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Modern Popular Media
"Dude, run!"
most famous two words from the "Ghost Hunters" series on the SciFi network
You don't have to go too far to find several 'ghost hunt' TV shows on any number of cable channels. Some are totally sensational and they always seem to find the absolute most haunted location outside of the mansion in Disney World, and they have the out of focus somewhat grainy video to prove it. Others are more sensible, if not exactly scientific in their approach, and they are at least trying to be more about 'debunking' rumored haunts than they are in finding the local restless spirit and putting him on TV. And, of course, a number are in between the two extremes, but they still make an entertaining hour of television.
Then you have the purely fictional entertainment wing of the broadcast center. Everything this side of "Casper the Friendly Ghost" and all of his cousins that aren't working at that mansion we mentioned. In that pile is everything made for movies or TV since the mid-sixties, including that film with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg made in 1990 that won Ms Goldberg an Academy Award.
We won't spend much more time in this category than it takes to say this: every video you see on TV or online that claims to be a 'real ghost video' is exactly that. It IS a video, as to whether or not it shows anything at all is totally up to you, and your willingness to suspend your disbelief and think that the guy in the plastic armor is Lord Macbeth.
For this article the Desk went through more than its fair share of videos on the various 'tube' sites, and it did see some that were interesting, but it saw a lot more that were everything from camera artifacts including low light lens flare, odd reflections, dust and fog, and so on, as well as a lot of wishful thinking, and no small collection of deliberate hoaxery. Some of the latter was very well done, but it doesn't prove anything except that the gullible are still among us. Were any of the 'spirits' so photographed a Real Spirit, as versus, say, a bedsheet?
And while we're at it, how about some of that grainy video on the 'ghost seekers' shows? Are any of those real? Or are they just slightly better camera tricks or something done on a computer back in Hollywood?
Give us a minute and we'll get to that.