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12:24 pm
September 13, 2008
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Jen
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| Investigator in Training | posts 5 |
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Hi, all. I love this website and all the thoughts about the show! My approach fits in with those of you here. I'm willing to believe, but unwilling to be a sucker.
Anything with a commercial is vulnerable to impaired integrity. As the Moss Beach Distillery episode showed, the restaurant owners
enjoyed "enhancing the guest experience." I wouldn't be surprised if
the show occasionally does the same.
The very first thing I thought while watching GH was why on earth are they not all equipped with cameras on helmets?? I'm glad to see so many others view this as an obvious and deliberate oversight.
I think they should approach their investigations in a more segmented manner. They should have separate teams of researchers/client interviewers, investigators and tech analysts with no intermingling of duty. Ie the tech analysts and researchers do not also investigate the location itself.
The researchers should initiate research immediately after the client interview to determine whether any documentation exists to back up claims. The investigators should be told minimal specifics about client claims. They should know the complaints themselves, but not any history which might impact their interpretation of evidence. (Ie, the fact that a child or woman died in a particular room shouldn't be disclosed to the investigators until the reveal.)
The tech analysts shouldn't be aware that at one point Grant saw this or at this point Steve heard that. They should listen and watch blindly and at the end the tech analysis should go back to the researchers for compilation with client claims, pre-investigation research, and, if necessary, additional research. I think the end result would be far more interesting and harder to challenge.
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10:23 pm
September 13, 2008
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Stephen
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Excellent topic, Jen! I've been thinking quite a bit about this.
First, I'd drop the unproven sensors. Forget the EMF meters, digital recorders, and FLIR. They are ambiguous and prone to false positives. Don't use any method whose explanation begins with the phrase "Some people believe…" Yes, and some people don't. Concentrate on sensors that can provide more direct evidence, such as the wireless cameras. Use the cameras to detect activity, then use that to demonstrate the usefulness of FLIR cameras, digital recorders, and so on. Once you've shown that they work, you can bring them back.
If you must use FLIR, always pair it with a regular camera. Ditto EVPs– if you put down a digital recorder, put it near a camera, hopefully one with sound. Use backup recorders.
Blanket the place with cameras. Don't investigate places larger than you can cover. Seal off the entire area so that only authorized people can get in or out. If you're investigating a large area, choose a smaller subsection and seal THAT off, then investigate there. Seal off any doors you're not using.
Centralize command and control and work as a team. If there's some kind of activity in a room, have someone go in and check it out immediately. For example, what if Steve had been listening to the remote mike while Jay and Grant were in the room at Mount Washington? Steve could have let them know that they were appearing to get responses, and had them turn the microphone off and on to see if the voice was coming through the microphone or not. Instead, no one seems to be monitoring all of this information.
Embrace the opposition. If skeptics are full of hot air, prove it! Involve skeptics in investigation and analysis. If nothing else, it would be some compelling TV as we fight it out.
Helmet cameras are worth a try, but failing that, just go back to the days when each team carried a camera.
Rig up an infrasound detector. Measure rooms to find standing waves that could cause strange symptoms.
Leave the lights on.
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Stephen the Friendly Skeptic
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4:33 am
September 14, 2008
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bullerspoke
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| Investigator | posts 101 |
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The first thing TAPS should do is to install basic protocol on how investigations are to be done, not just a modus operandi based on, well, whatever they base it on now.
As for helmet cameras, I don't believe that using them would be any better or worse than using hand-held DV cameras. What is key is that they are used and how they are used. Protocol that is, so that there atleast is some control of the variables in play. And so that we know what we are really watching.
Stephen already put forth good points and I won't repeat it all, but I would like to add that the debunking must be more to the point. And again, protocol, transparency in what you do and how you do it, so that it can be assessed by a third party. It all comes down to peer-review, the methodology and the results must be such that it is possible to be subject to peer-review.
Basic scientific method, which TAPS claim they use or want to use, would be a good place to start. This in no way is in conflict with their other goal: to help.
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When in doubt… figure it out!
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7:04 am
September 14, 2008
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CrowTRobot
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TAPS needs more than two people reviewing the collected information. (Maybe they do have more, but we just see two for some TV reason.) I just have a hard time believing anyone can stay focused for the unknown hours it would take to watch/listen to everything TAPS collects. I'm not even taking into account all the silliness we actually see during the review that distracts them from this task.
In fact, this really makes me suspicious of that image they 'caught' at Eastern State Pen. I say there's no way they (I think it was Brian) were focused enough to see that………………..unless they already knew to look for it.
