March 22, 2009
Fort Mifflin: Steve vs Grant
by Nosfer
I've been asked about the Mifflin thermal figure controversy regarding Steve's version and Grant's version of what happened.
In short, Steve's version, given while showing Jason and Grant what they found indicates that they were filming the cot which had the heat signature, and then they pannned up into the doorway and caught the figure.
Grant indicates that they were walking down a hallway shining the thermal into the various rooms when they caught the figure.
That's the "short" Let's look at the details.
By doing a frame by frame of the Analysis and Investigation footage, it can be shown that they are in a room that is DIFFERENT from where the cot with the thermal signaure is. Thus proving Grant's version of the story. The captures that I still have show Jason and Grant in the hallway that the various casemates open onto.
The following are sequential from during the Investigation, note the times on each image. They show a corridor in thermal with the final shot showing the duo just before pointing into the room with the figure. The final shot is from the production camera and is in IR.
In the last two images, note and compare the crescent shape at the side of the "doorway" over Jason's left shoulder (in the IR) vs the colder blue crescent-shape of the side of the doorway in the thermal. That shape is important for later on. Note also the dark line going upwards above the doorway in the IR shot. This is a cord that leads up to the lights (the white and red signatures) in the thermal.
Compare now to a daylight shot of the same hallway found here:
http://llphoto.smugmug.com/photos/478841636_fKJBo-Th.jpg
There are some interesting things to note on the side here. Look at the signature of those lights. This takes place well into the investigation, ie, after they "go dark" I did some experiments measuring the temperature decay of a lightbulb after it is turned off, and I would estimate that those lights in the images above were on not five minutes before they were filmed. Makes one wonder if perhaps the figure is someone on the production crew whose job it was to shut off the lights before the team came through. He shuts off the lights, ducks into the casemate to hide until Jason and Grant come through and, bingo, instant thermal hit!
Now, in the analysis, we get the following dialog:
Steve: "Now if you'll notice here, shortly after you see that, that heat signature on the cot, you pan up away from the cot and all of a sudden you see it. "
Jason: "Stop it right there Steve, that's a person."
Steve: "…shape of a person."
Jason: "Well what else is down there that's going to give off heat"
Grant: "Well that's a stove, that's one of the…that's one of the rooms"
Jason: "Thats that's a…s…uh the outline of a human figure right there, that's exactly what it is and you know, another thing, it's not like there's any footprints of anybody walking in or anything else that's warmed up so it's just…it's there so we caught, we caught something on thermal and it's pretty substantial because we've even got what appears to be warmth coming off the stove."
Grant: "Well we were down there we didn't see anything. What the heck is going on?"
Break to commercial (naturally!) Also interesting to note is Jason's statement about there being no footprints. This is the same argument used in the Fort Delaware investigation (the original one) Immediately afterward that episode I performed an experiment trying to see if I could get a heat signature on a cold stone floor with shoes on, and after standing in one place (not just walking around) I was still unable to get a significant enough temperature difference that would have registered on their thermal.
Onto the reveal in which they tell the client about the thermal evidence they get. The first being the heat signature on the cot. Here they show the cot, and then show their attempts to get temperatures of various things including showing their handprint on the cot. The footage of the handprint comes after (obviously) the initial shot of the cot which just has the first signature on it. Then they move to the figure and as Grant is setting the scene up for the client we hear him say:
Grant: "In the next part we were walking through the hallway, and just shining the thermal imaging camera into the other…"
Client: "The little rooms"
Grant: "…casemates, right, and uh obviously there's nothing in there but a stove."
Client: "WOW!"
Grant: "Yeah, that's what we said."
Grant says they were walking through the hall shining the thermal into separate rooms. This is quite different from Steve saying they just panned up from the cot and caught the figure!
