Homeland Security UFO Video Analyzed

UPDATE: I made an error or two and have created a graph showing proper triangulation at the bottom of this page, with corrections, and with notes on conclusions!

A Puerto Rico "UFO" video has been making the rounds. I analyzed the video after it became a hot topic on Reddit, and posted about it there, but I felt I owed my readers analysis. You'll have to pardon my lazy writing here, because I'm already pretty talked-out about it as I write. Here is the video:


It looks weird, doesn't it? It's IR video, of course, so even a video of a human looks otherworldly in that context. Honestly, I was more than a little surprised the skeptics (some of them, at least) seemed flummoxed by this video. I'm not a skeptic, just an open minded investigator, and UFOs are not my thing, but still...

The video is from 2013 but this month the Science Coalition for Ufology released its lengthy 161 page report detailing their analysis of the video. Their conclusions were a bit surprising to me, since I immediately saw a problem with how they derived their numbers and concluded that this was an anomalous event - an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Now, as I said, I'm a bit talked out on this subject. I didn't want to get into it because it's just not my "thing," but since I saw some errors that nobody else seemed to notice, I felt compelled to point them out.  So pardon the fact that I will be copy-pasting some of my Reddit comments as part of this article, but I can't handle rehashing it. Sorry.

Claims are made about the bird traveling 86 miles per hour, and later flying through the water at a similar speed. I think there were too many assumptions involved. Just looking at the display, there was an attempted target lock at around 43 seconds into the video (the box that briefly pops-up around the crosshairs) - this fails. This is a clue in itself: The target had plenty of heat signature, and once in the crosshairs, the operator pulled the trigger, but the lock failed. This was an immediate clue that we were looking at a very small target; one below the threshold of the software for target tracking. We understand that. Mostly these IR systems are used to lock onto aircraft, or cars, or sometimes people. But you don't want them accidentally  locking on a very small target such as a bird. Now the lack of a lock is important, because it means that all the target readings on the lower right display were not about this target. Instead, they are a mean average for the ground. This means that the coordinates cannot be used to establish any speed estimates whatsoever. And We will address that further, because it led to a fundamental error on the part of the SCU investigators.

The aircraft was turning and climbing during this, starting out heading WNW (302 degrees) and ending up going SE when they lost the target. The target was North of the aircraft for this entire event. They increased their distance to the target throughout this. I think it was 2.7 nautical miles downrange on lock attempt, and they were 3.4 nautical miles down range as the bird crossed the shoreline, then 4.0 nautical miles downrange when the bird lands in the water.

IMPORTANT POINT: As alluded earlier, the coordinates shown on the video display are those of the far distant ground, not of the target - and I will conclusively prove that at the end of this commentary. Because the investigators used the coordinates of the land, they got a total arc of 2.2 miles, and that is where they came up with their ground speed. Furthermore, they used the moving ground coordinates to try to establish a movement speed "underwater" while viewing a stationary target. The coordinates continue to move as the airplane moves, however, they have NOTHING to do with any target you are looking at, unless the target is locked! But back to the video for the moment....

You really catch the shoreline at 1:55 in the video; aircraft is still turning left, now at 155 degrees. Target is estimated 16 ft above ground, 3.4 nautical miles downrange (but of course, that's the LAND not the bird). Right after this is when we zoom in, at 1:58. At 2:00 to 2:04, you can really make-out the shape of a pelican: big curved neck, long bill, and wings in that classic glide arc. Now we're 3.7 nautical miles down range. Some people have objected that you can't see wings, but you can - only at certain points. You have to remember that this is infrared video; it's reading heat signatures. Since wings are thin and have low vascularization, they have a very low heat signature. To infrared, they are almost invisible.

At 2::05 you see the bird land in the water. 2:06 they lose the target when the bird lands in the water (heat signature disappears, of course). 4 nautical miles down range: Target is North/northeast of the aircraft, but the aircraft is flying SE. Now we have some controversy as the operator supposedly tracks the target underwater, moving as fast as they thought it was moving in the air!

I don't see a bird flying underwater (or a UFO). I see a heat signature artifact that appears briefly on screen after the camera operator loses the bird (because it landed in the water and the heat signature disappeared). You'll notice it's no longer a heat signature (dark) at that point, but a cold signature (white). He does seem to spot a floating pelican momentarily but perhaps didn't realize that was what he was following to start with, so he zooms back out again, to hunt.. The changes in coordinates you see on screen are describing the visible sea area as the plane moves away and turns, that's all. I will restate yet again, that the ground coordinates, when there is no locked target, describe a mean average of the ground (or sea) being views, and they are constantly in motion because the plane is moving. These coordinates cannot be used to make a speed estimate. We proved that there is no target lock and the coordinates describe only the visible landscape/seascape. About the waves and speed: They seem to be moving really fast (all of the waves, you'll notice) but that's because of the aircraft speed and the foreshortening of the long telephoto lens, not because they are turbocharged ocean waves.

Finally, zoomed out, the camera operator (while panning) spots two birds taking off from the water at about 2:32 and he zooms in again. There is another important point here: who says one of these two birds is the same one as the camera guy followed to the water? Pelicans are ubiquitous in the area and there could be thousands of them out there; all invisible to the IR because their feathers are at water temperature. That assumption was another mistake, and it is one of the assumptions behind the alleged underwater flying, along with the the error displayed throughout the analysis: Thinking that the ever-changing coordinates described a target, which they do not..

..Bob, the other half of udebunked despite the fact that he never writes anything, commented to me the thing I was thinking: This seems like  a very inexperienced IR operator. Perhaps his first-ever field work? Birds are seen on IR all the time. Everybody knows that the wings are hard to see when looking down from above with a warm (high heat signature) land background. Everyone knows their movement profile. What was this person's problem? We'll probably never know. This is part of the real mystery: If you believe the SCU report, nobody in the Homeland Security service or Air Force could figure it out... so they just gave it to UFO people. Yeah, that's believable... (wiping smirk off face) as in not believable at all. With the Air Force's IR profile database, the match could have been made by computer in like a tenth of a second. So then the real mystery is why some bird footage was proffered to UFO groups by the government..what were they up to? Some kind of test? If so, the UFO people failed that test. Maybe that is what the government wanted. But I digress....

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Personally, I don't see any indicators of high speed at all. The heads-up display is misleading people into thinking the bird is covering a huge distance, but it's not a locked target so we're getting coordinates of distant ground. Those coordinates are always in constant motion, even when viewing a stationary but unlocked target. Don't believe me? Look at the first part of the video, before the operator starts chasing a bird. The ONLY way you can arrive at a speed estimation is to find a stationary ground target with a known width, and use that to triangulate vertically and horizontally, to establish a speed.. When you do that, it doesn't look fast at all.

Then we get to the landing in the water, which we actually see at 2:05, followed immediately by the loss of heat signature (and the white artifact) at 2:06. Again, no speed really. The waves look fast, because of foreshortening by the enormous zoom (remember the aircraft is now over 4 nautical miles away, so that's like equiv. 2,000 millimeter lens) and the effect of the aircraft making a left turn, which means the waves (like the bird) are being videoed in a moving arc, with the aircraft's speed being added to the apparent ground and wave speed. You could calculate how much apparent speed the aircraft is adding to the bird by tracking the turn of the aircraft throughout the video (goes from WNW around to the SE and finally to the NE in the same short time slice) - doing a sight line and tangent analysis - but I'm too lazy to do that, and it would be highly problematic anyway because altitude of the target would be a critical factor (and we don't have that).

The ground arc is a total of 2.2 miles, but much of that is accounted for the the turning aircraft and the fact that those coordinates are of the far distant ground (and constantly in motion because of the aircraft), NOT the bird.

 * ... To give an example of this: Bird crosses a two lane highway (airport runway) at 1:14 to 1:16 -  (coordinates 18 29 51N 67 07 04W ) to 18 29 54N 67 07 08W Google map, (THIS IS HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE, as you will see) which shows that is a distance of 294ft. 294 feet covered in 2 seconds - IF the bird were flying at 0 feet above the ground and we were viewing the road from directly above - that's the only way their measurements would work!