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9:38 am
September 14, 2008
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jrregan
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Anything with a commercial is vulnerable to impaired integrity. As the Moss Beach Distillery episode showed, the restaurant owners
enjoyed "enhancing the guest experience." I wouldn't be surprised if
the show occasionally does the same.
That the entire episode wasn't dumped, clearly re-zero'ed my trust level in G&J.
The very first thing I thought while watching GH was why on earth are they not all equipped with cameras on helmets?? I'm glad to see so many others view this as an obvious and deliberate oversight.
This would allow a more scientific tracking and measurement of the investigators. Which brings up, the question, Why? Trust. Even if you got that 'tracking' information, how fruitful would it be to have clips of an untrustworthy investigator?
I think they should approach their investigations in a more segmented manner. They should have separate teams of researchers/client interviewers, investigators and tech analysts with no intermingling of duty. Ie the tech analysts and researchers do not also investigate the location itself.
This brings up the whole question about how scientific their investigations are? No data collected what-so-ever is reliable without a baseline. How much more would it cost to pay for 2 nights for the crew? Certain locations I can understand (homes, restaurants), others there is no obvious reason why an extended stay couldn't easily happen.
Ugh. There I go. Forgetting that GH is just entertainment. :)
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4:35 pm
September 14, 2008
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Shannon
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| Investigator | posts 26 |
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Great topic idea Jen!
My criticism right off the bat would be if you claim its more of a documentary than show it as such. No phony scenes of them plumbing and no recreations of anything. There should be a graphic stating what day they are showing (ie Day 1, Day 2 etc).
Personally, I've never been on a ghost hunt but I think we got a good idea of the way it should be done on that episode of "Monsterquest" with Al Rauber. Lights on, cameras everywhere and multiple recording devices.
I think its a great idea to have someone review the evidence that wasn't on the investigation. Its kind of mean to have those guys look at it 4 hours after they shut it down for the night.
I'm with Stephen-enough of these vagues "theories" and "some people think". Lets use one of those stupid cut ins explaining what an EVP is to cite some study or paper explaining why EMF should be an issue for anything!
I'm really leaning towards its not so much that they fake anything but they probably don't show the event being totally debunked (ie that dopey statue episode).
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8:34 pm
September 15, 2008
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Stephen
| | San Jose, CA | |
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Jen: I think that you make an excellent point about separating analysis from investigation. The analysts should be totally blind to the history of the area or any previous haunting reports, or any subjective experiences found during the course of the investigation.
bullerspoke: Agreed– if they're to be scientific, they must have a protocol. They're not scientific. :)
jrregan: What I'd like to see is for TAPS to investigate ten sites, blind. Five of them should have reports of paranormal activity, and five of them should be houses of comparable age and condition without such reports. TAPS should get no information about which is which. They should declare each place haunted, not haunted, or unknown. That would both establish a baseline and test their ability to tell a haunted from a non-haunted house. (They could, of course, claim that the non-haunted houses were actually haunted, but that the occupants had never noticed. Or that they had debunked the occupants' complaints.) I'd actually expect them to do better than chance on this one, since they'd be affected by some of the same environmental causes we discuss in the "Third Option" podcast. Still, it would be interesting.
I'm also with Shannon: drop the staged scenes. I understand that they're not particularly trying to fool us. They're just trying to present the information without having a talking head tell us the case background. Still, it makes it hard to tell what I'm supposed to be taking seriously and what's theater.
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Stephen the Friendly Skeptic
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5:55 pm
September 20, 2008
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dr_peter_venkman
| | Rochester, NY | |
| Investigator | posts 99 |
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Good thread. Some additional random thoughts.
There is only so much that can be done with respect to good science while still creating a compelling television show for a broad audience. That being said, I do think some improvements are possible.
Helmet Cams – good idea. There are many, many instances in which a GH investigator (usually Grant or Jason) sees something that the TV cameras are not in position to capture. Capturing what they see or claim to see on camera would help their credibility and make good TV.
Lights on during the investigation – another good idea. I'm not sure what advantage having the lights off provides. Not having current flow through the wires in a building might reduce EMF but there is so little real evidence gained from EMF the benefit is minimal. Many of the claims are of dark shadows and masses. One would think that these would be easier to see with the lights on. Most if not all of the first-hand accounts are reported while there is light in the environment. Why change the environment?
Scientific rigor – A general increase in adherence to a more rigorous, defined protocol could help the overall credibility of the show. There is more to the investigations than gets conveyed in the program. I live close to one of the sites where the GH team investigated and have done a ghost hunt at the site. According to a person who was the recipient of the reveal, the GH crew did spend multiple nights at the location and the building was locked down during the investigation. Allowing some of this to be portrayed in the show might be interesting to viewers.
