American Paranormal - S01E01: "Haunted Prison"

by JC Drake (Crassus)

“American Paranormal” (AP) is a new “para” program that has just begun its first season on the National Geographic Channel. The show seems to be a less serious reboot of their previous program “Is It Real?,” which made an effort to turn a skeptical eye toward phenomena considered in popular culture to be paranormal. AP comes off as a more unpolished, somewhat less skeptically inclined version of “Is It Real?,” but the essential premise is the same – to see what the world of science has to say about woo woo claims.

The first episode takes on the paranormal fad de jour, ghosts, and perhaps more importantly, ghost hunters. With a team of scientists and experts, AP explores the claims of ghosts manifest at “America’s most haunted place,” Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) in Philadelphia. ESP operated from 1829 to 1971 and is considered to be the world’s first true penitentiary. It is built in a radial pattern, with long corridors of cells extending out from a central hub, capped with a massive skylight called “the Eye of God.” The prison when initially conceived was meant to house all the inmates in total isolation, without any external stimuli. This “Separate System” of confinement was based on Quaker religious philosophy, assuming that a man isolated with nothing but his own thoughts would become closer to god. Thus time served at ESP was meant to be spiritual penance – hence the origin of the word “penitentiary.”

The Separate System, however, rather than making inmates more holy had a tendency to actually drive them insane, thus it was eventually abandoned. But before ESP closed, it housed some of America’s most notorious cons, including Al Capone, who lived in a lavish private cell while incarcerated there. Capone is the origin of many of the myths of haunting at ESP – he believed his own cell was haunted. Bear in mind, though, that at the time Big Al’s brain was slowly being eaten up by syphilis.

Today ESP is run as a tourist attraction that features, rather prominently, pay-for-play ghost tours. At the time the prison was erected it was one of the largest and most expensive buildings ever constructed – and the place is in rough shape today. So perhaps we can sympathize with the noble cause of attempting to restore and maintain one of America’s most important pieces of architectural history during uncertain economic times. The ghost tours and haunted house events probably bring in the much needed cash that more traditional historical tours fail to generate. This also explains why every ghost hunting television show worth its EM detector has filmed an episode (or two) there. ESP is the site of the famous “shadow man” video captured by TAPS in season 1, episode 5 of “Ghost Hunters.” So, what better place for AP to kick off their own inaugural episode?

The program begins with an evaluation of the claims at ESP. They mention a number sightings, including those made by Capone, but focus on the claims of two individuals in particular: Charles J. Adams, III – the author of Philadelphia Ghost Stories, and Gary Johnson, a locksmith at the prison who in 1996 witnessed what AP calls the prison’s “most dramatic haunting.” A quick Google search indicates that Mr. Adams has made a virtual cottage industry out of claims of the paranormal at ESP, focusing particularly on Mr. Johnson’s experience. ESP has become a one-stop ghost hunters amusement park, it seems. Cool. I wish I had thought of that – I could quit my phony-baloney government job!

The essence of Mr. Johnson’s claims stem from an event that happened in 1996 while he was working alone at night in the prison. Heckuva a locksmith that makes late night house calls! (It seems if you need a plumber or a locksmith, just tell them your house is haunted and they’ll be right over.) While working, Mr. Johnson began seeing ghosts emerge from the walls in mist form hovering around him and speaking to him, whispering “stay on your feet, don’t turn around.” This sighting lasted for a “terrifying five minutes” at the end of which Mr. Johnson was forced to conclude that ghosts are indeed real! What else could it be?

AP’s lead investigator for this opening effort was Dr. Jim Houran. Dr. Houran has legitimate degrees in clinical psychology and psychology and seems to be an expert on psychological assessment tools. He appears on TV in a lot of forms, lending his expertise on a myriad of topics, and is even the chief psychologist for an on-line dating service(!). A man of many talents. His stated aim in participating in the AP investigation is to “understand the psychology of ghosts and the haunted.” (Perhaps ghost dating is the next big thing…maybe I have a retirement plan after all.)

The investigation begins with the creation of a 3D laser scan of the building, focusing closely on the notorious cell block 12, the most haunted region of the prison and the site of TAPS’ fabled phantom. I admit the 3D scans look cool. I am not really sure what their purpose is. The science team states that the scans will help them to pinpoint any detected anomalies accurately. OK. They made for some nifty TV, regardless of the stated reasons.

Dr. Houran begins his part of the investigation by going on a tour with another witness, Dave Juliano who is a ghost hunter at ESP. He claims to have seen ghosts at ESP while leading tours. He shows off his equipment; the standard consumer grade stuff the TAPS guys use. Juliano asserts that ghosts are the remnants of the “energy” left over from people after we die and that his equipment can detect that energy. That is a common claim made by every manner of paranormal investigator, from the plumbers over at the SYFY Channel to the biblical historians that maintain the veracity of the Shroud of Turin. But if that is true, what are ghosts really made of and how can you detect them?

In order to investigate these claims the AP science team sets up high-end versions of the standard ghost hunter’s kit and they staff the equipment with experts on its use. Jim Seffrin, a certified thermographer, provides a long explanation on the use of infrared cameras, such as the FLIR. He explains that such cameras have limited viability because they can only detect the temperature of a surface, not the ambient air. IR cameras cannot detect the temperature of, for instance, vapor, which interferes with the camera’s reception. In a test Seffrin shows that vapor shows up as a dark cloud on the camera – the kind of anomaly the untrained eye might mistake for a ghost.