But we know that isn't true: the bird is in the air and being viewed from 2.1 nautical miles away from an altitude of 2100 FT (corrected in graphic), and the road (airport runway) is seen at a very oblique angle, which tells you that the bird is closer to the aircraft than the coordinate estimates would imply. Applying a little trigonometry, it appears that the bird is covering about 65 air feet (corrected in graphic) in that same two seconds, yielding a lazy speed of 22.36 mph (corrected in graphic). So yeah, the speed and turn of the aircraft, the long-distance view and foreshortening of the zoom lens is giving a very misleading impression. Also note that while the road can be checked to confirm it is 294 feet, the displayed coordinates travel almost 500 feet as the bird crosses that road. Again, the coordinate motion, when there is no locked target, includes the relative speed of the aircraft.

Note on speed: You have multiple points which can be triangulated. You must use stationary ground targets of known width. Alternatively, as I said, sight line and tangents give you another way to get at a number, but they are again enslaved to the inaccurate coordinates and therefore problematic. The runway above has a known width. The aircraft had a known position when the bird was observed crossing in front of that road (airport runway). The aircraft was  2.1 nautical miles from the road (12760 feet) and 2100 feet in altitude. With that, application of Pythagorean theorem gives us the unknown side of the vertical triangle: 12932 feet. We will need that late for the speed calculations. Now we determine the horizontal triangulation: the space through which the bird actually flies, as you can see in the video. So we take the 12932 feet (Corrected in graphic) from aircraft to target (the ROAD, remember) and the width of the road (easily obtained from Google maps) which is 294 feet, and get our other side. Now we have a horizontal triangle, which is 294 feet wide at ground level, and makes a point at the aircraft. In other words, the width of the triangle gets smaller as we approach the aircraft.  Finally, we have to estimate the height of the bird. That's  a little fuzzy, but since elsewhere you see clearly the tops of buildings with the bird far above, you know it isn't skimming the land. I chose 100 feet. It was probably higher. If you go with 200 feet, the bird is traveling a little even slower, and if you go with 800 feet - then we're down to a walking speed. It isn't going 86 miles per hour, that's for sure.  So then we find our vertical height lines on the vertical triangle, and that gives us a new base for the horizontal triangle. I arrived at a 65 foot window that the bird crossed, as I said. There's fuzz here, but the fuzz factors are altitude and angle passing through the viewing area. At their ends, a perpendicular passage will give you 15 MPH at their suggested height, diagonal passage gives you 44 MPH and diagonal and diving from altitude gives you 72 MPH (however, in that case we would have to see our bird moving parallel to the lines of sight, which is not what is happening. I only mention this to illustrate that there is an outside speed that can be derived, which is still far lower than the SCU report estimates).. Nothing higher than that. Sorry, guys.

 ABOUT THE PROOF of the coordinates error: As you see from the Google map, plugging those coordinates into Google maps lands you directly on the road which is off in the distance and only seen obliquely, as you can see. Plug in the coordinates shown at any point, and you'll get the objects seen in the far distant background. THIS conclusively proves my original point that the coordinates shown are of the far distant background land, not the bird (otherwise those coordinates would put you on land in between the aircraft and the road, and not the road). Furthermore, you  can observe in this case that the moving ground coordinates always show a greater distance than we know is involved. The road, for example, being a known 294 feet but the ground coordinates reporting a much greater distance. The erroneous speed estimate was based on those land coordinates, yielding 2.2 miles covered/86 mph-ish, but the bird is between that far-distant land and the aircraft camera, and and probably flies under 3/4 mile in that same time frame. SCU used ground coordinates to establish speed, but we've already proven that these are useless for this process. I'd say that this is pretty much conclusive. Sorry, though, I'd rather it be something more interesting!

Mistake 1: Misunderstanding and failing to acquire the public information available about how the IR display rangefinding works. If they had done this, they would have understood that the lower right coordinates do not refer to a target, unless the target is locked. THE TARGET WAS NEVER LOCKED. Therefore, the numbers are constantly in motion even when looking at things like houses on the ground (which obviously aren't moving) because the aircraft is moving. Those number always show motion. They cannot be used to make speed calculations. All of this could have been avoided by simply sitting down with any experienced military IR operator: It would have taken 30 seconds for him/her to say, "It's a bird," and none of us would have had to go through this tedious and unfortunate process.

Mistake 2: Having misconstrued the readings, they then used those readings to estimate speed of the bird. And they used their wrong estimate to rule-out the fact that this is a bird. Speed estimations can only be made using stationary ground targets with known widths, and triangulating on those, using the altitude and distance of the aircraft. Once again, an experienced air-to-ground IR operator would have stopped this train wreck before it ever happened.

Mistake 3: When the bird lands, because they didn't understand the meaning of the display, they misinterpreted the target as still moving. Again, that data is always in motion unless there is a locked target which is stationary ...which never happened in this case.

Mistake 4: The investigators of SCU conflated a later sighting of two birds with the original bird sighting. They did this probably due to confirmation bias, since they had already set the idea in their heads that stationary targets were actually moving, due to their erroneous interpretation of the display information, then thinking that the same bird later emerged from the water further down range made sense to them and confirmed their wrong assumption about the motion and speed of the target..

Verdict: Debunked. The SCU report concluded that this was an Unknown Aerial Phenemon and an "Unknown Submerged Object" based on misunderstanding and misinterpreting the on-screen data. Once a proper speed analysis is done, there's nothing left to hang that UAP hat on, and once one realizes that they conflated two unrelated sightings to get the "submerged" moniker, there's nothing to left of that, either. It's probably a bird, and in that case, almost certainly a pelican. The investigators who analyzed this video assumed that the on screen coordinates were of the bird or related to the speed of the bird in some way, but I've proven that they are of the land in the far distance and show a constant motion factor even on stationary targets, because there is no target lock. The error of using target coordinates where there was never a locked target simply led to a cascade of errors, and all the mistakes which followed. Does anyone know how many pelicans there are in that area at that time of year??? Nobody checked, I bet. With the coordinates, the analysts could have just plugged the coordinates into Google and found out that they were not of the target but of the far distant land, but they didn't think of it.

In other words, despite issuing a lengthy scientific-sounding report, the investigators didn't really do their homework and didn't employ proper investigation procedures, nor did they apply accepted, appropriate analysis techniques.

The SCU investigators didn't know  how the coordinates displays work when there is no locked target. They didn't understand infrared heat signatures and their limitations. They probably didn't look up information about pelicans in the area and they certainly did not do the triangulation of stationary ground targets  necessary to determine the actual air speed - and we know that for a fact: The speed numbers they stated can ONLY be derived from the ever-changing coordinates (run the math and see for yourself) and those coordinates were of the distant ground not the bird, and were always in motion even when viewing stationary targets because of the actions of the aircraft. Proof that they did not use a triangulated ground target distance measurement. Even when they note in their report that they thought the coordinates were of the distant ground, they still used those ground coordinates to estimate speed instead of triangulating known, identifiable stationary ground targets.

You could still call it a UAP, of course. It looks like a pelican but that's subjective! I think the innocent mistakes in interpreting on screen data just messed you up and caused you to rule-out the likelihood that this was a bird from the get-go. I'm really sorry, guys! Stuff happens....

We all make mistakes. But next time, check out the details instead of assuming so much. I'm just an ordinary person, not an important scientist, but even I could immediately see where you went wrong. Mistakes were made. Someone (me) noticed. And that's the end of the story.

