Ghost Hunters....fake?

There have been a lot of situations on Ghost Hunters in many of the previous seasons (and I don’t even watch them regularly) that felt to me contrived and faked. Even with those feelings I gave the show the benefit of the doubt, because hey, I’m not there with them and who knows, maybe they really do constantly get great stuff! Those feelings all changed one day I saw with my own sad, disappointed eyes how they clearly faked a scene in their show.

Looking for a nice place to both get away and maybe experience some paranormal activity, some of the NEPS team booked a few nights at the Colonial Inn, a location that was featured on an episode of Ghost Hunters. The main activity on that episode  was the team hearing some sounds and voices, flashlight communication in the gift shop, and a door shutting twice by itself in room 24, which has the most reports of activity by guests.  After the door moved Britt and some other dude who were investigating looked at the door, tried to debunk the spontaneous shutting, and made a show of jumping up and down near the door demonstrating how it just simply cannot close on its own, thus “proving” it was credible evidence.  Because of that I was very happy when I was able to book that very room, room 24, and try to see what WE could catch in that room!

After we checked in I eagerly walked toward my room, put the key in and pushed the door open…only to have it close right back on me.  I just felt my heart sink.  I mean, I had my suspicions that some of the evidence on the show was dubious but to have something so obvious be faked? NO! Not Ghost Hunters! OK, OK, I thought, Let’s go in and really check this out.  We played with the door which was heavy and always closed on its own unless it was pushed all the way open where the bottom gets caught on the carpet. However, we found a “sweet spot,” so to speak, where the open door gets stuck in just such a way that walking near it causes the door to come loose and then close in a smooth manner.   We then pulled out the computer and cued up the scene in that room from Ghost Hunters.  We replicated how it was done and, yes, it was beyond a doubt a contrived scene.

 To really clarify why I am so certain let me break the scene down for you (assuming you were able to open the link above and watch). You will see Britt move in front of the door and kind of shuffle his feet and walk in place. He then moves out of the way (conveniently) so the door can close all the way, making sure there is maximum drama. This is what dislodges the door from the “sweet spot” in the carpet  (although another possibility one can consider from watching Britt look down before the door closes is that he manipulates something with his foot that dislodges the door).  Anyway,  30 seconds or so of bad acting after that you see Britt open the door…but watch, he opens it and has to push at it again because of how the door naturally closes back and he needed  to push it hard enough to get it stuck on the carpet.  Otherwise, why not just open it and keep open at that position for a second? A few more minutes of acting and again you see Britt walking in place and moving around the door area (notice the door is out further from the wall and he is looking for the “sweet spot”). They ask for it to be shut again, implying that it’s an intelligent haunting, and low and behold, it shut again! *Sigh*  It took all of two minutes for us to figure out exactly how the door shut on ‘its own’ and if they, as experienced professionals,  couldn’t figure it out on their own then there is something really wrong there.  Later Jay and Grant go in the room, point out that the door shut on the other two guys and then shut the door. The kicker is as they leave the room, they open the door and you see that the door SHUTS BY ITSELF while they walk through it. Again *sigh*….

Now that I knew the truth of this particular situation I thought about what it really meant to me as a viewer.  Logic says that they all had to know.  Jay, Grant, Britt, the other dude, Amy, Kris, the producers…they all had to know.  And if they all know, then they are all OK with evidence being faked.  The other thing about the episode is that in talking to people who worked there we found out that the Inn was still operating at the time Ghost Hunters was there and they only closed off the rooms that they were filming in at the time. This means that there were people walking around, making noise, and thus eliminating the possibility of any other evidence being real, such as hearing voices or sounds coming from other rooms.  We did hear stories of activity that happens often there, but without the ability to have the whole place to themselves and thus being able to do a proper investigation, really there was little chance of any credible evidence being captured. The Colonial Inn, as well as the town of Concord was a really lovely place to visit, and I would definitely go back and stay there again, regardless of the lack of activity we experienced. I highly recommend others to check it out as well. 

