Significant Thermal Hit by Ghost Lab
One of the most interesting ghost hunting tools is the thermal camera. Ghost Lab has captured an image that to us is the most interesting image captured to date on any paranormal TV show.
What sets this image apart from anything the Ghost Hunter franchises have ever caught is the difference in temperature. All of the images caught by the plumbers have been “hot” images. These hot images are easily explained as coming from something living and breathing. Most likely an animal or a crew member from Pilgrim Entertainment. Even the most interesting image the Ghost Hunters found was of the “soldier” – which really was a reflection of Grant from a metal locker.
The Ghost Lab thermal image is a “cold” image. We have heard for years of “cold spots”, how spirits use heat as energy to manifest themselves. To us here at Spectral Review it always made sense to us that finding a thermal cold image is much more interesting and much more likely to be something paranormal.
The temperature difference is around 55 degrees. Very significant find. Nice job Ghost Lab!!
So what about this image is bothersome? The Ghost Lab team interviewed someone from the camera manufacturer to get their feedback which they could not explain. Steve Harris a team member suggested that it was a “water bottle”. Earlier in the show they returned to a previous thermal anomaly to debunk it but didn’t on this one if we remember correctly. They did take thermal pictures of water bottles to clearly show what they captured was very different than these tests.
The problem to us here at Spectral Review is the thermal camera itself. It’s very difficult to discern any sort of reference point in the thermal video to get any sort of sense of what the room looks like, or what objects are in the room. Also what sort of “zoom” factor is the camera set – so you lose any sort of perspective on size.
We wish someone would implement a “mount” where two cameras could be installed. One camera would be a thermal and the other an IR camera. Of course one would have to manually “sync” up the two cameras as to zoom and recording. This way one could produce video that was time synced and viewing the same objects but capturing a thermal image along with a “normal” image that could give one some perspective on what the heck is being captured on video.
So theres a free idea for all you paranormal investigators out there who have some extra cash lying around to buy the equipment and to implement a mount to do the job. Get to work. 
November 25th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
How can anyone see anything there except a water bottle?? These guys are so loud and wild they would scare a ghost away. They really seem to be struggling to find evidence.
November 27th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Ann,
Sturggling to find evidence? Hardly. We have found many great pieces of evidence, and alot of things we find do not even make the show because of time restraints (even things I would have to argue are better than some of the things that do make it), however, this thermal image is pretty significant to us for many reasons. First and foremost, you weren’t there, and you have no idea where we were, how the camera was being held, where this image was physically captured, etc. I am quickly learning with our international exposure that everyone is a critic. Everyone KNOWS what things are, and everyone KNOWS how to do it better, when in fact, most of this can never be absolutely proved to anyone unless you were there. So that is going to be a struggle right off the bat. Now, to tell you first hand because I WAS there…this image was taken outside of a doorway into a conference room. The camera was not zoomed at all, and there were no water bottles in the area–especially that close (not to mention, why would there be a frozen water bottle in the room–and going further, the thermal company even tested a frozen water bottle and said it absolutely was not that). Secondly, (and something they didn’t properly show), the image moved, peeked into camera view, then disappeared (poof) from the screen and the voided area returned to room temperature. We talked to the thermal expert for several hours and all you saw was a clip. At one point, he said what convinced him most was the fact that it just flash vanished and went back to room temp. When you are trying to present several days worth of research and findings on a location in roughly 21 minutes of time, it is impossible to show everything that went down.
Now, this is why I persoanlly respond to people. So many times, the genral public needs that background information to have a more educated opinion, and I only scratched the surface on background information. I do not hide out and ignore public scrutiny because we have a little thing called integrity that we are very proud of. i always tell people I wish you could have been there, or I wish you could know me personally. Now I also know people will come back on this post and attempt to trash talk us further, or say one show is better than another, blah blah blah. When it is all said and done, we really do not care what other people think, but we do think they deserve to know all of the facts. So sorry to disappoint you…that was not a water bottle.
And Spectral Review…great point on the positioning of cameras. We actually had IR cameras in the area that we reviewed and it showed nothing. Again, why this review didn’t make the show, I do not know. We also do place static thermals on stands in locations, but we like to walk around with one too for on-the-spot analysis. This incident just happened to happen in the hand-held. I wish we could make the paranormal happen exactly where we wanted it to…make our jobs easier.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Brad,
I have been critical of you on this site before but I have to give you credit for coming on here and telling your side of the water bottle thing. I know putting several days, as you say, into 21 minutes of show is something that does not come across on the show. Some may look at it as you being there for a couple hours and then gone. Looking at the image shown of the shadow man/water bottle, i can’t say that looks human-ish in form. It does look like a bottle to me. But you explaining the circumstances the way you have does clear it up some. It being 35 degrees IS hard to explain. One of your guys said at the time he thought it was a water bottle, what is his opinion now? I’d also like to ask if there was an IR camera on in that room to show you in what angle you were facing and where the camera was. I haven’t seen anything on that and was curious.