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Here is the 2:02-2:04 part of the video where you can see that it is a pelican:

And here is a zoom-in of the same time sequence. Use the square on the lower right to go full-screen, and the circle on the lower left to repeat... and repeat, until you get it. :)

General video timeline (of the YouTube video):

• 0.22 - bird flies into frame at upper right, with the brief appearance of apparent flapping.
• 0.23-25 First opportunity to see wings flapping. Yes, wings are hard to see in IR, particularly when viewed from far above and at great distance, but try harder!
• 1:14-1:16 - Bird crosses identifiable road. This was the critical data point: The coordinates entered into Google map prove that the tracking is of the far distant ground, not the bird. We can then get the width of the road and create X and Y triangulations to estimate the bird's distance from the plane and actual speed, which is far lower than the estimates created from taking the coordinates, erroneously assumed to be those of the bird.
• 1:27-1:28 Bird crosses another road in the far distance. Yet another set of triangulation points and proof that the coordinates are of the far distant land, not the bird.
• 2:05 - bird lands in water. IR artifact (white) remains on screen for a moment after this.
• 2:11-2:13 - Bird is briefly spotted, floating. Note again that coordinates continue to (with the clearly unmoving bird) only because they are readings of the sea level, being read in an arc as the plane continues to turn. We've already proven that these are not measurements of the target. No point in trying to claim that they are otherwise.
• 2:21 - bird head barely visible here and there, just before operator zooms out at 2:22. I don't know how many times one has to say: You can see the target is not moving (other than bobbing up and down in the waves), the ground coordinates continue to change because the aircraft is now 4 nautical miles down range and the visible seascape is changing with the arc of the airplane's turn. There's nothing more to it than that.
• 2:22 - Operator zooms out and begins panning.
• 2:26 - You can see a bird in the air, near the sea level, to the right of the crosshairs.This bird continues to fly and the operator follows it. The bird becomes more clear as it flaps its wings and develops more heat signature at 2:33.
• 2:36 - Operator zooms in and you can now see that there are actually two birds. Probably neither is the same bird as we see in the first part of the video. There is an illusion of fast motion caused by 1) the foreshortening due to zoom lens usage, which makes the waves seem to be moving fast, even though you can see the target is not, and 2) the ever changing coordinates on the lower right, changes which match the changes of the aircraft coordinates as it turns and moves away, represent reciprocal values of each other. Once again, those numbers are not about the target, because there is NO locked target; they describe the area of sea being looked at, and that is all.

UPDATE: Graphic of proper triangulation!  I did make an error in the blog, which is corrected in the graphic. Sadly, it does not help SCU any. Bummer. I even went with their 40' height estimation for the bird, which seems too low but whatever...

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this post or blog is meant to suggest that the supernatural or paranormal does not exist. The fact is, I don't know. All I can do is look at the evidence to see if it stands up to the test of very simple scrutiny. If it passes, yay. If it fails, oh well... there's always next time. Investigators are human. I'm human. We all make mistakes. My pointing out the mistakes that others make should not be taken to imply that they are wrong in general, or that the things they investigate are only the product of imagination.

Roswell Slides Alien is Just A Mummified Child

UPDATED! The original article on the Roswell Slides alien from the night of the big show appears below. Following that there are two updates, the last of which is conclusive. This author turned out to be right about everything...not that anyone noticed. I was particularly disappointed with some big name paranormal podcasters (who will not be named here- changed my mind, at bottom) who got a heads-up on this the night of the pay per view, but waited several days for people like Nick Redfern to finally get a grip on the information before coming out with it. Congratulations on backing the celebrities over the little people, guys.

Yes, I admit it, I got suckered into watching the live event known as Be Witness! In my defense, how else am I going to write about happenings in the paranormal world? So this is what the hype was all about: After more than a year-long build up to a pay per view event in Mexico City, the infamous Roswell Slides were revealed. And what you see above is what we got. The image appears to be a child, maybe two years old, turned into a desiccated mummy. The museum card on the glass case is conveniently unreadable (but WOULD BE READABLE ON THE ORIGINAL SLIDE! see below), but a quick web search finds several examples of child mummies, and you'd be hard pressed to find any difference.

Just as an example of a mummified child:

Licensed from Getty Images

But you can find many other examples on the web. You may look at several below before you decide that yes, this is indeed a mummified child. And well before the big over-hyped reveal, enough had leaked out that others had written about child mummies, suspecting that this was the case. For example.

For the "alien" mummy of the Roswell Slides caper, a  simple increase of brightness and contrast reveals a mummy in a double museum case:

You can see the white bracket runs up the middle of the double museum case. The child mummy is in the foreground, while in the other case on the far side of the bracket you see an animal head and two snakes.

Now the build up in the pay show was endless.... they retold every tale of aliens and speculative ideas about them that they could think of, droning on for hours.  I was impressed that the audience didn't start booing at some point, because it was rather clear they were stalling.

When the reveal finally came, we saw what you see in the first image at the top of this page: It looks to be a mummified child in a glass case in a museum. There's nothing particularly weird about it. Oh, that didn't stop them from making something weird out of it though....

Expert after expert appeared to point how how the proportions were all wrong for a human .... ... adult male. That's the ONLY comparison they made. It looks like a child, but they never once made that comparison. Instead, over and over they would show us the skeleton of an adult male human and point out that the "alien" was so different from that. Yeah, it is - because it's a kid, not an adult male!

The stupidest one was when they brought up the guy who pronounced this "alien" to be some type of reptile!  Yeah... I couldn't make this shit up. He said it couldn't' be a mammal, like us, because it lacks mammary glands.  ...It also lacks skin, eyeballs and internal organs, so that probably means it came from outer space too, right?  (The Getty  photo from a museum above also "lacks mammary glands" and for the same reason).  Maybe all these mummies are reptiles then, and we just thought they were human mummies.

Okay, maybe the guy who said the child mummy was some kind of  lizard because he couldn't see mammary glands on the shriveled corpse wasn't the stupidest one. Maybe it was the anthropologist who said it had more ribs than a human. Not because you can count extra ribs, but because he inferred ribs you cannot see, based on (AGAIN) the proportions of an adult male human and that therefore some of that mummified flesh must have more ribs under it, etc.

Let's be real here: They went out of their way to avoid comparing their evidence to a mummified child. Didn't come within a mile of that, in fact. They only compared it to an adult human male. Period. To me, this strongly suggests that they knew very well that it was a mummified child but were hoping their audience wouldn't notice that. ...And that's almost criminally scummy, in my opinion.

VERDICT: Nothing to see here. Except maybe scam artists at work. The slide is a real and old, but it doesn't show anything weird or unusual - just a visit to a museum that had a mummy. The two "alien" slides came from a pack of slides taken on the original owner's vacation. To their credit, these hucksters admitted that much. So normally there wouldn't be any reason to see this as anything other than another souvenir of that trip - until you insert promoters of crap into the picture.

The only argument to the contrary would be something along the lines of: If these were part of that trip (and they were) then why did the old lady hide them in the box lid?  This seems fairly straightforward: The mummy picture is the only photo that polite conservative society of the 1950's might find objectionable/gross. She probably hid them because she didn't want to show them to visitors but didn't want to throw them away because her husband took them. Everyone has vacation pictures they'd rather not have others see. What's the big deal? Nothing.... except (again) for the insertion of pecuniary purveyors of hucksterism into the story. And that is a story unto itself.

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Here are some more mummified children ...er... aliens. Yeah...

And last and probably least, once again, the "Roswell Slides alien" mummy child:

By the way, there IS information on the museum card. I did a little Photoshop curves and channel isolation. I can't read it because the highest resolution version online is still pretty small at only 1200 pixels wide (a bit less than ~1Mpx), but those who have the original slide can do so. At 1200 pixels, the letters on the card are only 1 to 2 pixels wide - not enough to read anything, but the slide will have about 24Mpixels of data, making the card quite readable. And I'm guessing they probably did read it (because anyone with a little Photoshop knowledge can enhance to this level), but didn't want you to know about it. Or put it another way; they know exactly what it is and where it is/was - and chose to hide the truth. In my opinion.

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UPDATE May 7, 2015: Well, this stuff has now been reproduced everywhere using other methods and analysis, but I still see defenders, vainly trying to hang on to the illusion. These all revolve around experts who looked at the low res photo and made judgments about its structure (compared to an adult male). I've covered that and won't repeat myself. The only additional points I've seen are along the lines of, "Yeah, but the alien has giant eyes!" ... No it doesn't. The promoters' graphic illustrations and animations have giant eyes, but look again at the photo. There is no justification for that in the photo. It has normal child-sized eye sockets. Seriously, look at it!

And this brings me back to the fact that the museum card would readable with a full resolution scan of the slide. Are you seriously telling me they put all that time and money into having CGI animations done - animations in which they gave the skeleton giant eyes and gray-blue skin without any justification in the source material - but they didn't bother to have a full resolution scan made? Seriously? That lacks even a shred of credibility, unless you say they didn't have a full resolution scan made because they knew they would be able to read the museum card and that would have spoiled the fun. That I can believe.