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Hee hee hee! "Get her!" That was your whole plan, huh, "get her." Very scientific.
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3:17 pm
September 22, 2008
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Harry
| | Fort Mill, SC | |
| Investigator | posts 60 |
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"Embrace the opposition. If skeptics are full of hot air, prove it!
Involve skeptics in investigation and analysis. If nothing else, it
would be some compelling TV as we fight it out."
Bingo! It would make for great television if TAPS had an in-house skeptic who would challenge the crew on everything from how well they had prepared for an investigation ("Are you sure everyone was out of that building?") to their interpretations of the results ("That EVP sounds more like 'grymphlomor' that 'get out of here!' "). The arguments between their resident skpetic and Jay/Grant would probably be real fun to watch, and it would be great to see the reactions during "The Reveal" if the skeptic would say something like, "Jay and grant are full of it, nothing paranormal is going on here."
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3:19 pm
September 23, 2008
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dr_peter_venkman
| | Rochester, NY | |
| Investigator | posts 99 |
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Ooh ooh. Pick me. Pick me.
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Hee hee hee! "Get her!" That was your whole plan, huh, "get her." Very scientific.
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1:20 pm
September 25, 2008
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windwhisperer
| | 1313 Mockingbird Lane | |
| Investigator in Training | posts 14 |
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Good topic Jen. I guess the main think I would love to see is an investigation done without the camera and sound crew. Something just like a documentary, where the entire investigation is filmed by them.
No stupid sound effects during the investigation and every time somebody says "what's that" or "did you hear that". I just want to jump in the TV and yell "No I didn't hear that because all I heard was the stupid sound effects!"
But anyway, I would love to see a plain investigation done by the TAPS team only.
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places." … H.P.Lovecraft
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1:42 pm
September 25, 2008
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josh blanco
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i love the show but i just have one complaint but the other peoples ideaas are great also like the head cameras and lights on and no sound effects on the show. i saw the train station in ny and they made contact with a woman ghost and was resonding to questions but they did nt ask enough and they start talking to these so called ghost and when they get an answer back they talk to each other like( did u hear that , or what was that) instead of talking more , also i with they kept the thermal camera with them and had more but for some reason they always leave it in a stationary place. last request is … please have more than 4 cameras for places over 4k sq ft! hahaha i would like to see more of this and it would be better!and invite me if you come to ga!
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5:10 pm
September 27, 2008
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bill kelly
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OK, I was surprised the first criticism wasn't one that everyone usually mentions after a show is recapped here. That is whenever one of the team says "did you see that?" the cameraman never points his camera in the direction of what someone sees. Or they do it after the cameraman shows the Taps member who just saw something.
I started watching all the old shows and this has been going on since day 1.
The reason Tango and Steve keep doing the findings is 1) there's no one else to do them and 2) some like Krysten dont know how to review. GH has lost a lot of people over its history. Donna and Brian left GHI for different reasons recently while Andy and Dustin are now part of GHI. Donna and Paula just seemed to disappear while Krysten and Joe come in now and then. In the first season there was a guy named Brian Bell that used to fight with Brian Harnois all the time. He was the communication tech but we never hear about him. Nor do we about the twins (forgot their names now). So unless GH hires more people we're always going to see Tango and Steve do the reviews. Although kris has done a couple and recently J&G had to help because the place was so big.
I say ditch the K2. It seems so fake why bother?
The first few episodes seem more real and less "commericalized" than the newer ones. Fame has certainly taken over this show
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7:21 pm
September 27, 2008
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Jen
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| Investigator in Training | posts 5 |
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You all have some great ideas! If I don't single you out by name below it's only because the web page reverted to a more narrow format when I started this response and so some usernames are partially cut off.
Stephen – Juicy! I love it, especially the in-house skeptic. The control locations with no hauntings would make for a very cool "For the Skeptics" episode, if they ever chose to do that. Piggybacking on your idea, they could have people intentionally haunt control locations to see whether GH successfully debunked the hauntings.
Shannon – I agree that cut-ins explaining the equipment would be a relevent addition and certainly more interesting than the roto rooter faux conversations. I'd at least like to see a special episode (perhaps web-based) where they really
explain their equipment, how it came to be used in paranormal investigations, what contributes to false readings and
what they do to avoid that. It wasn't until reading the comments on
this site that I learned the significance of one of three recording
devices picking something up, and I found that rationale really
interesting.
