Ghosts Caught On Tape: Fact or Fiction?

From the network that brought us the alien autopsy film, comes an hour long prime time show saying that it has the "best evidence" of ghosts caught on tape.

The show started off with the "Unsolved Mysteries"-type disclaimer saying basically that the people who put the show together weren't going to say anything really definitive because that might turn away viewers, so 'you be the judge.' Obviously, viewers of the show critically analyzing what they are being presented as they watch the show is not a bad thing at all. The problem was that the intention of the disclaimer, and this type of thing would come up a couple of more times during the show, was to create a sense that the show was a critical examination of the subject matter, when there was no way the producers were going to let the seesaw become more than a fraction unbalanced (a prime time show, of this nature, on FOX).

The show, itself, consisted of a series of cuts of video, allegedly showing this or that ghost or ghosts. Although there was a certain level of skepticism (rather mediocre) shown on a couple of cases/claims, there were also some real stinkers. These included:

• The lights in the woods "ghosts" near Colorado Springs that have received a measure of previous attention. For this show, they were tagged as "orbs" and were said to be "balls of energy that actually reflect light" and are "associated with spirit phenomena." Wow. And just who was it that tagged them in this manner? A MIT physicist, perhaps? No, it was a woman who was identified as a university professor (of what we aren't told) and an avid ghost hunter. She would be back later in the program, going behind the camera to capture scenes of a ghostly mist in a haunted mansion. Truly someone qualified to make scientific judgements concerning the nature of light and energy.

• A Brazilian video of an orb floating(?) over a suburban neighborhood. The immediate question was why this wasn't featured on FOX's UFO special that followed. During the analysis of this, there was no questioning of the angle at which the video was shot or of the position of street lights and other significant light sources. The 'skeptic' on this one, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, was baffled by the tape, saying that the orb seemed to have an "intelligence" to it (by its movements). This statement and the tape, itself, suggested a bird, bat, group of insects, or even a child's balloon floating in the wind. Yet none of these much more natural, and I think not unreasonable explanations were explored, at all.

Finally, FOX is keeping pseudoscientific and paranormal caravan rolling with the May 11th special, "Powers of the Paranormal." This show is going to have top psychics, live on stage, reaching out to us through our televisions and stopping our clocks. Two words -- yeah, right.

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