As I predicted, you have the usual debunkers calling the photo a fake - because they are misreading it. I knew that was going to happen because I too had trouble interpreting the visual data at first. Once I realized it was a double case with a center support bracket, it all fell into place. But for the debunker crowd, who always assume everything is fake, there is little interest in accurate analysis. Tl;dr it's not fake, just a relic of a couple's vacation where they visited a tourist trap and saw a mummy. That's all.

UPDATE May 13, 2015:  Thank you to Greg Bishop of Radio Misterioso for his show about the solving of this mystery. (ADDITIONAL: here is the iTunes podcast link since we're currently slamming his web site into non-existence)I listened to the podcast last night  and was delighted to hear my predictions come to fruition, thanks to a team of much more dedicated UFO researchers. The show itself was pretty messy with lots of people talking over other people, but it's worth listening to, if you want to learn about how the mystery was solved - and also how beneath contempt the promoters of the Slides have been.

I was the first to cover the event, but I lost interest in pursuing what was obviously a museum mummy. But others did not, and they got a better image than the one offered to the general public, and they read the museum card. As I predicted would happen.  At the time it was photographed, the mummy was in the possession of the National Parks Service at Mesa Verde National Park. The card says "MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY" on the title line. The bottom line says that the the mummy was donated by a  Mr. Palmer of San Francisco, California in 1938. He had originally removed it from a historical site but was now returning it. It's a mummy of a 2 year old boy. A HUMAN CHILD. Well, I got everything right - EVERYTHING - (and first) but kudos to those who took this home. They did their work despite threats and accusations of fraud hurled by the shameless and scummy promoters of this hoax. I'm glad they did that because the threats and vicious attacks probably would have stopped me from going further, had I had any inclination to do so. You can read all about their work at The Roswell Slides Research Group.

The group explains how anyone can read the card posted on the scammer's own web site using Smart Deblur. I just used Photoshop to enhance a bit. Try their method and figure it out for yourself.  Here's my slide card using just the Smart Sharpen filter with motion blur setting in Photoshop (you have to do it twice for X and Y axes, but Photoshop will do it), and taking the yellow channel and some adjustments, because some color channels are less blurry than others!. Thank you again to the Roswell Slides Research Group people. Good job, man.

I'm glad the hoaxers lost this one. I'm sure they planned to make a good living for years to come off of their hoax. But now the truth is out there.  Honestly, though, it's not over. The promoters will continue to make money off of their hoax (just maybe not as MUCH money as they were going to make) and true believers will continue to shower them with cash and keep them in business. It's just human nature; people want to believe so much that they are willing to ignore conclusive proof. So there's nothing to cheer for, here. Congratulations to those who dug up the facts, and shame on the con men who foisted this upon us - but the hoax machine will grind on, because that's just a sad part of human nature. Another sad part is how all the podcasters and bloggers held back on this information, waiting for it to be endorsed by celebrity UFO speakers instead of just confronting the facts head on. That celebrity-worship is yet another sad fact of human nature. It might help you get those celebrities on your shows...maybe... but you might not be providing the best service to your audience. I'm still glad that the Roswell Slides group did what they did. I would never consider going on radio shows or fighting the fight with the true believers. That's not my thing. I don't even like blogging about this stuff. It was a dirty job and they stepped up to the plate and did it. For that, I am immensely grateful.

EDIT June 1, 2015. On second thought, I'm going to name the podcaster culprits who kept this information from their listeners: The guys of Mysterious Universe. I used to like them. I used to be a Plus subscriber. When I did this analysis the night of the event, I posted it to their web site and a day later to their Facebook page. They DELETED both my posts. Deleted! I later noticed that they had also blocked me from ever posting again on the FB page. TAKE NOTE: They deliberately kept their listeners in the dark until Nick Redfern was ready to come on their show and talk about the whole thing, springboarding off of the Roswell Slides Research Group's work. Un-fucking believable. I consider this unforgivable and proof that they don't really care about facts, just entertainment. Needless to say, I am no longer a subscriber. The Mysterious Universe guys should be ashamed of themselves.

Stop The Bigfoot Madness, Please

It amazes me that TV producers can create a show about hunting for Bigfoot. It's not like Bigfoot sightings have the bulk or evidence behind them that other paranormal-type phenomena have. So I don't know why other shows about the paranormal feel they need to include Bigfoot "experts," unless it's because these guys write books and so they are willing to come on shows. We've also heard the latest twist: Bigfoot is actually an inter-dimensional being! Why? Backward logic: We've never found a shred of physical evidence that Bigfoot is real, so we're going to explain that away by saying Bigfoot comes from another dimension and therefore doesn't have to eat, leave crap lying around, or die. I can't address that one; it seems like a last-resort kind of thing. "Sure we don't have any evidence, and yeah, a real forest ape kind of creature would need a breeding population of thousands to exist and we'd find dead ones, so since we've already decided Bigfoot exists, it must be interdimensional."  Whatever. I'm only going to address Bigfoot as a real, evolved creature of *this* world...

"Bigfoot"

Bigfoot sightings, at least as far as real flesh and blood (not interdimensional) creatures,  fall into two categories: Bears that are misidentified, and hoaxes. That's it. If decades of nothing but hoaxes, misidentification and no actual evidence for their existence can't convince you, I don't know what will, but we'll go over some of the facts anyway...

A) Nobody has ever found a dead Bigfoot. This is not insignificant. There is no real, living animal that hasn't had a body turn up here and there. This is often the way we find out that some obscure animal we thought was extinct is actually still around. Everything that lives, dies. If there are no dead Bigfoot creatures, it's only because there are no Bigfoot pseudo-apes that are alive, either.  It's important to note, I suppose, that basic biology requires several thousand animals to maintain a breeding population. Apparently there are Bigfoot creatures all over America - and the world - but nobody has found a dead one or a family group. It's always one-off sightings by panicky city folk who haven't spent enough time in the woods to know what they're looking at.

B) All the videos are hoaxes. All the "scientific" evidence, like claims of finding DNA or hair or feces,  are hoaxes. People have confessed to them or have been caught and exposed, and we know that's true.If Bigfoot existed, getting a clear video wouldn't be a problem. Anyone can go in the woods and get videos of bears. Heck, you can get them in most cities, or at least the suburbs. Finding Bigfoot turds (and DNA with them)  wouldn't be a problem, either. A giant animal that would have to consume tons of food and leave tons of waste behind? The forests should be covered ankle-deep in Bigfoot crap ... unless the animal doesn't really exist, of course.

C) Bigfoot sightings that aren't hoaxes, are bears. It's the illusion of high strangeness that makes Bigfoot reports seem credible to some. Think of it this way: in a county of hundreds of millions of people, some of them are going to have close encounters with bears - every single day. For almost all of them, the story will be; "I was driving down the road and a bear ran out in front of me, and I almost hit it!" ..And that's the end. You'll never hear that one on the news. But all it takes is one person ..maybe one out of a hundred thousand bear encounters, to say "Hey a Bigfoot ran across the road in front of me!" - and now we're supposed to think this is what really happened.

MOST people know a bear when they see one, and so you never hear about their encounters. The rare person who lets their imagination and predisposition construct a cryptid encounter in their minds - they are the ones you hear about.

What's wrong with these people? Nothing, basically. Some of them may have overactive imaginations. Some of them may just harbor a deep longing to see a Bigfoot, or anything that's strange. If they said they saw a leprechaun instead of a Bigfoot, they probably wouldn't have the instant support group gathering around, telling them that what they thought they saw was the real deal. If a person longs to see a fairy, they might talk themselves into seeing one but they will be more likely to (correctly) question their memories and assessment of the situation, due to the lack of a supportive network of people who will rally around them..

Beyond that: apparently some people are expecting bears to look like cartoons or what you see in the zoo. There are lots of bear encounters all over the world, so it is probably only a tiny minority of people who misread the situation. That's all it takes, though..

