I thought the thermal hit in the window of the barn was a cat, maybe sitting on the ledge. Would a coat of fur block a cat's body heat so it would read cold on the FLIR?

Anything alive would have registered as a heat source (red to white). Even reflections are in the lighter range (see the debunking of thermal figure outlines). Fur would not block the heat signature, just as clothes do not.

First impression was that it was something in the window, but after reviewing it, here's a possible explanation.
Jay is bouncing around the imager like mad, so that what we're seeing may not be the "thing" moving, but a stationary thing from different perspectives. When we get the closest view, we can see that the window looks into the barn and we can see the clear outline of another window in the background. If that window is covered in glass (or wood) except for a large, jagged gap in its lower right corner, we'd expect to see the cold outside air showing up as it did against the (relative) warmth reflected into the room by the covered window.
This of course would be easy to debunk, but unfortunately, the TAPS team didn't seem to address this possibility (at least on the portion of the investigation aired) …

OMG! I was thinking the exact same thing! It looks exactly like the shape of a cat.

I thought it was an animal at first as well. But, after seeing it a couple of times you can actually see it change shape and then disapear. To me this is the best evidence TAPS has shown this season.

The object in the barn window does seem to be one of the better pieces of evidence so far this season. Still, like others, I thought it was a cat. (Does it seem like there's a lot of cats involved lately?) The changing shape could just be it turning around and jumping down. Unfortunately, TAPS just don't seem to spend as much time trying to find alternative answers as they used to. I understand it was cold, but this is why they're out there.

btw, I thought, just before they got to the cat shape, there was another shape that looked to be a person standing up looking out the window. I caught it while they were waving the thermal around. I missed it the first time, I caught it on the second showing.

Oh, and note to TAPS: The next time you want the spirit of a child to kick a ball – hide your camera but keep it running; then tell the child you're leaving and he'd better NOT touch that ball while you're gone.

You're right Crow, I thought I saw something looking out as well. Good Idea about the ball, I know with my kids if you tell them not to do something they will more than likely do it as soon as you leave.

Maybe TAPS has a pet cat that they bring along with them.

If it was a cat, it was a frozen cat. People seem to be forgetting that the image in the window registered as colder than the surroundings — not warmer as you would get from a cat or any living creature, as Todd pointed out.

I agree Wes, just making a little fun of them. I was a little disapointed that they didn't spend much time in the barn because it was cold. To me they should have spent more time out there investigating.

It was pretty funny though that Steve thought there actually was an underground railroad.

I just watched it again and it's clear that as they approach the Barn from an acute angle to that window (where they would be able to see further inside to the right, where this object appears from) the object is not originally there.

A couple of seconds later after some more camera bouncing we see the hayloft window/door again and now the edge of the object is visible — but from this angle if it was a stationary object they should have been able to see it BETTER/LARGER during the approach to the building from the angle they were at.

Finally when they are almost directly parallel to the building the object appears very large and visible (but shorter). All of this would make sense as a stationary object if they had been moving right-to-left but since they were moving left-to-right I think it's a certainty that the object is moving.

The other problem is the temperature — it's so out of whack with anything in the surroundings that it has to either be producing it's own temperature variance or it has to be recently introduced into the environment.

Now, I believe (and I could be wrong) that any mammal would show up as white, centrally according to the scale. With the scale so cold I would expect it actually to show up as blinding white, radiating whiteness into its surroundings — either that or the camera would auto-adjust to a higher temperature scale, but that isn't what appears to happen.

The other thing that bothers me is the black would seem to be an object significantly *colder* than the average subzero temperatures outside. If that interpretation of the FLIR footage is correct, then what could *possibly* be colder? I mean, the average ambient temp seemed to be industrial-freezer cold, so how on earth could something get significantly colder than that — in an old barn, no less?

I have to agree with Yeti33, in the absence of a FLIR expert explaining how this is some trick of the camera or we're misinterpreting the scale, this definitely qualifies as some pretty impressive evidence. The more I review it and try to pull it apart, the more impressed I'm getting with how well it stands up.

About the cat hypothesis: The tall (human-like) figure that is apparently to the right of the window in the earliest shot of the anomaly clearly *cannot* be a cat, but to be duly skeptical since we don't have continuous, unbroken footage we can't *really* be entirely sure that object and the object we see a few seconds later are the same object.

In other words, we see the "cat" object "descend" from the window/door back into the barn but we don't see the "tall" object change into the cat object as the camera is pointing elsewhere between the two visuals.

That being said, I think the thermal evidence seems strongly *against* a cat because of the heat problem (not enough of it). Also, for anyone thinking of the winter-coat phenomenon we noticed (discussed in Podcast episode 3) I think we can rule that out because the winter coats should show up the same as ambient temperature, and that doesn't look like what we're seeing here either.

Hi Yeti, I wish Jay and Grant had sent Steve on a hunt for the tracks …

Without having the footage handy, I recall it seemed to be more shifting in shape rather than "moving." So a question: could a draft of cold air, perhaps coming through a crack in the floor of the barn, account for a shifting, super-cold anomaly like the one we're discussing?

Wes, in a word, No. The cold air would have to be affecting a solid object. Even a pane of glass could do — some glass almost completely blocks thermal light — but as mentioned earlier the other problem is that this object appears even colder than the ambient temperature.

I'm absolutely not suggesting this was hoaxed but just as a thought experiment, if you wanted to hoax this evidence how would you go about it? Forget about the shape itself and the movement — how would you get an object in that barn to be *that* much colder than the ambient sub-zero temperature?

I can't think of a way to do that.

I admit I don't know a lot about thermal images.

I guess I'm unclear about why the imagers *couldn't* show pockets of air in that way. I remember the episide where a sensitive was doing a reading on Jay and we saw a growing, moving heat signature behind him that was obviously not a solid object nor a reflection on a continuous object since it crossed a doorway without changing appearance.

To me, it looked like the same kind of phenomena except with a cold spot. Of course, I could be wrong …

Wes, yeah I know the footage you're talking about and to me that's another one of those pieces of footage that really shout "Hey! Something weird is going on here!" — something not normal, possibly paranormal.

So basically you're comparing one anomaly to another. I haven't seen a good explanation for either, and I've never seen either one compared to similar footage which *can* be explained.

Maybe this is way off but for the one investigation where he was getting a reading from that sensitive could it be possible that what we see is actually Jay's body heat? I recall Jay saying that he was trying to block the sensitive from getting information from him. I know sometimes when people are under stress or trying not to give information out there body temp rises. Could that be why we see the heat coming from Jay?

Does someone have a thermal imaging camera we can experiment on?

The footage in question is Carroll Heath reading Jay at Dr. Ellis' House. You can see it here, at about 5:27 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dem5q0Rj5-4

The anomaly occurs so rapidly, and is so huge in size, that I don't think there's any possibility it could be Jay's body heat, even if the camera could see body heat (which I would argue it cannot)

Maybe I'm way off here, but I got the impression that there was something on the lens.

Yeah, you're right Logisti, just a shot in the dark at a theory.

Definitely, keep taking shots. I like Ronin1220's "something on the lens" idea too, but I think we can rule it out from the way the object behaves (it clearly seems to be inside the building, as the window frame always seems to be blocking some portion of it.

Also, it was way too cold for an errant insect but that does bring up an interesting point for future footage. A gnat landing on that lens might possibly look like some sizable anomaly farther away. Definitely a possibility to keep in mind while reviewing future footage.