Another TAPS video

**Skeptical** · Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:40 pm Post subject: Another TAPS video

Regardless of your feelings on the expertise of the TAPS crew from the television program Ghost Hunters, they do occasionally turn up some pretty intriguing stuff. This particular clip shows a thermal image caught in the basement of a hotel (the room, at one time, served as a morgue). To their credit, the TAPS guys tried unsuccessfully to replicate what they captured on video. They make no claims but, on the surface, it is a little weird:

Link

I would have a lot more confidence in these guys if one of their ghostbusters-in-training hadn't, in the same episode, mistaken a bug for a ghost. Still, the two main guys seem fairly down to earth.

S
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"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson

Ataraxik · Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:09 pm Post subject:

Well, it's not a 'haunted house' when these guys are there, it's a TV soundstage. Look at the thermal image again. Look at the patches on the ghost's right upper arm. It reads cooler there because there are two layers of cloth -the shirt and the patch sewn on the shirt. Now, as far as I know, nobody claims that clothes have ghosts. I'm guessing just maybe that's a curious security guard sticking his nose in where he shouldn't?

I never understood why it is blindly assumed that EMF and thermal readings may indicate ghosts. There is zero evidence for it. Having taken both pieces of equipment into putative haunted houses as well as control houses, I can tell you that it is virtually impossible to find a house that doesn't offer spikes on both fields: EMF & thermal. Their 'anomalies' simply aren't.
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**Skeptical** · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:23 pm Post subject:

I guess that is the downside of taking these clips out of context. If you'd viewed the entire episode, which just happened to be on SciFi last night, the "patch" actually appeared to be the number 2 which was spray painted on the locker against which this thermal image appeared.

Regardless, there is nothing that says this couldn't have been faked or that the TAPS guys weren't hoaxed by hotel owners who were looking to drum up a little business. Even if it is neither of those things, all we're left with is a thermal image that appears to be human in shape.

Atar, i wish you would take the hint and follow up on one of these threads by saying "Hey this one isn't much but here is a case that I do find intriguing..." If all of us are such poor delusional bastards, I sure wish you would offer us something up to your standards about which to talk. I'm beginning to think that you're the old curmudgeon who yells at kids for walking on his lawn. Hope you'll prove me wrong on that.

S
_________________
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson

Ataraxik · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:53 pm Post subject:

Skeptical: "I guess that is the downside of taking these clips out of context. If you'd viewed the entire episode, which just happened to be on SciFi last night, the "patch" actually appeared to be the number 2 which was spray painted on the locker against which this thermal image appeared."

I took nothing out of context and did see the episode in its entirety. Listen to the clip. They express awe because they saw an infrared image of a guy standing a few feet away from them. So what? Why does that impress them or anyone else? Only the camera can see through the dark. The 'ghost hunters' could not see the guy in the dark and saw him only after the fact, on the FLIR. Looking at the FLIR image it is obviously just a guy with a patch on his sleeve standing there, most likely a security guard. Both the hotel and the Ghost Hunter TV road crew employ security guards. "Appeared" to be the #2? Well, sure, once you've twisted its actual shape with the very fuzzy infrared image it becomes a simple pareidolic matching session, like when someone who is Catholic thinks, gee.. that stain on the table kind of looks like Mother Mary, while the Catholic's teenager thinks it looks like Lindsay Lohan, and the Jewish neighbor thinks it looks like Moses, and so on.

"Regardless, there is nothing that says this couldn't have been faked or that the TAPS guys weren't hoaxed by hotel owners who were looking to drum up a little business. Even if it is neither of those things, all we're left with is a thermal image that appears to be human in shape."

Yes, and God forbid that what is obviously a human shape be attributed to.... a human.

"Atar, i wish you would take the hint and follow up on one of these threads by saying "Hey this one isn't much but here is a case that I do find intriguing..."

Are you telling me what to post?

"If all of us are such poor delusional bastards..."

If you insist on falsely attributing such nonsense attitudes to me, it is you who are responsible for your reactions to them, not me.

"....I sure wish you would offer us something up to your standards about which to talk. I'm beginning to think that you're the old curmudgeon who yells at kids for walking on his lawn. Hope you'll prove me wrong on that."

Ah, more ad hominem attacks. I'll pay them all the heed they deserve.

Look, I have posted quality questions in all forums. I don't think as little of your fellow posters as you do, OK? In this thread I asked why it is that ghost believers assume that a ghost will leave an EMF signal, or a FLIR signal. These are very good questions. Perhaps too good, eh? And that is my crime.
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I am not young enough to know everything. - Oscar Wilde

**Skeptical** · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:05 pm Post subject:

Sorry Atar, I'm having a bad day. I broke my own rule of valuing all Department 47 posters and that was wrong. Hope you will excuse my fingers getting ahead of my brain.

S
_________________
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson