Thermal Footage from the Attic in "Toys of Terror"

This is a discussion on thermal footage Brian and Mike D. capture in an attic in the 3rd season episode "Toys of Terror". In this footage a football sized heat signature shows up, apparently hovering above the missing seat on the broken chair before vanishing extraordinarily fast.

The thermal signature in question appears at timestamp 3:46:48 on the FLIR footage, all of which appears to be completely legitimate. The thermal hit remains constant until timestamp 3:47:20

The temperature of the bulk of the object was roughly a constant 64 degrees which puts it about 9 degrees above the temperature in the surrounding area. Not that impressive sounding, but it stands out like a sore thumb. At the end of the relevant section of FLIR video we see the thermal signature steady, exactly as we saw it before, then it gets really thin and disappears completely.

So basically this area the size of a football held a steady 9 degrees warmer than the rest of the objects in the room and doesn't change temperature for 32 seconds. Then suddenly it either vanishes or loses 9 degrees in 1 second. Clearly it couldn't have LOST the heat that quickly* so the explanation *must* be something else, although it definitely doesn't have to be attributed to the paranormal.

Less impressive is the objects "sudden" appearance. During the aired FLIR footage we see that this "hot spot" suddenly appears out of nowhere, however this clearly seems to be a focus issue. The FLIR was out of focus and when it came back into focus the object "appears". It is possible this was to deliberately mislead the audience (in fact, I'm sure someone will suggest it), but it's also possible it was *not* deliberate, so let's keep the conclusions to a minimum and the speculation to a maximum.

OF NOTE: There actually *IS* one interesting post-production FLIR anomaly here: The "before" footage they show is actually from "after" the anomaly disappears. The footage isn't doctored, but they are definitely implying it is "before" footage when it is not. One could argue they didn't have "before" footage and an editorial decision was made. It is certainly more innocuous than the other FLIR fiasco, but I felt it was worth mentioning nonetheless.

* There are several reasons we know we did not witness an object which changed temperature. First, we know the surrounding objects didn't show any temperature change the entire time. This is important because for an object to lose heat that fast, the heat would have to go somewhere and we don't see anything else rise in temperature as the heat signature disappears.

Also, we know the object didn't lose even 2 degrees during the 32 seconds between when we first see it and when it disappears. For it to lose 9 degrees in the following 1 second would mean there must have been a massive cold source introduced into the environment, like someone tossed in a big chunk of dry ice. This would have been 10 times more obvious on the FLIR than the mysterious object.

The most reasonable explanation would be a reflection, however a couple of things suggest a reflection is highly unlikely. Firstly, Brian and Mike Dion both assert there was no reflective surface, for what that's worth — but if you don't want to rely on their testimony, luckily you don't have to.

During the investigation we get to see the chair close-up, albeit from a bad angle, and although it does appear to have a piece of wood going across the back, that is not likely to be heat-reflective and it's too narrow (top-to-bottom) to match up with what we see in the FLIR footage anyway.

And there's more: during the part where they original catch the footage (starting around 5:05) we see footage of Mike standing over Brian, alternately looking at the FLIR screen and shining his flashlight towards the chair to see if he can make out anything. We even see this camera shot at the moment when the object disappears ("it's gone, it's gone!") and neither one of them, nor even the cameraman seem to have moved an inch, much less enough to make their reflection vanish.

All-in-all, an interesting video that does not appear to have an obvious explanation to debunk it.