The diversity of wild bears is amazing. They can be tall and skinny or short and fat, and everything in between. They can have tiny ears, short muzzles. If you can think of it, there are bears that have it. In fact, we should probably break down some things most people don't know about bears:

1. Bears in the wild are not like zoo bears. They can be fat or very thin, short or long muzzled. It's just the genetic variation that is natural in the wild.
2. Bear coats are often uneven in color. Especially around shedding time, it's not unusual to see a bear that is brown on top and black around the waist. It makes it look like it's wearing pants. This is just a difference between top coat and undercoat color, though.
3. Yes, bears do walk around on hind legs, and they do look ape-like when they do that. For bears, it is easier to go around on all fours most of the time, but when they have an injured front paw (common because bears fight each other ) they will spend extended periods walking and even running on two legs.
4. Bears kill stuff. Yes, even black bears where people swear up and down they just eat berries. That's not true. Black bears like berries a lot but they will kill and eat small animals as the opportunity arises.
5. An injured bear screams like a human being. Perhaps it's Hollywood's fault that people think bears sound like Godzilla. Their voice range is very similar to an adult human  voice range. This is very cringe-inducing if you encounter an injured bear - or you hunt them.
6. Bears sometimes lose their ear shells in fights, or to frostbite. Bears also can go bald. The same diseases that cause racoons and coyotes to lose their hair and be mistaken for Chupacabra can give bears a bald face, head, or even whole body. There aren't a lot of bears with baldness or no ears, but they have the maximum likelihood of being misidentified. Not that you need that much: As I pointed out, of the many bear encounters every day,  it only takes a tiny percentage of panicky, crypto-minded people to keep the Bigfoot myth alive.

When you know this stuff, you can readily see how bears get mistaken for forest apes on a regular basis. I think the only reason it doesn't happen more often is because only a minority of people are of a mind to think a big hairy beast is a Bigfoot. Misidentification is just too easy, and the difference between "I saw a bear" and "I saw a Bigfoot" comes down to mindset and expectations.

SOURCE: Outdoor person, here. I grew up in the woods of the Pacific Northwest (where Bigfoot is supposed to be common), and have hunted bear for food. That was my old life. Even though I don't do it anymore, I am an expert tracker and hunter. Everyone I knew, growing up, hunted. I've seen dozens and dozens of bears in the wild, including way too up close and personal, including bears with patchwork coats and semi-bald ones - and many walking/running on two legs. But not one Bigfoot. I think Bigfoot experts are mostly armchair outdoorsmen who haven't spent enough time in the woods to know a bear from some cryptozoological character. Even when you get a story where someone is called an "experienced outdoorsman" - when you read the story you find out that the guy's vast "experience" consists of going on weekend camping adventures a couple of times a year. People who really live in the woods and have spent their lives there never see a Bigfoot. And that fact alone should convince you that Bigfoot does not exist, at least as far as it being a literal forest ape of some sort..

A bald bear - it happens

There is much more, of course, like the fact that this imaginary creature doesn't fit anywhere in the food chain. Are they predators? What do they kill? Are they herbivores?  Why aren't they seen grazing? There's just no place you can fit them that makes any sense. In the meantime, actual apes and chimps - some varieties of  which are quite endangered and have low population densities - can easily be found in their natural habitat, in part because we know what they eat so we know where to look for them. Everything has to eat. If Bigfoot existed, it would be eating something... LOTS of something, since they're supposed to be huge. Even a low population density of Bigfoot animals would be consuming tons of whatever it is that it is supposed to eat - and thus would be easy enough to find.

And finally, if you have a weird sighting, why on earth would you jump to a cryptozoological character as the explanation? It's like; all the Chupacabra sightings where there were photos or the creature was found, have turned out to be raccoons or coyotes with mange. The people who took the photos or found the creature swore up and down that it was Chupacabra, but the evidence proved them wrong. At some point you have to say, "okay, witness testimony is unreliable, and we have solid evidence that they're just plain wrong with these reports."  But no, we keep jumping to the weirdest explanation possible.

I've already pointed out the fact that these are bears. Bigfoot is never seen except in areas with bears. No bears = no Bigfoot sightings. But even if you were to insist that it wasn't a bear, but an ape-like creature, the next logical explanation would be an ape that escaped from a circus or zoo. A supernatural cryptid would be the absolute bottom of the list, yet that's where Bigfoot believers go first.

VERDICT: Debunked. Debunked over and over again. Bigfoot is a mythological creature, like the unicorn. The only differences: 1) Bears exist and people mistake them for apes when they're running around on two legs, and 2) Bigfoot hoaxers abound. People seem less interested in hoaxing unicorn sightings, but knowing human nature, I wouldn't be surprised to find that becomes a thing in the future. All that is actually needed is a supportive community of people (especially people who write books) to say that unicorns are real, and they will gain the same level of respectability as Bigfoot.

After decades of Bigfoot hunts, big rewards for evidence of Bigfoot's existence, and an almost endless parade of hoaxers, the verdict is undeniable. If you keep believing in Bigfoot, you must be getting something out of it. But there are plenty of real mysteries out there to explore and research, where your high strangeness affinity might be more productive. Or, you know, go shoot a unicorn and have your picture taken with it. Bigfoot or Unicorn: The odds of success are the same.

Bottom Line: There are many people who make a living off of promoting the existence of Bigfoot and other cryptozooids. Without the professionals hawking their books and lectures, Bigfoot would be considered as real as unicorns and leprechauns. Alas, there will always be cynical people lining up to fleece the public, and we just have to live with that.

I should also note that Bigfoot is not in the same class as other phenomena like ghosts, apparitions, and hauntings, because we know what people are seeing with Bigfoot sightings. There is a huge pool of paranormal experiences related to spirit hauntings, and their cause is hard to pin down or explain -  but the pool of Bigfoot sighters is very small^[1], easy to explain, and they fall into just two categories: Hoaxers and people who don't know a bear when they see one...Unless you want to go to the latest fallback position that Bigfoot is an interdimensional being. I don't even know how to calculate the odds of that being true but if that were the case then people are wasting their time hunting for them because they would pop in and out of our reality on a random basis.

^[1] How small is the pool of sightings keeping the Bigfoot myth alive? According to several sources, there have been a total of 3,313 Bigfoot "sightings" in North America in the last 92 years as of this posting. That's just 36 sightings per year, on average. To put that in perspective: The Bigfoot myth is being kept alive by just 0.000001 percent of the population. Bigfoot sighters are rarer than people who think they are in constant telepathic communication with Venusians, or people who claim they can fly using the power of their minds. In contrast there are millions of encounters with bears in North America every year.

Other sources of information:
Why Bigfoot is unlikely, if you know what unlikely means
10 Reasons why Bigfoot's a Bust

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this post or blog is meant to suggest that the supernatural or paranormal does not exist. The fact is, I don't know. All I can do is look at the evidence to see if it stands up to the test of very simple scrutiny. If it passes, yay. If it fails, oh well... there's always next time. Investigators are human. I'm human. We all make mistakes. My pointing out the mistakes that others make should not be taken to imply that they are wrong in general, or that the things they investigate are only the product of imagination.

EchoVox, Spirit Box, SCD-1 and what is WRONG with all of Them

Most ghost hunting TV shows use EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena) as a staple for demonstrating the existence of paranormal entities. Everywhere you look, people are asking questions in dark places while running a digital recorder, Spirit box or EchoVox. When the recording is played back, there are often answers to their questions.

Before we look at any of the video evidence, though, I would like you to ponder a question: If these are audio recordings of sessions talking to spirits, WHY are they always posted as videos? I'm serious about this. Just stop and consider that question. You will find that it is very important as we go on from here.

It's become very popular to mix digital recording sessions with devices and smartphone apps that "assist" in communication. This method is so quick and easy - and works every time - how could anyone resist? Most of what is on YouTube today is probably from a device or app. Again, though, audio devices that mysteriously require a video to work correctly... hmm...