The Admin on this site seems kind of anti-TAPS at times. Even mentioning one of their shadow men being a reflection on a locker. The one i remember was of an image looking like a nun or something dress like it. I’m not pro-TAPs, just using that as an example. I figure a shadow “person” would have a “person”-like figure.
Admin suggested someone implementing a mount where both IR and thermal were synchronized. Not a bad idea if you haven’t tried it at all yet.
I’ve been critical of you because I’ve felt you have been TOO aggressive in your approach. What I mean by that is the yelling. If many of the spirits that are in a haunted location are aware of you there already, why yell at them? Also, if this is someone’s mom/dad, brother/sister aunt/grandma, etc. that has passed away, these were people that probably wouldn’t want to talk to someone coming into “their” home and laying into them. Wouldn’t a more subtle approach be better? If i’m an old lady still in a home and a big guy comes in out of know where and yells for me to show up for him, i’m probably hiding in the farthest corner. Then again, that ’s your approach I guess. It will be different than the next guy and his also different than someone else. I think in some occasions it is disrespectful. Not counting the JW Boothe show. Fire away. I’ve provoked in the Bird Man’s cell in Alcatraz and gotten results. So i’m not totally against it.
Not sure if you’ll read this or not.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Hey there Bobby. Yes, I read it. To answer your questions…yes there was an IR camera in the room on the other side of the doorway. It was not facing the doorway directly, but it was facing it enough to show the three of us in the doorway (me, Barry, and Steve Harris). It shows the angle I was pointing the IR camera and shows that nothing was there. Steve Harris was the one who said it looked like a bottle, but even he admitted right away that he was standing with us and nothing like that was around. I always point this out too…if there were water bottles around, to be 35 degrees, it would have to basically be frozen. Why would there be a frozen water bottle in the room? And besides that fact, the image was literally a foot in front of me. I was 10 feet from the nearest object…which happened to be a bench. It is amazing at the number of hater web sites there are out there–all insisting they know exactly what it was and how we did it. The part that is frustrating to us is that we know what happened, we know this thing appeared in view then disappeared, we know no one or nothing was around. We even brought in thermal experts to help validate our point, but people want to ignore that too. We have gotten used to the constant beating from nay-sayers, but when integrity is on your side, it is all we need. We realize the only way for these people to know this piece of evidence is the real deal is to have them there when we catch it, and since we can’t go back in time to take them there, it will never happen. It amazes me how much hate is out there. I don’t know if it is from people being gun-shy about the paranormal because of the questionable and possible unethical events that have happened there in recent years. Regardless, it makes our lives more difficult, but what can we do. We put forth as much as we could in a 25 minute segment to try to show it all. We would have need the entire hour just to show how the shadow person on thermal was a real anomoly. And another point we would like to make….this is paranormal…meaning we do not know how it looks or acts. I know in my heart now what a shadow person looks like on thermal. just like I know what I saw in the fileds of Gettysburg in 1990 that I got on tape. And if I know that this stuff is the real deal, then that is all that matters in the end.
So the aggressive loud approach question. I often say that if we go after someone like JW Booth, then I’m going to antagonize, but if I’m going after your grandmother, i wouldn’t do the same thing. It is just a technique that we have found works well…and the real funny thing is I am just as loud in person. it is my voice and my personality. We even have a theory that it is not what we say at all that gets the response, it is the amplitude of our voices. If spirits can only speak in low level frequencies, maybe they can only hear if you raise the frequency and loudness of your own voice. It is our approach, and we will continue to use it because it seems to get great results. We are always conscious of who we are dealing with in these investigations.
I have found that speaking directly with my harshest critics is the best thing. i am not sure if it is what I am telling them that changes their mind about me, or maybe it is just they are shocked by the fact that I am what some would call a “celebrity” who actually responds to them. We are very transparent. We speak to anyone. We know this is the only way we can prove our integrity. I always tell people I wish you could know me personally because they would never question my evidence if they did. Thanks for dropping a line Bobby.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
“Celebrity”…lmao…yeah right!
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 am
I run a group out of R.I. that like 99% of us don’t have any big notions of becoming famous. We just want to do good work and do the very best we can to find the truth and reach honest conclusions – paranormal or not. To that end, we are our own toughest critics.
