March 12, 2008
GH: Burlington County Prison
Dave Tango's father, an ex-cop and amateur ghost hunter, was investigating at an old prison in the Tangos' hometown of Mount Holly, NJ when he had a bit of a personal experience. Apparently he went into one of the cells and immediately felt completely creeped out, and since he's not one to often get such feelings he thought it was worth TAPS taking a look. Dave was certainly excited to be investigating someplace his dad had checked out, not to mention part of his local history, and the rest of the team was enthusiastic. Grant seemed to be of the immediate opinion that any place Tango's dad got a creepy feeling must be really haunted, but other than that eye-rolling moment the investigation got off to a fair start.
The first notable event of the evening was that Jay & Grant noticed a cigarette smell in the women's wing of the prison. It's important to note that the prisoners were permitted to smoke for the entire time the prison was in operation, but the prison hasn't been used for several decades. J & G's experience was a little more interesting than just some stale tobacco though, apparently the smell moved from room to room and they verified that the outside air seemed to be clean and also the odor only seemed to be in one place at a time. When it had moved onto another room they checked the previous room and that room seemed to no longer smell.
While that is certainly odd and intriguing, both Jay and Grant seemed to place what in my opinion is far too high a value on the experience. Jay said there was no reason for there to be any smell at all because "Nobody smoked here for 40 or 50 years" but in several previous investigations, including the Presidio officer's club and a different prison-turned-museum, Jay made a specific point about how tobacco smoke can really soak into a room and stay there indefinitely — so it seems as if his scientific knowledge has somehow diminished. Also, Grant twice said, "There's no denying that smoke" and although I agree there's no obvious scientific explanation, it seems as if Grant is always ready to "confirm" an event as paranormal any time another explanation isn't instantly available; it would be nice if he could check his enthusiasm in favor of a more scientific outlook.
Kris actually came through to that end, though. She and Tango were checking out some cells where apparently people would hear voices (described as coming from above) and she remembered hearing something about certain roof shapes transmitting even a whisper from one end to the other. She went two cells over and whispered experimentally at a very low volume and Dave was able to hear her. It was exactly the type of great debunking I like to see on the show.
There were some more personal experiences, less interesting to me than the smoke odor. Out in the courtyard by the gallows Steve and Dave were walking around when Steve said he briefly saw a shadow as he passed his light around the yard, but it wasn't there when he moved the light back. Shortly after that Dave got the chills. Jay was up in one of the cells when he got dizzy. He brought in Kris and Tango to see if they had similar experiences and they did report feeling off-balance — no one made any paranormal claims regarding the phenomenon but just flagged it as something odd and unexplained.
Interestingly, for the second time in back-to-back investigations Jay & Grant missed another FLIR oddity and it was only picked up during the evidence analysis. Last week I wrote that I was suspicious how J & G missed such great FLIR footage when they never seem to miss anything on the FLIR. Well I may have been a bit hasty in saying they never miss anything — and this one I'd say is pretty good — but I'd still maintain the Fort Mifflin FLIR footage was nearly unmissable, where as the footage they caught during this investigation was definitely harder to catch.
In this shot, the thermal camera is aimed down a hallway and some ways down the hall, on the other side of some partial obstacle (possibly a door?) there is a hot object that looks to me like person moving across the hall from right to left. Clearly visible is what appears to be a white (hot) ball similar to a head and something less defined (blocked by obstacle) below. Jay said it definitely didn't look like a person to him, but didn't explain why he felt that way. More important though was according to Jay, Grant, and Marisa the tour guide there are no doors on the sides of the hallway, so there would be no place to enter from on the right and nowhere to exit to on the left. If they are correct that certainly adds to the intrigue value of an already interesting clip.
Filed under Ghost Hunters, Posts by Logisti
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Comments on GH: Burlington County Prison »
Andy O @ 8:03 am
I think the cigarette smoke was interesting. I just wish they would show more than a 3 minute clip of them trying to figure out what and where it was exactly coming from. From what I understand Jason is a smoker so Maybe he was outside having one and some smoke somehow got into the jail. But that still doesn't explain how it moved down the hallway and into a different room.
As far as the image caught in the hallway I think it looks exactly like a shadow of a person. I'm not exactly sure but it almost looked like it was reaching a hand out towards the wall. I think it was Kris that said it looked like the ball of light and the lower half looked like they were moving seperatly.
CrowTRobot @ 8:26 am
Frankly, I was disappointed. It was clear from the beginning they were going to find this prison haunted. In fact, when they came back for the reveal with nothing to show, I turned to my wife and said, "If they declare this place haunted, I'm through. It's just going to be another GHI."