EchoVox: Pre-packaged Assisted "Communications"

The EchoVox app - latest version

EchoVox is a smartphone app that has a database of phonemes. Phonemes are parts of words, and with 24 consonant phonemes and 20 vowel phonemes you can make every word in the English language and most of the words in other languages as well. EchoVox has all of these, and it will play those phonemes as soon as you hit the Start button. It is claimed by its maker in rather vague terms that EchoVox mixes the phonemes with information from your device's input, whatever that means. Are they trying to say that the phonemes of the app's database are somehow altered by environmental sounds...say, from the microphone?  Well, EchoVox plays a barrage of phonemes even if you don't give it access to the phone's mic. I know that, because when I first tried it, I didn't give it access to the microphone and it still played the phonemes. The microphone only goes into effect if you turn Echo on. If you don't do that, it won't even ask permission to access the microphone. Based on microphone on/off tests, the phonemes are just played randomly. The app uses 4 "channels" of phonemes, but I think that the channels just have speed differences plus different levels of distortion, and that's all.

When you have a lot of phonemes being thrown at you, some of them are going to sound like words. There's just no getting around that.  There are all the phonemes of the English language bombarding your ears in both male and female voices. Words will be heard. So, on what basis are we thinking that the phoneme collection - which is what Echovox produces - represents paranormal communication?

That claim is based on "accurate answers" to questions. Sure, the phonemes are random, and that's all that is really here, but if you get the right phonemes to make words, and those words are the correct ones to answer your questions, then there MUST be something to it, right?

EchoVox has become really big in amateur paranormal research. You'll find thousands of videos on YouTube, and there are even several Facebook groups devoted to Echovox and populated by over one thousand "serious investigators." The developer has also added variations on this theme such as BlackVox, which is the same thing but with a pentagram and scarier-sounding voices included. Yeah, I'm sure that helps.....

Adventures in Assisted Spirit Communication

I paid for this app because after all the claims, I had to see it in operation for myself. So even if I felt kind of stupid about it, I did the usual things: I asked if anyone was present, what is their name, do they have any messages. That sort of thing. I recorded all the questions and answers. (EchoVox will record everything for you, IF you turn the "Echo" feature on. If you do that, I'd suggest setting it to 0 delay or the echoing of your own voice will drive you crazy.  You can also just use a digital recorder.  I went for the EchoVox internal recording feature at first - and I was excited by the results. It did seem like there were intelligent responses to my questions, and even though I knew that the device deluged you with phonemes, and I knew about audio pareidolia, it seemed like maybe there was something there. I guess I wasn't that interested in the "how" - mostly I only cared about the positive results -- until it was proven to me that it was just audio pareidolia. Here is how that happened....

I transferred some of my best stuff to a portable digital recorder so I could play my fabulous results for all my friends. At first, I would tell them about all of the incredible, true answers I got - and then they would listen to the recording - sure enough, they heard them too! Confirmation!

But then, I played it for another person without telling him what to listen for, and he just got nonsense sounds - couldn't pick out much of anything except a word or two he mentioned, which I had not heard on that recording. So then I told him what I got and asked him to listen again with headphones: This time he heard my answers. Success! ..... So maybe... yeah.... EXCEPT for an important detail I should mention: I played the wrong file. I had several on there, and I played an Echovox session with different answers (according to what I had heard). I told him what I heard on the file EVP-1 but I played EVP-2 instead. Yet he heard the answers I had told him to listen for! They were the "wrong" answers for the file he actually listened to, though.
 
Then I tried my files with other people without telling them what answers to listen for. Some heard answers and some didn't, but the ones who heard answers to my questions never heard the same answers I heard. Not one of them.

As a last test - on myself, I put the audio on my computer and cut it up into separate questions and answers; one file for each question; one file for each answer. Then I mixed them up so questions were paired with different answers.... and I still thought I heard correct answers. So audio pareidolia was definitely confirmed.

TL;DR Audio Pareidolia

Audio pareidolia is a very powerful effect. It happens because the brain doesn't really process a whole group of sounds, determine they are words and then match them with your brain's database for conscious understanding. That would be way too slow: A conversation would be over before you figured out what the first sentence said. Instead, your brain picks up a piece of a word, a phoneme, matches it with its database of words according to context (expectation), and then delivers that product (a whole word or sentence) to your conscious mind.

This is the reason we all have times when we were very sure that person A said X when they actually said Y. And we would swear up and down that they actually said the thing that they didn't say - because that is what we really heard. We just heard it wrong. They said what they said, our brain grabbed onto the wrong phoneme, or completed a phoneme into the wrong word, and we consciously heard the other person say something that they didn't actually say.

Audio pareidolia is also why you may think you hear the phone ring when you're in the shower (when it's not actually ringing) or why you might think you hear someone say your name in a conversation that turns out to not be about you at all. Your brain takes fragments of sounds, latches onto them based on a preconception of what meaning might be derived, then delivers the word(s) that it THINKS might be present to your conscious mind.


EchoVox (and its cousins) is an app that is designed to take advantage of this phenomenon of brain function: Echovox has a database of phonemes in several voices, and the phonemes (parts of words) are spit out randomly, at whatever speed you select in the 4 bank speed section. By default, this is quite fast - like a bunch of people yacking away at top speed. The microphone input has NO effect on these phonemes. They are just random. You can prove that for yourself by turning the mic off. If you can't do that on your device (it's just the Settings app, scroll down to EchoVox and tap it, then turn off the switch that gives permission to access the microphone) then plug a dummy mic into the jack. It won't change the phoneme barrage at all; it's exactly the same. So that's how EchoVox works; a big phoneme soup! And you can't help but hear words in that pile of word pieces - because phonemes are what words are made of and the human brain only needs pieces of words to deliver whole words to your conscious awareness. Last but not least, you will hear the words you are expecting to hear - the words that are contextually appropriate - because that is how your brain works. I wish there was more to it than that, but there isn't. YOU CAN CONCLUSIVELY PROVE THIS FOR YOURSELF - READ THE 'DO IT YOURSELF TESTING' SECTION BELOW.

The Spirit Box

Spirit Box (technically P-SB7 by ITC) is an older device working on the same principle, but derives its phonemes from radio broadcasts. With the Spirit Box, what you have is a little handheld scanner that rapidly scans FM (or AM) radio frequencies. Unlike a police scanner (which may be more familiar to some) the Spirit Box doesn't stop when a signal is picked up, it just keeps going. It's blowing by radio station after radio station. The TV show Ghost Adventures loves this little radio scanner.

I probably don't have to tell you after all we've been through, but what that means is that you're getting phonemes from the radio stations; bits of words here and there.  And now that you understand the basics of audio pareidolia, you know what is going to happen, right?  Yep. So EchoVox supplies a full set of phonemes in multiple voices while the Spirit Box relies on phonemes from rapidly scanned radio stations. And like EchoVox, the "proof" comes in the form of videos - because they need to have captions so your brain will know what to hear.

And just to make the madness complete, Spirit Box now has an app version, called SCD-1. It works exactly the same way, the only difference being is that the app version draws phonemes from Internet radio station podcast feeds. There's no practical difference and the effect is the same. SCD-1 stands for "Spirit Communication Device, number 1" - but you're not getting spirits. Like Spirit Box, you're getting actual people talking on radio stations, and then your brain creates an artificial meaning in order to give you the illusion of communication. That's the only thing that it does. If you enjoy fooling yourself, you can have some fun I guess, but there must be a cheaper way to do it. The SCD-1 is outrageously, almost criminally expensive.

Back to my earlier question: Why does everyone take audio recordings and put them in a video? At this point, you should know the answer. Your brain needs an expectation trigger in order to hear specific words and phrases, so you won't hear their amazing messages from beyond the grave unless you are told what to hear via captions - or possibly the person telling you what is said and then replaying the "message" so you'll get it. It's just a trick of the mind because the human brain works that way (with a caveat which I will place in the footnotes).

I mean, think about it: If you linked me to a lecture by Stephen Hawking or... I don't know, an interview of Mariah Carey - would you feel the need to tell me what to hear in order for me to "get" what they're saying? Of course not, because they're speaking real words (in Stephen's case, we're not even talking about a human voice but an electronic one - and STILL no captions are needed). The reason these phoneme cannon recordings need to be captioned is because they're just phonemes, LOTS of them, not actual words, and the brain needs an expectation trigger in order to know which phonemes to lock-in on to turn into words and phrases.