Despite whatever inevitable criticisms come the way of Everyday Paranormal, I wanted to offer up an unsolicited word of praise to Brad Klinge here. No matter what path this leads you or where this all goes with ‘Ghost Lab’ – I appreciate you making yourself available to people as you do here. You may take the occasional “hit”, you may feel compelled to explain your methods and clarify some things, but coming on shows far more class and common touch than most of these arrogant shits who find themselves in the public eye are doing now. I may look at some of your evidence with a critical eye myself from time to time as someone who does this, but the fact you are willing to respond to questions or comments without going through a publicist or a mouthpiece earns my respect.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Thanks riseup. No one ever prepared me for the public criticism that we have to endure (or the praise for that matter which is overwhelming.) We knew it was coming considering the field we are in, but we aren’t scared of it because we are truthful, honest people. You can’t get into trouble when you are honest, and when you are presenting things that are indeed odd (paranormal) in your investigations. I will take criticism when done in an intelligent manner that gets a good discussion going. Everyone has their opinions. It is the idiots that just do an equivelent of a blog drive-by shooting that crack me up, and what they do not realize is that they make you stronger. Our goal is to take this field into the mainstream, so exposure (good or bad) is still exposure. And when you can hit the critics dead in the mouth and either shut them up or earn their respect, then I will continue to do so. I have no need to hide.
December 24th, 2009 at 1:24 am
I just want to point out that Steve who from what I understand was with you. Was carrying a water bottle with him when you three walked back into the trailer to review the thermal evidence. So water bottles were around. and I’m sure they were not warm. And why is they head of the figure flat on the edges. Why do the edges look fuzzy and out of focus. And it was in a conference room there is almost always water bottles there (i agree this is just a speculation). But it seems that this evidence no matter what it is was either really poorly presented or really poor evidence. It looks too much like something else and if someone was carrying a chilled bottle of water and turned into the shoot very close to the camera it would look cold 35.4 and out of focus and taking up the entire frame. Also ice melts at 32 degrees so if it was water it would not be frozen. I know you think it’s what it was and that’s fine but when there are so many things stacked against you, you might consider leaving it at unexplained and not paranormal. For your credibility sake… you’re not on the science fiction channel after all are you?
December 24th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
You had to be there Phorx. You have to know everything we did to test this piece of evidence. You had to have been standing right where we were and knowing what was in the immediate line of sight of the thermal. You had to have been there when we gave it to the thermal imaging experts and they said it was absolutley not a water bottle. You had to have seen the footage that the production company didn’t show where that image just vanishes from the screen. We wish all these things could be shown in just a 21 minute segment of an entire 3 day investigation, and yes we wish some things were shown to further prove our point…but it is what it is. That fact that we thought enough of it to present it as evidence is good enough, and I will never call something inconclusive when we rode it hard. It was paranormal…like it or not…believe it or not. We know what happened, and we stand behind it.
December 27th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Brad,
Thanks for responding last time I posted. I had another question but was distracted by a big plate of leftover Thanksgiving turkey and cut it short. When you were in Tombstone, you got an image of what you called a shadow man. I saw on a link last month someone showing night and day photos of a metal fencing around a gravesite that looked in the same shape and form as the image in your photo. It made me go through my own photos of Boothill from a couple years ago and I have the same gravesite with fencing. I’m not sure if you have seen the day photos or not but they are very similar. So much in fact I would put money on them being the same thing. I’m curious if you’ve seen this before.
Also, I’ve noticed that many groups don’t use any hand-held mics and prefer to use the mics installed on their hand-held digital recorders. With a good mic hooked up, wouldn’t it make more sense?
Bobby
December 30th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
noted para-psychologist and spiritualist Ellen Bourne claims that since ghosts are not living, breathing, carbon-based organisms, they cannot emit heat. And since FLIR is based upon using multiple infra-red beams of varying wavelengths to detect heat, how is it possible for it to detect something which does not retain or emit heat? I really think that people who use the FLIR on these types of programs are using it incorrectly and are misreading the output of the device to interpret something which may not actually be occurring.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:49 am
Brad,
I’ve had the opportunity to see your associated TV Series recently, and I must say, this is the best series I have seen so far. As compared to many other shows, I am delightfully impressed by your thinking outside of the box, and testing of various theories. You are making real progress in this field.
As an armchair investigator, it frustrates me to see these shows, where I’m thinking – no matter how many times you capture phenonema X on camera, you’re not adding any more information to the subject.
You actually correlate information from different sources, and postulate and test theories. Even if someone doesn’t agree with your conclusions, clearly you are doing things that have never been done before.
This is much in line with my own way of thinking and I find it very appealing.
