blips and bleeps in OSR
To sum up this weekend's trip to OSR ... The EMF meter proved to make it a bit more exciting, but after traipsing around the place for 7 hours, we only got three "hits," which really boiled down to only one hit, after analysis.
See, on the second hit we discovered that the EMF meter could detect itself if the separate sensor (connected by a three-foot wire) was held against a sweet spot on the main unit. I remembered then that on the first hit I'd been holding both sensor and main unit in the same hand, as I had been on the second hit, thus negating them both. The third hit, however, was more thought provoking.
We were in the basement of the warden's quarters -- the same area we'd felt most creepy in 2005 -- and by this time I was making sure to keep the sensor in one hand and the unit in the other, leaving about 18 inches minimum between the two of them. As we came through a doorway, it beeped once, which corresponded to about a 1.5-2 miliGauss EMF signal ("normal" background EMFs start around 10 mG). I froze and took out my tape recorder to begin taping (haven't had the chance to hear it back yet) and Jinnet snapped a few pictures. As I swept the sensor around the same general location, it registered a hit again in the same area. Still sweeping to try and narrow the location -- and discover the wire or whatever had caused it -- the detector remained silent. I swept several more times with no hits, then turned and swept the other side of the door. This time, the detector went off again, just for a bleep or two. After sweeping the whole door and all around within several feet a few more times (other tests on live electrical boxes had shown that it needed to be about 6-8 inches from the source to detect it), the signal could not be reproduced again.
So was it a ghost? Who knows. We didn't see anything, the pictures didn't show anything (I'll post them and the audio file soon), and we didn't feel cold or like we were being watched or any of the other things people report. All we can say definitively is that the detector registered something, that something appeared to move (from one side of the doorway to the other), and that something then disappeared. Had it been a live wire, for example, its signal would have been detected during the subsequent sweeps and could have been found in the same spot each time, neither of which happened.
Now, your garden-variety ghosthunter will tell you this was evidence of ghosts ... I'm not so sure. I think it's evidence that some form EMF disturbance passed through the place, but without better readings it's hard to say much more than that. Could it have been some EMF equivalent of ball lightning? Or some other natural "release" that registered as an EMF? Or did the hot-spot move under intelligent control?
And that, of course, is all the more reason to see if we can put our idea to the test.
See, on the second hit we discovered that the EMF meter could detect itself if the separate sensor (connected by a three-foot wire) was held against a sweet spot on the main unit. I remembered then that on the first hit I'd been holding both sensor and main unit in the same hand, as I had been on the second hit, thus negating them both. The third hit, however, was more thought provoking.
We were in the basement of the warden's quarters -- the same area we'd felt most creepy in 2005 -- and by this time I was making sure to keep the sensor in one hand and the unit in the other, leaving about 18 inches minimum between the two of them. As we came through a doorway, it beeped once, which corresponded to about a 1.5-2 miliGauss EMF signal ("normal" background EMFs start around 10 mG). I froze and took out my tape recorder to begin taping (haven't had the chance to hear it back yet) and Jinnet snapped a few pictures. As I swept the sensor around the same general location, it registered a hit again in the same area. Still sweeping to try and narrow the location -- and discover the wire or whatever had caused it -- the detector remained silent. I swept several more times with no hits, then turned and swept the other side of the door. This time, the detector went off again, just for a bleep or two. After sweeping the whole door and all around within several feet a few more times (other tests on live electrical boxes had shown that it needed to be about 6-8 inches from the source to detect it), the signal could not be reproduced again.
So was it a ghost? Who knows. We didn't see anything, the pictures didn't show anything (I'll post them and the audio file soon), and we didn't feel cold or like we were being watched or any of the other things people report. All we can say definitively is that the detector registered something, that something appeared to move (from one side of the doorway to the other), and that something then disappeared. Had it been a live wire, for example, its signal would have been detected during the subsequent sweeps and could have been found in the same spot each time, neither of which happened.
Now, your garden-variety ghosthunter will tell you this was evidence of ghosts ... I'm not so sure. I think it's evidence that some form EMF disturbance passed through the place, but without better readings it's hard to say much more than that. Could it have been some EMF equivalent of ball lightning? Or some other natural "release" that registered as an EMF? Or did the hot-spot move under intelligent control?
And that, of course, is all the more reason to see if we can put our idea to the test.
1 Comments:
Considering that it happened nowhere else in the prison, despite a lot of EMF sweeping and photographing, I'd like to think something was indeed happening there. Like you said, we should have brought the Polaroid. Maybe next time!
Post a Comment
<< Home