Oh, I have to give a dishonorable mention to Ghost Adventures, here. If you use this device in an area with lots of radio stations, it sounds pretty much like EchoVox; a barrage of phonemes but with bits of songs being played on those stations, here and there. On the other hand, if you take this device out to the desert of eastern Oregon, or some similar place where the stations you can pick up may number in the zeros, you'll just get a steady, rhythmic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound - the scanner locking to each frequency for a tenth of a second, then moving on to the next where it does the same - and so on.  On Ghost Adventures, the sound is clearly edited. All you have to do is use a Spirit Box once to realize they don't sound as portrayed on the show. On the show, it's a very formed, pattern click-click-click static until there's a voice giving a message. That really never happens with this device, for the reasons stated, and cannot happen in real use. So they're editing out the phonemes from other radio stations. And the people involved KNOW that's going to happen, which is why the star of the show mutes the device as he speaks - to cover the edit. Of course, this is also the tv show that recently tried to sell a spider descending on a thread from the ceiling as something supernatural, so they're pretty much beneath contempt and appear to have no ethics at all.

Bottom Line: With apps such as EchoVox and devices such as the Spirit Box, there's no input from spirits or anything else as far as we can tell, it's just all the phonemes of the English language being thrown at you, and the ones that meet your expectations for an answer will stand-out in your mind. They'll probably even seem louder than the background chatter. The human brain does that. All of the "answers" are coming from your own mind via your brain's natural inclination to make intelligible words out of minimal input. And of course, if you have to tell someone else what to hear in order for them to hear it too, it isn't real. I guess if you have spirits that must be spoken with, you'll have to find yourself a good psychic medium. Probably, anyway; I have a longshot alternative explanation in the footnoes.

Random Example Video

So now that you know the truth, let's put this to the test! I don't want to hear any crap about how it's just my opinion. I'm talking about well-documented science of how the brain works, but you  won't be satisfied until you see this effect in action. I made a random choice of an "amazing" spirit communication - and the one I chose was chosen only because it came up in the first page on YouTube and is very short...

 To do this, you will need to follow my instructions. It's something I already mentioned, though, so this is just a reminder. You're going to watch a video of the EchoVox app in action. Except you MUST NOT watch it the first time through. Get a pad and paper, then start the video and turn your head away. DO NOT LOOK AT THE VIDEO.  Write down every word you think you hear (not counting the "investigator's" words, of course - just stuff from the stream of phonemes). Since you have 4 banks throwing phonemes blaring at you, every once in a while two or three of them will come together by sheer coincidence to make an actual word or phrase. There are only 44 phonemes that make up every word and every name, so when you are being hit with a barrage of them, SOMETIMES you'll get real words. Even so, maybe you won't get anything. Your brain needs to pick a context in order to infer meaning. But if you are thinking that ghosts are talking to you, then maybe that is all the context you need. Remember, no looking! ....Yes, I know, one of the captions shows up in the preview here. I can't help that. Just try to listen for words and forget about what you're told to hear...

As I said, I picked a short one so I wouldn't be torturing you too much, but you can do this with ANY of these videos of EVP sessions, regardless of the device involved. Just look away from the video the first time through and write down your own impressions. Sometimes (as happened here at one point) the person who is doing to the recording will give you an audio cue as to what answer is expected - so you'll hear that. But if you go back and listen carefully, the word you thought you heard isn't really there. It's just a phoneme. Your brain did all the work and filled in the details.

Now, if you like, you can go back and watch the video, and see what you were supposed to hear, according to the person who posted it. Did you match them very often? No? Of course not, because their "answers" were based on their own expectations for answers. Your expectations are different, so your answers will tend to be different. But with them telling you what to hear, you'll probably clearly hear their messages now. Try this with as many videos as you like, but you're going to find out fairly quickly that audio pareidolia is all that is going on, here. Sorry.

Old-School EVP Recordings

EVPs are obtained by other methods, too. In paranormal TV shows, you're more likely to see someone using a digital recorder, like the one shown above. They will hold the recorder up to their mouth, ask a question, then immediately stick the recorder out into the air and wave it around, like they are interviewing a moving yet invisible guest. For non-TV paranormal teams, digital EVP recordings are a staple.

The problem with that is that these recorders have variable sensitivity and when you stop talking the audio gain instantly goes to maximum - so they  pick up any noise whatsoever. Contact noise (like moving your fingers on the body of the recorder) will be the loudest things that get recorded. Of course there will be noises during that moment of "silence!" There's more, too: the rustling of your clothing as you move, clearing your throat, barely audible mumbling you might do subconsciously, stomachs growling, someone speaking in another room or outside of the building.... You won't be aware of any of these things when they happen, but the recorder will pick them up. With playback, now they seem supernatural, because you didn't notice them when they happened. Add audio pareidolia and magically you have a message from dead people.

Do-It-Yourself Testing

Digital recorder videos can be analyzed the same way as EchoVox videos: Just listen to them without looking at them. Write down any words you think you hear, and when you are done then and only then watch the video to see what happens. Unless the investigator also tells you what to hear in addition to the captions, you won't hear it. Except in perhaps a rare case: Sometimes the investigator's question will have such an obvious answer that your brain will immediately know what it is supposed to "hear." Sometimes the investigator is simply muttering the answer (perhaps subconsciously) and giving a real message that way. Sometimes the recorder will pick up someone speaking in another room. With EchoVox, on top of pareidolia you'll also have phonemes come together in the random assault on your ears that accidentally form words. But mostly, it's all pareidolia. This simple test will debunk 99.9 percent of EVP videos out there. And you can prove that yourself.

If there are any true EVPs out there, then this is the test to find out: Have a number of people listen to the audio only, with no cues as to what they are supposed to hear, and have them write-down (not speak) what they think they heard. Look at their notes after you are done. If you give them suggestions as to what to hear, you've killed the test: You're just trying to trigger their pareidolia mechanism. SO NO CUES!

If all of them agree on a phrase being spoken, it might be something. Maybe: If the answer wasn't obvious from the questioner's context, and if you can show that it wasn't the investigator muttering or a real live person in another room or outside the building speaking. Super mega bonus points if the message is not only intelligible to everyone but also contains information that can be verified but couldn't possibly have been known to the investigators or test subjects.

On the other hand, if your test subjects can't agree, it's because audio pareidolia is in operation and they don't have enough context to trick their brains. That's all.  And congratulations, you just conducted your own scientific investigation!


VERDICT: Debunked. Devices like Spirit Box and apps like EchoVox are just phoneme generators. They take advantage of the fact that the human brain is pre-programmed to latch-on to any shred of a word, and turn it into a real word or phrase - and this process happens entirely subconsciously, so people think they really heard something. Digital recorder EVPs are not entirely debunked but they also typically rely on captioning ambiguous environmental sounds to trick your brain into hearing words. Obviously, if it is real then nobody will need to tell you what to hear. Otherwise, there's nothing paranormal going on - to a 99 percent certainty. My only reservation will be contained within the footnotes.

There is something scam-like happening though with the various apps and devices, because there is a moneymaking opportunity which takes advantage of a known brain phenomenon. That is, "known" in the sense that anyone who has done any research at all knows about it. The average member of the public probably doesn't know, though, and that's where the scam comes in. And to the people who make money off of that, all I can say is shame on them. These developers are walking a very fine line between running a legal scam and outright fraud.


FOOTNOTES:
(1) I did say there was a caveat, although it's a big long-shot I feel obligated to mention it since apparently I'm the first human on earth to notice this: Here goes... If we must, let's talk about pareidolia and all the special messages you see on YouTube: Ghost boxes, Echovox, and all that - all that must be captioned in order for other people to "hear" the special message that the original person heard.

Obviously, the words are not really present in the sounds - that's why you have to have captions. When you hear a message, it's only in your head. But did you ever ask yourself (apparently nobody does); where did the message in your head come from? ...Well, your own brain, right? Right. But where did your own brain get the idea to make a particular choice and give you a plain message from gibberish?