Next, AP provides a detailed debunking of the electromagnetic field detector. It is explained that almost everything gives off some EM field, from the human body to the cell phones and other gadgets that ghost hunters carry with them. EM fields are generated by any source of electricity and are everywhere. They can erupt in different places at different strengths all the time. So, even if the assumption is true that ghosts are made up of energy, there is no way to isolate a “ghostly” reading from the background “noise” of EM fields. So neither thermographic cameras nor EM detectors are really the kinds of tools one could reliably expect to find a ghost with.

This begs the question, then, what would ghosts actually be made of? They cannot simply defy the laws of physics. Dr. Dan Hooper of the FERMILAB Theoretical Astrophysics group is brought in to explain. It was claimed by Mr. Johnson that the ghosts he witnessed had passed through the walls of ESP. This is a popular claim made by those who have seen ghosts. But how can that be? If ghosts are made of atoms then the electrons within those atoms – which have a strong repulsive force – would prevent a ghost from passing through anything solid. For a ghost to behave like, well, a ghost it would have to be made of something else. Hooper suggests that ghosts could be made of something more exotic such as neutrinos – the so-called “ghost particle” – which contain no electrons. However, were this the case ghosts could not be seen as neutrinos give off no light or electromagnetic radiation. Billions of neutrinos pass through our very bodies every second.

So if the ghostly phenomena at ESP are not caused by actual ghosts, what could be the cause? The AP science team turns to the environment of the site itself. It’s creepy and has a disturbing history. Sound engineers Bob Berens and Steve Africk propose the theory that ESP is a unique environment that strongly resonates infrasound. Infrasound is made up of low frequency sound waves outside the realm of human hearing. The frequency of 19hz has been linked to the presence of ghostly phenomena in other structures. That frequency, though unheard, vibrates the human eyes and inner ears and creates the feeling of discomfort associated with the perceived presence of ghosts.

The science team then set up an experiment in which tourists were taken through the prison with and without a 19hz generator running. Sure enough, the group that went through while the infrasound was being pumped out reported strong incidents of ghostly “feelings.” The presence of infrasound made a strange environment even stranger. In the interest of full disclosure I have experimented with infrasound as well in a very amateur way and can assert that it does “mess with you.” I’m not saying that it explains away all ghostly phenomena, but if I were going to run a haunted attraction, I’d make sure I had a 19hz sound generator installed somewhere out of sight!

Finally, after providing a cursory debunking of the most common claims made by ghost hunters at ESP, the science team got down to the really interesting and key component of the investigation. Dr. Houran set up a psychological experiment whereby he pre-screened groups of ghost hunters using an examination tool (according to his web bios this is his area of expertise) which ranked them on the scale of their belief in the paranormal. He then broke this tourist group up into sub-groups and gave half the visitors the strong suggestion that ESP was highly active with ghostly phenomena while giving the other group the suggestion that it is not. He then turned the groups loose in the prison.

At the end of the experiment, it turns out that the group with the highest belief in the paranormal that was part of the sub-group that was given a strong indication that the prison is haunted had the most ghostly encounters. Woo hoo. Big deal, right? To any skeptic, that seems obvious. In point of fact, it is actually not obvious at all. We skeptics make this claim all the time and it was useful to see Dr. Houran actually test this hypothesis with a controlled experiment. Indeed, the young woman who scored as having the highest belief in ghosts also had the most experiences. She felt and saw what she expected to feel and see. This psychological phenomenon is called “confirmation bias.”

To cap the show off, the science team set up all their equipment and monitored the empty prison for one night, typical of the standard ghost hunt. Did they catch a ghost? No, they caught something else – rain. In a rather sloppy fashion they explained that everyday happenings like rain can play havoc with an environment like that found at ESP. The rain drops can set up waves of infrasound that make people uncomfortable (really? I didn’t buy that) and the changes of temperature can mess with IR cameras and give bizarre readings.

In the end, Dr. Houran concludes that the bizarre environment at ESP coupled with confirmation bias is responsible for the hauntings at this old prison in Philly. I would revise that just a little bit – confirmation bias is probably 90% of the cause and the fact the place is creepy accounts for the other 10%. The infrasound explanation, while a bit interesting, actually seemed to step a little too far into pseudoscience for me. After all, Houran was able to easily determine that people who expected to see ghosts at ESP saw them – even without any special modifications of the environment.

I felt that the weakest link in the whole program was the fact that the science team took ghostly encounters at face value. No investigation or consideration of outright fraud was ever entertained. As we know from watching all these other “para” shows, fraud is a very real part of ghostly phenomena and any real investigation of claims should take that possibility into account.

In the end, this show is pretty good. It’s entertaining though, oddly enough, not as much fun to watch as “Ghost Hunters” or the wacky “Paranormal Adventures.” Nor is it as informative as its predecessor “Is It Real?” “Is It Real?” gave greater weight to the skeptics on the show, often led by the redoubtable Joe Nickell. Joe rarely needs fancy equipment or crazy graphics to do his debunking work and maybe that’s why he’s not a good draw for this kind of TV. No flare, just hard science.

AP will succeed or fail as a skeptical program based on the merits of its experts (as we will see in my upcoming review of their Bigfoot episode.) Scientists, after all, can be just as prone to confirmation bias as anyone else. AP is a good place to test your skeptical skills. Even though someone has a fancy degree, you shouldn’t just believe what they are saying – especially when they’re saying it on basic cable. So keep watching and thinking!