Yes, there are ways to debunk the "Taps flashlight event". However, this does not mean that a spirit can not effect the flashlight.

Welcome Monique. I'm also looking forward to seeing the flashlight footage. Two at the same time does add another element. This flashlight trick is a good example of where the GH franchise has hurt the field of paranormal study. A few examples of what we've seen on the show have a very high probability of being faked. And, at the least, there is 100% certainty that the footage has been edited to show something in a way that it did not happen which, to me, makes the scene inadmissible as evidence.

You are correct about if something can be shown to happen in a normal fashion that it doesn't necessarily mean that a similar occurrence might not be paranormal. I think you have to put it into a different tier of evidence, though, if it is something that you can repeat yourself. You do gather a more defensible array of evidence if it is made up of things that you just cannot repeat.

Interesting about the EMF readings. At Wright Patterson, Grant had the same experience in the time frame in which the light came on. However with GHA at the Stanley, from what I can see, the EMF did not change. And Grant's experience seems different from your own in that it was not just a spike but an increase that continued for a while.

Course, we have to take his word for it because I don't think that at any time we were treated to a view of his detector's screen. Regarding the EMF increase, our own Learjet here has demonstrated that a normal flashlight going on can create an increase in EMF. See Post #17 here: http://www.skepticalviewer.com/forums/ghost-hunters-academy/episode-112-its-over/page-1

My own experiments with the flashlight trick http://www.skepticalviewer.com/2010/07/18/the-flashlight-trick-aka-the-sft/ leave me suspicious of this act. A suspicion that would not be so heightened if it were not for the deceit seen on GH/GHA, maybe in that regard they have done a bit of good lol. Because of this, there are several things I would probably need to see before I would even consider such footage as evidence. One of those is trust in the person bringing me the evidence, however in the case of an unknown group, I would like to see at a minimum:

1. Person asking the questions in the same frame as the flashlight, no voiceovers, no panning back and forth.
2. A timer or timepiece (ideally showing tenths of second) on camera (not just time stamp/time coding since those can be added after the fact)
3. More than one occurrence of the interaction.
4. EMF screen visible

Unfortunately, my "requirements" could be a bit difficult to setup logistically! Another Learjet question…signature of flashlight going on vs an RF remote being activated? Would they be distinguishable from each other? Frequency would probably separate one from the other…sure would be nice to see some consumer equipment that showed that in addition to just the level.

I do like the fact that you indicate that you have two flashlights doing it at the same time, that adds another level and as I said, quite eager to see the footage.

Again, welcome and I hope you'll stay around and continue to contribute.

Monique…a question regarding some info on your site. (vsparanormal.com)

Regarding EVPs there is a statement:

A best practice for field recording is to use two recorders. As a rule, EVP will only occur on one recorder or sound track, making it possible to avoid mistaking local sounds for EVP (false positives). But it has happen where we got a voice response on more than one recorder. VSPR had 5 recorders going in a session and 2 of them had the same response to a question while the other 3 did not.

The instances where there was voice response on more than one recorder or where it appeared on 2 of 5 recorders, were these considered to be EVPs or were they thrown out since they broke the "rule" of occurring on one recorder only?

Monique Sears said:

VSPR, my paranormal research team, did the same flashlight experiment.   We placed two flashlight, one on a chiar, and one on the floor.  We had a emf meter near one.  When asking the spirit to put the flashlights on, both went on at the same time, as the emf meter spiked.   Interesting mmm?   We did capture it on video, and it should be on our site in about a month.

Monique Sears

What's interesting, Monique, is that it's now been almost 2 months and no video, and no return to this site to answer any of the questions. It can't possibly take that long to post video that you already supposedly have. Makes me think your post was naught but a drive-by or an advertisement for your site?

Dreamsinger said:

I would like to have seen the video, and have a question or two for Monique as welll.

One question I'd really like to hear an explanation to is why would you have to add background noise when conducting EVP sessions while using a high quality recording device?

If you're the Dreamsinger I'm familiar with, a hearty welcome, indeed! If you're another Dreamsinger, well, welcome anyway :) Learjet has already used muppets in his avatar, but fortunately they are non-Bunsenlike in appearance.

As for one of your questions, I'm going to hazard to guess that one reason might be that, with less static, they may need to artificially introduce some sort of noise pattern with which to get their audio-matrixing engaged…