Alright, let's go back to the Findings when Steve is showing them the footage. Here is the sequence of frames starting with the cot (showing the INITIAL heat signature on it) and ending with the figure:
Note that blue crescent shape again (compare to the sequence of captures above)
Note, now, the same lights, too (again, compare to the first sequence of captures above)
At this point it may be argued that Steve was just not sure of the sequence of events and Grant does, in fact, say:
Grant: "Well that's a stove that's one of the, that's one of the rooms"
Which is not picked up upon by anyone and elaborated on. This could be seen as Grant's attempt to correct Steve, but it is very half-hearted and not taken through to conclusion.
BUT…there is something else that is mysterious here.
The sequence that Steve shows is not what happened. It shows exactly what he says…a pan up from the cot and then all of sudden there is the figure. This is impossible given that the cots are not in that hallway to which the casemates are accessed from. AND what happens (in this sequence) to the footage of the handprint and the attempts to recreate the heat signature. These shots are shown later in the reveal so the footage was not deleted. This means there can be no way for the hall shot to immediately follow a shot of the cot taken PRIOR to the handprint on it.
The footage shown in the findings was deliberately edited to match Steve's INCORRECT version of events. Why?
Filed under Ghost Hunters, Posts by Nosfer
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Comments on Fort Mifflin: Steve vs Grant »
CrowTRobot @ 5:09 pm
I swear, I think the only reason I still watch GH/GHI is so I can come here and get stuff like this.
Quality stuff, Nosfer.
alicat @ 6:23 pm
Fantastic job Nosfer. 'tis a puzzlement. My head is spinning. GH is so heavily edited, nothing would surprise me but why this? What's the point? Ugh! Oh, why do I watch this show?!
Interesting that during Steve's presentation of the findings, both J&G accept this as being the correct sequence of events. They were the expert investigators directly on the scene and yet neither questions Steve about the sequence and location of the cots with respect to the hallway/room?
In the end, I guess these GH producers feel no one will ever notice the break in continuity. Strange.
Revenant @ 1:52 am
First, I applaud your effort. That's some very nice detective work you've done there, my friend.
The only thing that I'd like to see (just to avoid questions down the road) is more information on the type of thermal device that you used in your footprint experiment and in judging the temperature decay of the lights. And is the device that you are using better than what the GH Team uses, worse, or comparable?
Nosfer @ 9:23 am
The footprint and lightbulb observations were just asides in the write-up above so I didn't want to go into too much detail there that would detract from the main focus, which being the discrepancies in the two versions of events. That being said, the experiments and what they show are worthy of some space as well.
The footprints experiment was carried out to give a substance-based rebuttal to some of claims being made after the Fort Delaware episode where it was beginning to look like the mere absence of footprints was proof-positive for many that it was a ghost rather than Bill from the production crew who just got lost looking for a bathroom. My findings naturally fell upon deaf/closed ears
Thus I felt somewhat vindicated during the Halloween Episode when they panned after Jason with the FLIR when he was walking away and no footprints remained to indicate his _immediate_ passing! (let alone residual footprints showing more than a minute afterward)
I shall do here what I wish GH would do in their reviews and I will point out some of the flaws in my own experiments. And since they won't do it, I'll point out some of the flaws in their methods!
In any recreation there are two very important factors to consider. Physical Conditions and Equipment. There is a third factor and this applies both to recreations and investigations…and that is _knowledge_ of the equipment you are using.
Equipment: This is a big one and probably the largest "flaw" in my experiment. I was not using a FLIR but rather a high-ratio (50:1) point-IR thermometer. The ratio is an indication of the area that you are measuring. As an example, if you were standing 5 meters from your target, the temperature reading would be that of an area about 10 centimeters in diameter. That's a bit big for detecting footprints! So, naturally, I did my sweeps from a much closer distance. I believe I used 0.5, 1, and 2 meters. For the lightbulb test I used a less-than 0.5 meter distance.
Despite dissimilar equipment, I do not think the outcome itself is any different and the footage from the Halloween Episode showing a lack of footprints mere seconds after Jason walks by supports the findings.