Also, I always wonder where they get the idea
that entities are or are not dangerous? How can they possibly know
such things? They can't, but I'm interested in knowing why they have
the ideas that they do. In one episode Steve talked about his feeling
that maybe the reason we don't see ghosts is we can't properly tune
into them. I thought this idea was intriguing and I'd enjoy seeing
more about why the investigators have the beliefs that they do.
My theory on the lights off directive is they do it to avoid lights producing false readings on the FLIR. It could just be for drama though, and I suppose the creepiness factor might change if the lights were on. However, I recall an older episode where a piano played (off-camera) before the lights shut off. It still struck me as creepy.
Bill – I also wondered about the camera never turning in the direction something was seen. My my guess is it's their choice in filming style. Bear with me here because I'm not a film student, so I can't back this up with education on the matter. When I think of cameras turning in response to what someone's saying or looking at, it makes me think of Cops. I agree that for the purposes of their investigations this would be a logical way to film the show. Since they don't, and since the cameras don't move in that herky jerky way they do on Cops, I assume they must have decided in filming these things that cameras would remain stationary and behind the hosts to allow for some direction in story arc. In the Cops example you could have a camera on a cop looking at a "perp," with the cop commenting "I think he's got a crack pipe in his pocket or he's happy to see me." The camera guy would pan straight in on the perp's bulging pocket. If Cops filmed like GH, the cop would make the comment, we'd get some annoying music and go straight to commercial break. Upon return we'd get a quick recap of the prior scene and then the camera would be on the empty pocket. lol
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8:40 pm
September 28, 2008
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Dr. Peter Venkman
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Headcams on EVERYONE running all the time – visable timestamps
… including the crew Lets get more then one angle on things and KNOW where everyone is at all times. These are in addition to the handcams.
Any re-creations are marked with a red ®
in the broadcast … it's kind of foolish to say " she looked really surprised" when we don't know if it's the third time they re-shot it.
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10:38 am
March 13, 2009
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Hannah
| | Texas | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 361 |
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Having just found this site, I am still going through all the threads and I just have to comment.
Everyone that posted had excellent ideas.
Scientific methods, head cams, in-house skeptic with broad knowledge of paranormal and psychology, film and audio experts and seoarate teams to do specific tasks.
I hardily agree with that the investigators need to quit yakking so much, use hand signals, oh thats right hard to see in the dark, so turn the lights on! I want to say that I read somewhere that GH thinks the dark works better because ghosts can be shy? OR do a day investigation and a night one at each location.
Get better questions to ask-be aware of time period of ghosts that you are trying to communicate with; using modern slang on 19th century ghosts, probably doesn't work well. Be given certain questions to ask based on what the historical research turns up.
Cut out the loud background music, half the time you can't hear the noises that Jason and Grant are talking about because of the "mood" music.
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9:38 am
March 14, 2009
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Oubliette
| | Igloo in NJ | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 574 |
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Just read that Jason had posted somewhere (MySpace maybe?) that they were looking to use more varied equipment in upcoming episodes. Headcams were mentioned. All I can say is that's it's about time and why haven't they thought of it before?
Stop getting people from central casting. Give serious investigators a chance. Maybe have guests from other groups on once in a while (they used to do that a bit before. It adds that local touch).
Maybe they should just go back to the trailer and start over 
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If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France
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12:22 pm
March 26, 2009
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Hannah
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| Lead Investigator | posts 361 |
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Yes, use the local investigators. Many times the sites have already had an investigation prior to TAPS rushing in to the rescue. I have a sneaking suspicion that they don't due to the increase of really dubious evidence.
They used to do that and do some investigating in the daylight. Some Inn that was haunted because a bride died on her wedding day-first season-and the local TAPS group thought they had a ghost photo of the bride? It was debunked in broad daylight as dust–Andy found loose insulation in the attic. Bring Andy back, yeah he was sort of annoying, but he seemed truely interested in finding normal causes.
Many of the paranormal things people reported happening in the daytime. Wouldn't it be more scientific trying to debunk in the same setting? Not too mention easier for us to see.
Probably just repeating what someone else has already stated, but I am tired of them hearing something and sending one of the team members to "go make sure" we are the only ones in building, floor, etc. Seems like that would be fairly easy to coordinate.
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8:09 pm
March 26, 2009
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Stephen
| | San Jose, CA | |
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Yeah, that's something that always seems a bit odd to me. If you hear footsteps, and you have a guy with cameras in all rooms of the building, why not just pick up your radio and ask him if there's anyone there?
The answer, of course, is that an exciting dash makes for (theoretically) better TV than a quick radio call.
I'd be kind of interested in a show that had different ghost hunters on every week.
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Stephen the Friendly Skeptic
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