because they knee-jerk upon hearing a loaded word.

Moving along... Do I personally investigate those things you mentioned? No. The first three have been thoroughly falsified. Regarding alchemy, if you conducted a scientifically-sound experiment that claims to have produced conclusive evidence, I'd be willing to entertain that evidence so long as it's understood that the burden of proof is entirely on you and your methodology needs to be both sound and available for examination. If you can meet those conditions then I say go for it.

This is the part you seem to have a hard time with. I have seen abundant evidence that the Earth is spherical. That's why I see no point in investigating a flat-Earth theory. It is falsified by the knowledge that the Earth is spherical combined with the knowledge that spheres are not flat. I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.

Your mistake is that you think the two ideas are on equal ground. You cannot recognize and appreciate the difference between a thoroughly falsified notion and the truly unknown. That's why what you call "skepticism" is just narrow-minded arrogance, not unlike religious zealotry. It makes a mockery of the healthy kind of skepticism that says "show me the evidence".

You can cower behind that narrow-mindedness if it helps you protect your worldview from the terrible (to you) risk of being altered to accept new possibilities if that pleases you. Just understand that others like me are perfectly comfortable saying "I really, truly don't know, therefore it doesn't make sense to form a passionate belief about this subject."

Creeping Mysticism

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I had noticed that reason and critical thinking were fading in the world of late, but I never thought that the rot would get so bad that the foremost geek site on the internet would be giving credence to this sort of rubbish. What the hell were the editors thinking? What should I even have to say that ghosts don't exist and that this "investigation" may as well be looking for invisible green unicorns?

As a society, we're reverting back to superstition and ignorance. We've even given up on even imagining a better future.

The only question I ask is: where did it all go wrong? When did the world abandon progress?

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[plover]

OK, well then go ahead and bring some common types of detection gear. Bring a digital camera (DSLR would be best, but bring the most sensitive you've got.) If you can find one, bring an EM detector. Perhaps bring a multi-band radio, one that has a manual squelch so you can hear the static, and with a portable antenna. Maybe an optical distance thermometer. And bring a video camera.

Also bring some experimenting supplies. Aluminum foil and wire would be good. Duct tape and some tripods will be useful, as will a few ordinary tools (a multi-tool knife/pliers thing would probably suffice.) Various clear plastic bags. If you can, get different color LED flashlights to look at things under different colors of light. Plain white paper. A box to put stuff in.

Go over how each of the things you brought detects something, then amplifies the results so you can see it. The camera detects light with a CMOS sensor, and does so in 1/60th of a second; the EM detector detects lines of magnetic flux with a coil of wire, etc.

Explain how every sensor has its limits. For example, a light switch is a sensor of human fingers. It doesn't switch itself, a person has to push harder than the internal spring to toggle the lights. The light switch can't detect humans that don't press hard enough, but the lack of flipping doesn't prove there's no human there. Note also that the lack of flipping doesn't prove there IS a human there, either. Then take out the camera and explain how the CMOS sensor has a similar threshold, and requires a certain amount of light. Anything below that threshold proves only that there wasn't enough light.

If a camera sensor has no light at all when you press the shutter, you'll find that the sensor is not perfect, and not all the cells are exactly pure black. The differences in the individual cells will show up as variations in black.

Set the camera to RAW mode, or to the highest resolution possible. Change the ISO setting from "Auto" and set it to the highest possible value. Set the aperture as closed as possible (high F stop) and set the shutter speed as fast as possible. Fully obscure the camera lens with aluminum foil and take a couple of pictures, then magnify one of the pictures on the computer screen until you can clearly see distinct pixels. Notice how even though no light should have reached the lens, some of the pixels are brighter than others. Compare this to the other pictures you took of the covered lens, and look for differences between them. They might all be the same, or there might be some variations.

Then take the still-foil-wrapped camera and put it someplace cold for a while, and take another couple of pictures of blackness once it chills. Finally, warm it up to body temperature and take another set of pictures. Compare all three temperature pictures, and look for differences. You might find something like the cold sensor pictures have a more consistent level of black, while the warm sensor pictures have less consistent black. Or the other way around.

When you're bored of the camera, pull out the EM meter. Make various coils with the wire, and see if they affect the readings. See if having one end of the coil grounded makes a difference. See if grounding both ends makes a difference. See if having a person hold one end makes a difference. See if it makes a difference if the person is also running a video camera. See if it makes a difference if your cell phones are on or off. If you find a spot in the house with a strangely high EM reading, make a shield of aluminum foil and hook the wire to it and ground the other end, and see if that can change it.

Try various things to reproduce anomalies you may have seen on the TV shows. Come up with hypotheses, and create experiments to confirm your suspicions.

That's why ghosts don't like skeptics!

[billstewart]

Have you ever wondered why skeptics never find ghosts? It's because, basically, skeptics are annoying people and ghosts don't like to hang around them. Too much negativity, and not enough good-looking cheerleader girlfriends, and especially not enough of the dumb ones who say "let's leave the rest of the party in the well-lit living room and go make out in the abandoned upstairs wing of the house - we don't need to bring a flashlight."