Conditions: For the experiment with the footprints, conditions were quite similar. Both were done in cold stone surroundings. The lightbulb experiment was in a similar setting but I had to lay it (in a metal-grilled holder) on the stone floor since I didn't have one conveniently attached to the wall at height in that sort of setting.
Since the team was kind enough to have settings displayed on the FLIR at Fort Delaware I was able to use them and also to see that my surroundings were recording very close to the same as what they were seeing. At Fort Mifflin, however, I was not so fortunate and this is a flaw in the GH technique. Those settings should always be available. Not just the numeric value of what the temperature is reading but also the range and the IR settings themselves, ie, emissivity. For Fort Mifflin I had to make an educated guess and assume that they had not changed the settings from when it was being used at other times during the episode.
This brings us to the third factor which is the knowledge of the equipment you are using. I don't feel there was any flaw in this in my experiments, but the settings used at Fort Delaware are NOT the ones they should have been using in a stone environment like they were. Nevertheless I used them so as to more accurately recreate what they were doing. Using more correct settings did not change the outcome, at least not regarding the footprints.
The first footprint experiment consisted of walking over the floor. I just wore socks and tennis shoes since I didn't know what the potential footprint-leaver was wearing. Given the temperature down there it would not have been unreasonable to assume some sort of insulated boot which would make the possibility of footprints even less. After walking over the floor I waited one minute (an estimate based upon how long it took them to say "Whoa G, rewind that" "What the frig" and then to wander down to where the figure was) I then swept the IR beam over the area noting the temperature fluctuations. The fluctuations (only about 0.1F-0.2F) were random and did not correspond to the area of a footprint. Lacking a FLIR which lets you see the whole scene at once, I had to do it in multiple sweeps and piece the info together which one could see as a flaw in the recreation. I'm still confident of the results, though.
The second experiment was to stand in one place for two minutes (to simulate someone hanging around waiting for the duo to approach and then to pop out) I then waited the minute and performed the same actions as above. There seemed to be greater fluctuations but there did not seem to be any defined boundary that would indicate the edge of a footprint. One additional "flaw" would be that we never see the actual footage of when they claim there were no footprints, so there is nothing to compare to.
One additional experiment that I performed was based upon some of the claims that the figure was way too cold for a human (at Fort Delaware) and that a human should be reading almost 100 degrees (ie 98.6F) So, I put on a jacket, fired the IR at my torso and obviously must have been feeling very unwell because my body temperature read so far below 98.6 that it wasn't funny. Amazing what a JACKET can do to shield thermal radiation! I don't think I need to say any more about that one!
The Lightbulb recreation was not as controlled since I didn't know the actual temperatures being recorded by Jason and Grant. I didn't know the temperature range of the scene, either, so even relative difference wasn't too good (I assume the FLIR was set for auto-gain rather than fixed-scale). I did not know the wattage of the bulbs. I did not know the emissivity settings on the FLIR (but assumed they were the same as shown earlier)
IF the FLIR was set on auto-gain AND the walls and floor were all within a degree of each other and you had a lightbulb giving off a temperature that was 5 degrees hotter, you may infact see what they were seeing.
In the experiment I turned on the light and let it stabilize at an "on temperature" I regret that I do not have my notes showing actual temperatures and that what I wrote originally detailing this experiment over on the "other" forum no longer seems to be there. Once the bulb had reached temperature I took a reading from it and the surrounding floor (trying to recreate the surrounding wall to which the light was affixed at Fort Mifflin) I switched off the light and took the same measurements at (I believe) 10-second intervals until equilibrium was reached. I recall that the decay in the first minute was incredible and the plot was definitely exponential rather than linear. Unfortunately, not knowing the absolute temperatures recorded by GH, this experiment should be taken with a lot of latitude. I really wish I knew what their settings and subsequent readings were.
GH Flaws: Always show the timestamp, the temperature range, the emissivity settings, etc on the FLIR!! If you are in a stone tunnel, set the emissivity to match that, don't use the factory settings or the settings you used upstairs in a wood room!