I’d love to be in this field, however I don’t have access to many haunted locations in my area, and with no car and an average income, can’t go travelling all over the place. So for now, maybe I’ll throw out a few ideas which may appeal to you: (though I don’t expect at all these will ever be tried..)
-Next time you run across reports of orbs, can you bring a spectrograph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer). This device lets you see very easily what is producing the light. For example, if the orb is dust reflecting the camera light, it will prove this immediately by showing a narrow line in the near IR range. And if the orb can’t be debunked, the spectrum will actually prove whether it’s a chemical reaction, plasma discharge, or whatever. By consulting an expert, for the first time you can prove exactly what causes an orb.
-Capturing sound, think of how concerts are recorded. You could set up 5 channels of sound in corners of a room, and actually hear the sound moving around. This would be fantastic marketing in fact for home DVD, ghostly footsteps in Dolby Digital! I’d pay a lot just to hear that!
-Light trap for your favorite, shadow people. Do these shadows reflect light? Using a laser display, sweep different colored lasers across a space, therefore partitioning the space. If you see reflection or shadow in one zone, you know exactly what depth it crossed. If it crosses several depths, you can measure the reflectivity in different color ranges.
(Imagine someone with a laser pointer waving it up and down across in front of you. The light shining on a black strip stuck to the wall. Basically you see nothing but a dim sheet of dust that crosses the light).
-Another idea to trap shadows: get a big piece of cardboard and paint with flourescent paint. Place these panels about the room with a UV light in the middle. The shadow will cast simultaneously from different angles onto each panel, thus showing the full 3d profile of the shadow (only if it blocks UV).
-Use mirrors more often. When cameras are knocked over, I’m always wondering if anything can be seen behind the camera. In any case, mirrors can extend the reach of your equipment, and show the same thing from different angles (though I realize mirrors can cause their own contamination). Seeing a reflection of behind the camera I think would do a lot to quell skeptics, who just assume some crew was pulling a string.
-Eliminating contamination. Why don’t people temporarily hang up blinds on windows to eliminate the ‘car light’ possibility? Detecting drafts: why not hang some streamers near doors etc., or burn incense to see the air pattern. Chairs which move? Cordon off the object to prove no one bumped it (rope fence etc.)
-Camera placement: I’d really like to see different angles, like hanging off the ceiling fixture with a fisheye lens… just to show a more 3 dimensional aspect of the orb/shadow/movement. Again you can use mirrors to maximize your angles instead of expensive cameras.
-Photo Camera use: set your cameras to burst mode, this takes say 3 pics in a row quickly, it should give further confirmation of things like faces in a window. When doing this, move the camera slightly from side to side to prove the reflections. Dust should move as well. Just gives more to analyze.
-DVR is dead: as an IT expert, it would be natural to me to use your cameras in webcam mode and use a completely networked basis of DVR. Then it’s all just files on a harddrive. But what benefits does this give you? You can make some cameras wireless for easy setup. Also the quality is always digital, whereas you lose quality with long runs of analog cable. Finally, some camcorders have the abiliity to stream uncompressed video, whereas it would normally be recorded as DV or AVCHD type compression. I’ve seen orbs caught on DV that had artefacts introduced by the compression which was mistaken for other things.
With this network type of setup you can add $100 wireless webcams almost at will, if you really need to hit a place. And they can be HD in resolution as well, without paying >$1000 minimum for a real HD camcorder. Some webcams also *automatically* point and track movement!
-Motion alarms? You can detect motion through a purely video means as well (think in terms of a voice activated tape recorder). Since some activity doesn’t set off a motion alarm, these motion tracking cameras will always work.
-Analysis. For a static scene, I know a program which can search for only *differences* in frames of video, saving you *hours* of manual work. Imagine finding every bit of movement in 5 minutes or less, for a whole nights video.
Anyhow, it’s fun to think outside the box, enough for now.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:03 am
One more thought: how to “see” EMF. Is 10 mGauss strong enough to align iron filings? I know in school we poured some iron dust on a sheet of paper and put a magnet under it, you could literally see the magnetic lines.
It’s probably too weak to work, however maybe you could sandwich ferrofluid in a panel.. ask an expert if there’s a way to see magnetic lines somehow.
The idea is to leave traps around the place, and actually see the magnetic presence in real-time… for example, lay down one of these panels when you feel a cold spot standing next to you. This would be a far more effective way to track and follow spirits.
You’ll get the picture right away!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrofluid
January 26th, 2010 at 2:14 am
Magnetic viewing film, incredibly cool stuff – see the magnetism of your fridge magnet:
http://www.matchrockets.com/ether/magfilm.html