 The whole situation left me disappointed with the show as it stands now.  I do believe that all of the members of the TAPS team, past and present, started out genuinely wanting to investigate and find answers. However, the all mighty dollar and the producers are now definitely in charge. Maybe that’s the reason that Jay and Grant seem to have lost that real spark of energy and excitement they and the rest of the team had in the earlier episodes?  I can imagine having some measure of disappointment in oneself, knowing that you are exactly the opposite of what you set out to be, knowing there are so many fans out there who believe in you whole-heartedly, who feel you are the true gold standard in ethical and professional paranormal investigating and that you are out and out lying to them.  The fact of the matter is that now that I have seen evidence faked  it casts a shadow of doubt over all of the previous evidence and makes it so I can never trust any of their findings again.  The most troubling aspect for me is that if these guys who are so beloved and trusted can fake evidence, it makes all of us in the paranormal investigating field look bad.

Maybe they’ve been around just a little too long and lost their spark and drive to properly investigate the paranormal. Perhaps then they need to pack it up and, as they’d say, move “on to the next” chapter in their lives!  

Amanda

YouTube Site

In an effort to share some interesting evidence with the public we have recently revamped our youtube site. We plan on updating the site regularly with new evidence as well on "vlogs" on often asked questions and about things we have learned (and we are contantly learning) about ghost hunting. So please check back often!

Great Investigation

Recently, we've had the good fortune to be allowed in to investigate a restaurant in Schenectady, NY and so far in our review of our equipment we have captured some really great class A EVPs from the place. For some reason we have found that restaurants yield really good evidence...who knows why but it's great! We will be putting up some of the best evidence after we get all the review finished and present it to the clients.

We did this investigation a little different where we investigated with small groups on two different nights (with different investigators on the different nights) and both times there were similar experiences and quality evidence. Very exciting stuff!!

Also, today Josh and I stopped by a house in a town south of Albany that I used to love (and covet) when I lived in that area. The homeowner was kind enough to show us around the home, which was originally built in the mid-1700's and it was amazing. Personally, I really appreciate those who own older homes and keep the original charm of it instead of completely modernizing the inside. After seeing the inside, I covet it even more, haha! Anyway, the home has some rumors of having activity from previous owners and the current owners have had some strange sounds but nothing crazy. I do have a feeling though that because of the age and the way the house is built that it may yield at least some interesting residual evidence.  Hopefully the homeowners will be curious enough to see what we can do and ask us back for an investigation! Fingers crossed!! But this leads me to the point that we are looking for older, historic homes to do a really good background history on, and also do investigations to see what we can capture that maybe ties into it's history for a book we are writing on the most historic and most haunted locations in the area.  If you know of any locations that would be good for the book, please let us know!

Amanda

Welcome to the new NEPS Blog!

Welcome to our Blog!!

Recently we have realized that it may be very interesting to people to hear about current investigations, meet-ups, ghost hunting tips, etc...so we have started a blog. Yaay! But really, some of the stuff we get is pretty cool and we know that we love seeing what other's can capture during investigations so we decided we would also share. Too often it seems that people in the paranormal investigation field get very territorial over the general area they work in and that's just not cool. Why not embrace that different groups have different methods, people, etc...and be able to compare evidence? A great example of this is when we investigated a location that another group did (they referred us to the homeowners). We and the the other group both captured an EVP saying the same thing referring to a necklace. That was amazing because two completely different groups had a similar experience at the location and caught the exact same EVP lending credence to the idea that there was either an residual haunting where the energy was caught up with the idea of this necklace or that there was an intelligent haunting where the spirit really wanted someone to find this necklace. Or maybe, just maybe it was a relative of the homeowner who wanted to point out the significance of this necklace? Regardless, the point here is that when groups work together it can be of the benefit of both groups. Right?

So anyway, we are a group of people who are intensely interested in paranormal activity, mostly based on past experiences, but some of us are skeptics, and some simply curious.  We are here to help those who feel at a loss to rationally explain what they are feeling/experiencing, to help validate or explain (through "debunking" ding ding ding, paranormal buzz word!) cases where people think stuff may be going on but aren't sure, and to get more solid evidence of those cases where people know things have been going on, as well as investigating places where there have been a long history of hauntings. We also try to do a really thorough background search on the property. Its not uncommon to find places where there are rumors of this or that happening at the property and then in doing some research on the property history we come to find that the rumors were just folklore passed down in a kind of game of telephone, being changed a tiny bit every time the story is retold. It's also not uncommon to find that the haunting may not be a 'haunting' per say but a passed loved one trying to get a message to a living family member.

We have a history of capturing great evidence and it seems to be getting better and better all the time! So check back often to hear of our adventures and of other thoughts that pop into our heads at times that we feel the need to share:)

NEPS