Revenant @ 1:51 am
Thanks for the detailed write-up of your experiments. I can see why you didn't want to draw focus from the original article. The descrepancies in the two events is huge and you nailed it.
But really, I wouldn't take anything away from these two experiments either. I think they are very telling as well. When I first began reading your article and looked at the top four pictures, the very first thing that jumped to mind was "Why are the lights on? Or how long ago were they turned off?" I thought that was going to be the gist of the article. As I read on, I was very surprised that the lights had nothing to do with it. We are lead to believe that when they "go dark" it stays dark. The pictures show that this is obviously not true. Even if your light experiment was flawed, which I don't believe that it was, and the decay rate was even ten times the actual value, there is still no way those lights could retain that level of heat for so long in the cold (basing it on the fact that they had been on the investigation for hours at this point).
And the footprint thing has always driven me crazy. I've always wanted to do these experiments myself, I just don't have the equipment. The only thing I would have probably added was doing an experiment with bare feet, just to draw a comparison between that and shoes. I would want to see what it would actually take to leave prints hot enough and long enough for a thermal device to pick up. Again, this is just a personal curiousity. I think your experiments, as is, are pretty solid. Again…great job!
alicat @ 6:27 am
Again Nosfer, fantastic job. I just have to say, I am so impressed by the technical talents of the members on this site in both writing and analysis. It's amazing.
Revenent said: "We are lead to believe that when they "go dark" it stays dark. The pictures show that this is obviously not true. Even if your light experiment was flawed, which I don't believe that it was, and the decay rate was even ten times the actual value, there is still no way those lights could retain that level of heat for so long in the cold (basing it on the fact that they had been on the investigation for hours at this point)."
I thought so as well. They make a point of going dark by always showing switches being flipped and outside shots with lights going out but, as we know, they don't shut the breakers down completely as has been discussed in previous posts. So how could this happen if they had gone dark and been investigating for several hours? I know this is coming from far left field but, isn't it possible that they went back to the site and re-shot some scenes at some point in time (or as they have called it in the past-to re-check something they couldn't figure out) and then edited the scenes into the final product rather than showing it as a return to the "scene"?
Nosfer @ 8:33 am
Alicat: but, isn't it possible that they went back to the site and re-shot some scenes at some point in time (or as they have called it in the past-to re-check something they couldn't figure out) and then edited the scenes into the final product rather than showing it as a return to the "scene"?
—–
With this show there is always the possibility of almost anything being done and spliced in to make a shot! I'm not sure what they would have been recreating at this point, though, if (as they claim) they had not seen anything. Also, I would have to go back and look but I think at the start of the scene with Jason and Grant in the hall (the first sequence of photos above) it does say something about "Fort Mifflin, X Hours into Investigation" I will have to double check that, though because it's been a while since I watched the start of that scene…the number of hours would be interesting to see, too.
IF that is the case, though, and what we see is a recreated shot, then there would be more evidence of Pilgrim showing things that weren't quite as they were…I'm NOT saying that is the case here, but IF. Others here have hit on this point, too…if something is a recreation, it should be specifically labeled as such. Even Most Haunted will flash "recreation" or "replay" when they show the Investigato…er…Actors…screaming repeatedly.
The main point against it being a recreation, though, is that if it were, then the entire figure would have been recreated or staged, too, since the lights are showing the same temperature in the continuous footage of the swing into the casemate that shows the figure standing by the stove. That is why I don't think it was a recreation and that the lights had been on just recently. It also suggests that the person charged with turning out the lights might be the one they captured by the stove.
