(continued...)
At this point lets move on and discuss these other videos if you have time to view them. I still take these as compelling examples of paranormal contact.
If anything, these latest four are even less "compelling" than the other ones. Here are my thoughts:
The "Haunted Office"
I didn't watch the whole video, because it all just seemed to be the one guy telling ghost stories. No footage of any ghostly thing is seen. It's just one long anecdote and a rather uninteresting guided tour through a normal-looking office area at night. I suppose you think I should just believe everything the guy said about ghosts, just because you're ready to believe everything he said.
How long will it take you to appreciate that anecdotes are the weakest kind of evidence?
Celebrity - Rue McClanahan
I have no idea who this particular "celebrity" is, but maybe she is well known to Americans.
But, just like in the "Haunted Office" clip, there's nothing in this video except another anecdote than is not backed up by anything other than the interviewee's word. Again, next to useless. It's about the weakest evidence for ghosts you could get.
DH Store plate-falling-off-counter video
This is another very blurry clip, which is again typical of videos purporting to show actual ghostly activity. And in the 3-minute clip, all the "action" takes up about 2 seconds of real-time video. The rest is padding, voice-over, replay and nondescript footage of employees walking around the store.
So, what do we see in those 2 seconds? We see a glass plate of some type (it's described as a "pie plate") apparently sliding off the counter unassisted and smashing on the floor.
What
don't we see? We don't see exactly where the plate started from - at least I have trouble spotting its starting location. It seems to be behind some papers and other jars until it starts moving, so we can't see all of it. In fact, when it starts moving it seems to disturb a piece of paper that is apparently partly lying on top of it. We don't see smooth motion either - the footage is more like a series of snapshots - like on a webcam. This is not surprising if this is digital CCTV footage, but poor quality doesn't help us work out what happened.
The plate appears to move in a straight line while it is on the counter. I can't tell exactly, but it seems possible to me that it actually lifts
up off the counter a bit before it clears the edge, then it falls to the floor. Spooky, eh? Maybe the ghost lifted it a bit - if it was a ghost, that is.
It seems unlikely to me that the plate was pushed, but
pulling seems like a definite possibility. I ask myself: suppose I wanted to create a faked video like this in that particular location. What would I do? Here's one way I can think to do it. Get a piece of very thin line - like fishing line, perhaps, or a long thin thread. Tie it around the plate (it won't show against the glass, given the quality of the video), or just sticky-tape it to the edge of the plate (the sticky tape won't show, either). Now, take the string, run it around some fixed object on the wall on the right-hand side of the picture and then over the counter. Now hide. Crouch down behind the counter at the back of the picture (or behind the wall near the back that leads to the other room), holding the other end of the string. When ready, give it a good hard tug, and - viola! Call the press.
At the start of this video the reporter asks "Is this a ghost or a publicity stunt?" Let's ask ourselves: which explanation would be extraordinary, and which would be mundane? Is it completely implausible that the store owner (or whoever he is being interviewed) would pull this as a publicity stunt? I don't think so, based on the evidence I have so far (which, as usual with these videos, is not much). The default position is that this isn't a ghostly event, unless we can actually rule out fakery.
So, is this evidence for ghosts? Maybe, but it's (as usual) very low quality and unconvincing. Again, I ask the question: what
other evidence is there concerning this event? Is there anything else, apart from the video itself and the store owner's testimony? Do we know anything about the store owner? Is he an honest man? Is he a prankster? Has any other ghostly manifestation ever happened in that store, for which there is evidence (and independent witnesses)? etc.
I'm confident your response to these questions will be to say that I should just take the guy at his word, because you've decided to trust him for no particular reason other than that his story props up your existing belief in ghosts. And you won't produce any extra evidence. You'll quickly tire of examining this incident, and will want me to look at yet another "compelling" incident that has just caught your attention.
Queen Mary Ghost
Instead of the old creaky house I talked about earlier, here we have an old creaky ship. All the "action" in this video is actually audio - we might as well toss out the video for all the value it offers.
So, what can we say about the audio? Firstly, typically, it is low quality. I can barely hear the "ghostly" voice, and I can't make out what it is supposed to be saying. Apparently nobody else can either, because the makers of the video find it necessary to prompt an interpretation by actually
writing the words on the screen. That is, they are trying to set us up to hear what they want us to hear, rather than giving us room to make an unbiased judgment for ourselves. When you're told you're going to hear somebody saying certain words spoken... well, that sound did sound a bit like those written words on the screen, sort of, didn't it?
There are claims about complicated "audio analysis" work being done to compare the "voice" in two different videos, and we're told "it's a match", but this is just a claim. Where can we read about the analysis? Who did it? How did they do it? What factors indicated a "match"? We don't know, and I suppose we'll never know.
This video (or two videos if you like) would, of course, be even easier to fake than the plate video. All you'd need is somebody making some sounds (put on a "ghostly voice" for good effect) in an appropriately echoey part of the ship. Would the ghost hunters in the video be motivated to fake a ghost? Who knows. What do we know about them? Anything? Not really. Or, at least, nothing about them has been presented to me so far. I don't know if these guys are honest or not.
But would fakery be necessary? Are we really sure those sounds are a voice? Forget the text we're told we should hear. Close your eyes and just listen. Are you
sure it's a human voice (a little girl)? Think about what else it
might be. I can think of a few possibilities.
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So, all in all, these 4 videos are unconvincing. The two anecdotal ones are of virtually zero value in establishing that ghosts exist. The store one is no doubt an effective one to convince the believers, but my strong suspicion is that it is faked. And the ship's ghost? If I had to guess (which I do, because the evidence is lacking at this point) I'd say we have a confirmed case of creaky-old-ship syndrome.