OK. So I'm not really through….yet.
Regarding the image down the hallway (Logisti, I thought it was caught on one of the cameras they set up, not "me and Grant's" FLIR.), in the old days they would have gone back to that site and tried to find out what it could have been. But now it's: "Yep. It's a ghost. This place is haunted"
I had other thoughts, but I think my wife put it best: "I miss Brian. He was fun. At least he was real."
Logisti @ 11:45 am
Andy O, I don't think the top and bottom looked like they were moving separately, I think they're moving together and are part of the same object (or person) but I wanted to delineate that because there is an obstacle in our line of site it's difficult to determine exactly what it is that we're looking at and what it's doing.
CrowTRobot, although we normally see them using the FLIR in color mode and this footage is black & white, it actually is thermal footage. During the analysis Steve shows it to Jay & Grant and says, "Usually whenever you see something on the thermal screen you stop and you say, 'Oh did you see that'… you try to debunk it … but you didn't do it on this one … so I'm thinking maybe you missed it."
Also, during the analysis we are shown a longer piece of the clip and that camera is actually only stationary for about two seconds — as if they're using the FLIR as a very expensive flashlight we see it swinging around as they "shine" it down the one hallway and then continue swinging as they (presumably) move to "shine" it down another.
Interestingly though, Steve's first reaction as he's showing the guys isn't "Wow, look at this", he actually says, "I'm not sure I'd call it 'evidence' just yet", which I thought was a little odd. Maybe he's thinking of the possibility that someone from the show might have been in that hall at that time, and his opinion got edited out, or maybe he just failed to voice it.
Also of interest, Grant says it appears to be walking into the "doorway" on the left. Now maybe he's just saying that because there is a very clear light patch (which the object walks into) that seems to me is either a doorway or an interconnecting hallway. Later everyone seems to agree there are no exits on the left or the right in that hall but without us being shown that exact hallway again I have to entertain the possibility that maybe they're wrong about that.
The other thing — which yet again highlights the disparity between the way evidence is treated in *this* investigation and how it was treated in the follow-up investigation at McArthur's house — is when Jay says this can't be a person because it's got a "big ball of light" as a head.
Immediately this seems like a ridiculous statement to me because they're looking at *thermal* camera footage, so of course a head is going to show up as a "ball of light" (heat). Not only that, but you're looking at an object that is far away from the camera, obscured by an obstacle, and recorded at what is essentially 0.02 megapixels of resolution. How on earth he can be so certain it's not a person is beyond me.
He clearly knows that this is *thermal* footage, Jay even tells Marisa during the reveal that it's thermal footage (and it says "FLIR" on the version he's watching). Yet, he asks Marisa if she's "ever experienced anything like that, anything that was emitting it's own light?" — since we've established that he understands this is *THERMAL* footage it is baffling that he keeps seeming to suggest that it's giving off its own visible light.
CrowTRobot @ 11:58 am
Re Thermal footage: I stand corrected. And apparently, I missed the references to it several times…..that's embarrassing.
Logisti @ 12:27 pm
No need to be embarrassed. Jay is supposed to be the expert (not to mention the one who actually filmed the footage in question) and *he* seems to forget he's looking at thermal footage from one sentence to the next.
Todd @ 8:28 am
I really felt that there were no experiences of haunting type but of environmental types. Smells, chills, sounds, and the vertigo can all be environmentally caused.
When Marisa asked Jason if he thought the prison was haunted, I knew it was going to be a "yes". But I found it interesting that, instead of a "definitely haunted", Jason went on to explain that it was residual haunt type phenomena.
And since Logisti brought in the McArthur house investigation for comparison: the FLIR "evidence" could be duplicated by human instrumentation. Is it possible that there was a reflective surface for Jason or Grant's own reflection to bounce off of? Jason and Grant have gone back prior to the reveal to see if there was an explanation, yet they have backed off of that practice as well.
Robbin @ 8:13 am
I too was underwhelmed by this episode and was not convinced that there was anything going on there. I do have a question, I thought that they said they were not allowed to smoke in the prison which is why the smell of traveling smoke was intriguing. Did I get that wrong?
I am not sure what the moving thing was at the end of the hallway, could there have been a headlight or something shining in?
Just like CrowTRobot's wife I too miss Brian.
numyer @ 8:33 am
Not too impressed with the smoke myself, I figure one of the crew was having one outside and the smoke drifted in or something like that. I'm no expert, but its just too hard for me to place much emphasis on a "smoke smell" floating around and old building. There's probably so much air leaking through an old place like that it could come from anywhere outside.