I think they may have actually seen the figure during the investigation, realized what (or rather "who") it was, and then backed quickly out and went to another casemate. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a very thorough investigation if they just pointed the thermal into a room and didn't even bother to look and see if they captured anything that warranted actually stepping into the room to investigate further! Afterall, how many other times have they stopped and rewould the thermal after spotting signatures MUCH LESS substantial than that. If they missed THAT figure, then they have no real right to call themselves investigators!
alicat @ 10:10 am
Thanks Nosfer. Good points and, again, great job. I just thought I would throw it out there because you never know with them. Anything is possible since they even have to redo the client introductions for camera more than once and just not to get a different angle on the shot.
Revenant @ 2:10 pm
Nosfer said "GH Flaws: Always show the timestamp, the temperature range, the emissivity settings, etc on the FLIR!!"
You know, I couldn't help thinking about this while watching the new show at the Edith Wharton Estate. When they caught the handprint with the FLIR, I began watching intently for those things that you mentioned. And to my utter and complete shock…nothing. No timestamp, no temperature range, nothing.
Perhaps they are learning that people are actually paying attention to such things. It's almost as if they are saying "Let's use scientific equipment but let's also make a concentrated effort in order to make our findings as ambiguous as possible." Because if it ain't ambiguous, it ain't Ghost-Huntin'…
Oubliette @ 10:36 am
Plus the fact they probably have no idea how to really use the scientific instruments they have, or the actual source of any readings they obtain and how to interpret them.
"Using scientific equipment does not make you a scientist"
True words indeed.
JamesDX @ 1:40 pm
Anyone know how to do things like this?
JM @ 3:53 am
I just spent about two hours (because I'm a masochist, apparently), shooting down 9/11 was an inside/alien/Satanic/Oompa Loompa job theories….many of which were based on FLIR photography and footage.
Having come out of that little nook of "I share a species distinction with THESE PEOPLE?!" hell…I just have to say that FLIR footage is the new unintelligible EVP; in fact its likely worse and even more unreliable. It has Rorscach test qualities out the wazoo, is easy to fake, but hard to prove as such….
The best evidence for Jason and Grant having sold out is the fact that they continue to use the damn stuff, honestly. Their initial reason for incorporating the technology into their arsenal (detecting 'cold spots') it cannot do (as it can only read temps of solid surfaces), and the amount of times even _they_ have been forced to admit to it being their own reflection just makes it look fishy by default. They'd nix the elextronic Ouij-er, K2 Meter, but not this?!
Chris @ 12:48 pm
I am an employee of Fort Mifflin and just wanted to clarify a little about what we are seeing here. Please note, I have had my own strange experiences at the Fort, but they bear no relevance to my comment here.
The part of the fort where J & G caught the "apparition" is in one of the main "casemates" or bombproofs. These are part of the main casemates (underneath the northeast bastion of the fort.) The casemate with the apparition is casemate # 3. To get to these, you go down a tunnel (there are five casemates-# 1 and 5 are larger, 2-4 are smaller.) The doorways to each casemate are on your left, and as you would look into the doorway to casemates 2-5, the room itself runs straight ahead. To get an exact picture, I found a photo of the hallway flickr.com/photos/ 36188688@N05/3344603251 here, with the entrances to each casemate visible.
Casemate # 3 has an old stove at the far end of the room against the far wall. To me, it looks like J & G were filming this from the hallway. Trust me when I tell you that there should be no heat signature from the stove (it is in VERY poor condition-parts of it are rusted out). Yes the stove is cast iron, but The Ghost hunters filmed the episode in October, and since the casemate walls are 3 ft thick, and 10 ft of dirt is on top of the ceiling, even in the summer they stay a bit cooler (although muggy!).
I have heard some suggest it was a crew member that had run in there after turning out the lights. The controls for the lights are not in the casemates (they are located outside of the tunnel in yet another casemate-in fact in the previous photo that extension cord along the floor is for some of the lighting!
I have also heard it was a crew member who had ran in there to change a tape. It doesn't make sense to me that someone would run to the back wall to change the tape. Rather they'd probably leave the tunnel altogether, or step through the doorway and stand in the near corner.
If anyone has questions about the fort please feel free to email me.
Thanks
Chris