Let's consider the use of psychic mediums for spirit communications. Now of course the skeptics here will all say it's bullshit because they think everything is bullshit. They used to spend time debunking quantum mechanics, too, until they had to shut up about it. Ever notice how skeptics never do a mea culpa? They never admit when they're wrong, they just go on to the next topic? Skepticism is a no-lose proposition; you just say no and it didn't happen until you start looking foolish then you shut up about it and find something else to ridicule and belittle. Being a skeptic is a great because you get to feel intellectually superior to the rest of the world and you never have to say you were wrong about anything, ever, nor do you have to do any actual work beyond negating everything anyone else says.. But I digress.... Skeptics will say any kind of spirit communication can't happen because spirits don't exist and nothing exists but the material world, and so forth. On the other hand, Dr. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychiatry and surgery at the University of Arizona says mediumship is real, and he can prove it. What if he's right?

So if Professor Schwartz and others are right, then it is possible to make psychic contact with the spirits of the deceased. At least, *some* people can do it. Are you with me so far?

Only certain people have that knack, and it's a small minority of a minority (I think most of the people who *think* they are psychic mediums are probably fooling themselves). BUT... if it's real, even for a tiny percentage of people - even only one person, then there is a mechanism behind it; a way the conscious mind can interface with the spirit world. And if there is a mechanism, then we all have it but most of us are unable to latch onto that stream of information and pull it up into our consciousness (like every human has a voice but few can sing opera). At best, it would be a tiny subconscious influence for most people.

At this point, the argument should be a real no-brainer but I will spell it out: Spirit communication is possible via some brain (third eye/pineal gland?) interface for everyone (must be true if there is even one person EVER in this history of mankind who did it) but most people can't bring the information stream up to the level of conscious awareness. Pareidolia happens at the subconscious level: The brain creates whole words and phrases out of sounds, and that happens before your conscious mind hears anything. Spirit communication is also potentiated at the subconscious level. It's the perfect intersection of non-conscious processes; where any spirits could influence the words your brain manufactures from random sounds, and thus deliver a message.

Not sure how you would prove or disprove that other than delivering message content that can be subsequently verified but could not have been known to the receiver. ..But there it is. By the way, I do NOT authorize anyone to use this argument to sell their pareidolia wares. Since I invented it, I own it. I will come after you if you do that! :) It's intellectual property rights at work. ...Others are free to quote me, but you must give correct credit to this author. Sorry, but I just want to make sure my own intellectual work isn't used for evil purposes.


(2) More information on pareidolia in general and audio pareidolia in particular:
Paranormal Research: EVPs - things you should know
Audio Pareidolia at The Rogue's Gallery
Pareidolia on Wikipedia
Bridgtown Paranormal Group on Audio Pareidolia
PsychCentral
Visual and audio pareidolia examples


(3) If you want to do the world a big favor, and dispel some ignorance, save a link to this page and post it every time someone puts up a new EVP video. Everyone should know the truth - it's only fair.

EDIT: Confirmation from the other side. The "other side" in this case, being the builders of these devices. Now, it's difficult to believe that any of these hawkers of paranormal gadgets actually think they work - but you'd expect them to keep their mouth shut about it. It's how they make their living, after all! Nevertheless, one gadget developer came clean to Popular Mechanics in an email: Bill Chappell (inventor of the Ovilus and many other paranormal gadgets) explained his view on the paranormal in a blunt email saying "I do not believe in Ghosts or Spirits."
The inventor says he's built hundreds of devices and performed countless experiments over the last decade trying to understand the phenomena of EVPs and instrumental transcommunication. "The unmistakable conclusion," he wrote. "It is us, we are the ghosts."

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this post or blog is meant to suggest that the supernatural or paranormal does not exist. The fact is, I don't know. All I can do is look at the evidence to see if it stands up to the test of very simple scrutiny. If it passes, yay. If it fails, oh well... there's always next time. Investigators are human. I'm human. We all make mistakes. My pointing out the mistakes that others make should not be taken to imply that they are wrong in general, or that the things they investigate are only the product of imagination. 

Old Wheeler Hotel, Ghost Caught on Video?

When I first saw this ghost video, I was blown away. It just blinks when you see it at normal speed, but in the slowed down version (second half of the posted video) it made me feel like a figure really crossed in front of the television screen! Wow, proof of the supernatural at last. Why aren't these guys on television?


Oh yes, this video is a few years old - I only found it because I read a review of the Old Wheeler Hotel, where this event takes place. You can see the paranormal investigator sleeping in the bed. There's a blip on the screen. Can't tell what it was. But then the video has a second half where it's shown in slow motion, and the blip now looks more like a figure. Sort of. I was stunned. Be sure to watch the video before you continue reading! These are investigators from PSI of Oregon, located in Coos Bay. They don't have much on youtube but this one certainly got my attention! Feel free to check out their web site.

But seriously - watch the video first! Twice!

***
Did you watch the video? No, really, you need to do that first....

I was able to break the video down into frames, and brighten it a bit, just to see what is going on here. When you do that, it looks much less impressive. First, though, I want to mention that I applaud their work. People who want to provide evidence that paranormal activities are real should be thorough and open in their investigations. I'm always excited to find anything new and different, and this one got me excited.


Looking at the frames from the slow motion portion of the video, brightness enhanced but no other changes:

Time stamp: 8 hrs 14m 17sec

You'll want to focus on the television set. This is an old old picture tube type television. The kind you can't buy anymore. You might want to look-up the process of how they work. Basically, an electron gun at the back of the tube shoots a beam of charged particles at the front of the tube, the inside of which is coated with phosphor, so the particles cause the phosphor to glow momentarily. It's a single stream of particles, the gun itself is moved back and forth very rapidly by electromagnets. They're a big bunch of wires surrounding the neck of the tube, should you ever get to look at one.  Obviously, as with any mechanical process (and this IS mechanical) stuff can go wrong.  Here you can see that the very bottom right of the picture is pulling in just a tiny amount. In other words, the electron scan is missing a little at the corner. The picture tube is probably pretty worn out, so this is no surprise.

8hrs 13min 31 seconds

Here we see that the tired picture tube scanning has lost a few dozen pixels or so wide stretch from the bottom right to the right middle - and now the scan failure is creeping across the top of the picture. Again, this is old mechanical picture tube equipment - and it's been left running for hours. This thing happens with old tvs left on for long periods. The static (rather than an actual picture) provides no information so the electron gun has to hit every pixel. It's more than it can handle..

8hrs 14min 02 seconds

Now the scan has filled in at the top, but expanded the scan failure along the bottom - AND it's overscanning a little on the left side, about two thirds of the way down, creating a little bright spot.

We've captured our ghost!  Very interesting. When you watch the video,  it really looks like a shadowy figure walks in front of the tv. This is an optical illusion. The TV is the source of light, it's right in front of the camera AND it's the brightest object in the room by several orders of magnitude.When you look at the frames, you see the only thing happening here is electron gun scan failure in the old picture tube. The illusion of motion comes from how the scan failure creeps around the corners of the screen - and as it does so, it darkens the room a little (since it is the primary source of light) and the smearing of the whiteness of the screen (because it's the light source) means the darkening of the picture also appears to spread vertically from the image. That's the camera's sensor having trouble with the sudden light change.  And with this frame analysis, you can now see that the only thing darkening the room is the slight loss of light from the television. There is no intervening figure.

Disappointing. I really thought they had something at first. Oh well, try try again!  No apparitions. No ghosts, just the appearance of failing 20th century technology, as far as I can see. If you have an alternative explanation, I will be interested to hear it. Oh well... Now, if you want to say the scan failure was caused by paranormal phenomena, that's a different question. I'm answering the main question: No, there isn't any figure present. The root cause of the apparent picture tube failure is something that is a bit beyond me. Perhaps some technical experts would like to weigh-in..

So, I'm sorry (very), PSI of Oregon investigators. Sorry Old Wheeler Hotel.  I wanted very much to believe you. But alas ....at least as far as the presence of a full body apparition of some sort -  u debunked.

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DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this post or blog is meant to suggest that the supernatural or paranormal does not exist. The fact is, I don't know. All I can do is look at the evidence to see if it stands up to the test of very simple scrutiny. If it passes, yay. If it fails, oh well... there's always next time. Investigators are human. I'm human. We all make mistakes. My pointing out the mistakes that others make should not be taken to imply that they are wrong in general, or that the things they investigate are only the product of imagination. I named this blog "U Debunked It" to be cute, but I actually hate the debunking mindset. One should go into every investigation with an open mind. It's the only way to find out what is really there. That is what I do.