The "figure" down the hallway was interesting, as pointed out - not any debunking on it though. Nice that the "whispers from above" were debunked.
Seemed pretty weak evidence for the "haunted" claim, that was a word Jay seemed so reluctant to use in the past, If he starts getting into orbs as evidence I will really be worried.
Lil D @ 12:11 pm
So how obvious is it to anyone that Kris and Jay are having an affair?
That's about all I gleamed from this episode. Smell is not something that can be documented. The figure was cool - but why is it that TAPS can never actually get the full image on camera?
I, for one, love EVPs and I was hoping there would be some good ones here. Like "They don't want us" from the first episode, and that one, "What is this contraption?"
But I have to give Tango's dad props for admitting on national TV that even his feathers get ruffled around spirits.
It was also nice to see a Tango-centric episode! 
In all seriousness, I'd like to be on that show - because I'm not afraid of ghosts, etc. I do believe in the possibility of ghosts, and I've had one questionable encounter with one (maybe) but I'd love to get behind-the-scenes on that show and do some real ghost hunting. (Sorry, that comment is a bit off topic.)
Logisti @ 12:21 pm
Lil D, if you feel up to it I'm sure people would love to hear about your encounter. I've set up a section of the forums specifically for people to talk about their personal experiences and a couple of people have already taken advantage of it.
Lil D @ 2:15 pm
Hmm… OK!
You really had to twist my arm, didn't you?!
Thanks!
Stephen @ 12:59 am
The hard part about analyzing the hallway ball is that I can't find reference footage shot in visible light. I can't figure out, for example, if we're seeing a window at the end of the hallway, or if that's another blank hallway.
What it looks like to me is a car headlight moving past. Thanks to Jay and Grant's previous debunking, we know that there are cars going by the area. We could be seeing the headlight directly, or a reflection. One thing it doesn't particularly look like to me is a human figure– I'm just seeing a round ball moving smoothly.
Logisti @ 10:13 am
Stephen, take another look at the photos above. You can clearly see there is a divider running horizontally across what appears to be a much larger (and vertically elongated, like a human) figure.
There is a round "ball" above the obstacle, but there is also a much larger visible section of the anomaly below the obstacle, and the two seem to move together as a single object.
Rebekah @ 5:52 am
Stephan
how could the "round ball" be a head light reflection? as has been pointed out multiple times this is a thermal image. while headlights may have a similar effect on regular tape they would not show up as heat.
Lil D @ 6:39 am
Is there any chance, you think, that these are lights reflected from production - set up lights, etc? Or even someone's flashlight?
I don't know enough about the thermal cam to know if light sources such as a flashlight would actually show up. So if somene else knows, please enlighten me.
Stephen @ 2:09 am
Hi Rebekah! Incandescent lights like car headlights should show up pretty well in thermal. The average light bulb puts out about 80% of its radiation in the infrared spectrum. Reasonable point, though.
I have no idea if this is a car headlight or not; that was just a first impression. I have my doubts.
Logisti, I was thinking that perhaps the "body" was glare from the light. I can't even tell if we're looking through a window or not. Can anyone point me to a visible-light (or otherwise better) shot of the same hallway?
I imported the YouTube video into Motion, motion-stabilized it, sharpened it, and came to an exciting conclusion– that I've spent way too much time on it and it's time for bed. It's a blotch seen through a bunch of other blotches, context almost completely unknown. I can't tell if it's a ghost, a car, a person (with or without a flashlight), or Bigfoot. Talk to me when the DVD comes out– I might be able to say something then.
Logisti @ 2:49 am
I don't think DVD, HD-DVD or even Blu Ray can improve the upon the 160 pixels of goodness that are our source material. And I think we can rule out Bigfoot on height alone, although I'm going to toss in one of the Greys as a possibility, possibly recently returned from abducting Brian in Romanian well (if he'd checked his watch he might have noticed some lost time).
Seeing as they're only a few hundred miles from Lake Champlain I also don't think we can rule out Champ. If he's crawling, dehydrated and desperate that might just be the neck and head, with the body out of sight further down the hall.
Actually, the more I look at it I'm thinking Chupacabra. I hear they've been migrating north, like the killer bees. BEEEEEEEEEZ!!!!!!!
Okay, I too have gone far too long without sleep, clearly. Until tomorrow then.
J-Lo @ 8:23 pm
OH MY GOSH!!! I have been saying since Kris started that she and Jay are totally getting it on! Thanks for someone else validating that.