edison's ghost detector

So it turns out that Thomas Edison believed in ghosts, enough so that he developed an experiment to test his hypothesis that "spiritual entities ... should have some of the attributes of ordinary matter." To test this view, he set up a basic motion detector, figuring if there was a ghost present, it would trip the beam:

In a darkened room in his great laboratory, surrounded with beakers, generators, and other experimental equipment, Edison set up a photo-electric cell. A tiny pencil of light, coming from a powerful lamp, bored through the darkness and struck the active surface of this cell, where it was transformed instantly into a feeble electric current. Any object, no matter how thin, transparent or small, would cause a registration on the cell if it cut through the beam. ...

Tense hours were spent watching the delicate instruments for the slightest indication of a spirit form, but none came. The wind howled around the corners of the laboratory building, the spiritualists exorcised, but the ghosts, if any, remained in their abode in eternity. Narrowed scientific eyes saw the meter’s needle remain steady as a rock. ...

The great inventor was a realist and his experiment revealed the stony silence his profound mind expected to find. If spiritual entities existed Edison believed that they should have some of the attributes of ordinary matter. Hence his belief that if spirits existed they could be detected by the electric eye.

Of course, he detected nothing and thus assumed not that his hypothesis was wrong, but instead that ghosts did not exist. A safe assumption, some might say, but we'd offer our own hypothesis as an example of how his experiment might have been a bit too limiting. His tale -- taken from Modern Mechanix issue 10 (1933), and recounted in full at the Modern Mechanix blog -- will be worth keeping in mind as we conduct our own experiments. And maybe 85 years from now, there will be someone pointing out how wrong were our own theories...

the urban legend machine

If only we were further along in the project (and located in England), this could be a good candidate for a house to seal, or at least test the sensors in:

A young mother has pleaded with Redbridge Council to be re-house her and her daughter because their home is haunted. ... The family from Hainault, who do not want to be named, have reported eerily similar unexplained phenomena to that experienced by [a different] girl, which the Recorder reported in January 1997. ... The sound of fighting, shouting and breaking glass, which may have blighted the home half a century ago, can still be heard claim the family. ... A family member told the Recorder this week: "Every single thing is the same as what was reported nearly a decade ago."

Source: It's haunted, please get us out of here!; (Ilford Recorder); 24 August 2006; www.ilfordrecorder.co.uk

Of course, seeing as details of the story were reported in 1997, one could assume the current residents simply had read the news, even if they have "forgotten" it 10 years later. It would require some research down that avenue, to see if the story is "tainted," since we know how easily urban legends can start, but a house with audible manifestations, for additional verification, would be good fun to rig out.

ed warren knows for sure now

Ed Warren, the famed "ghosthunter" who investigated the original "Amityville Horror" house, died in his home at the age of 79 on Wednesday. During his 61-year career with his wife, Lorraine, he investigated over 10,000 haunted houses around the world. The Warrens wrote ten books on the supernatural and were consultants for the Amityville Horror film. Warren was also a nature enthusiast and enjoyed collecting rocks and gems. Warren had been in poor health since 2001 and, after being in a coma for 11 weeks, had never regained speech for most of that time.

And remember kids, if you want to follow in the Warrens' footsteps, always get permission from the owners before you start your ghost hunting:

WORTHINGTON, Ohio - A teenager out looking for ghosts with friends was shot in the head and critically wounded near a house considered spooky by local teens, police said Wednesday. A man who lives in the house, Allen S. Davis, 40, was charged in the shooting and told reporters Wednesday from jail that he was trying to drive off trespassers and didn't intend to hurt the teen girls, whom he called juvenile delinquents.

Source: Teen girl shot looking for ghosts (AP; Cincinnati Enquirer); August 24, 2006 (news.enquirer.com)

things that should not be

First, a welcome to Tim, our new resident electrical engineer, who will be working with Angie to develop a prototype sensor. Says Tim of why he decided to get involved, "I don't think I am a skeptic or a true believer on ghosts. I think I would say I am interestedly neutral on the whole subject."

And in the vein of other scientists not afraid to look for things that might not be there and/or shouldn't exist by the current "laws" of nature (but who are willing to spend oodles of cash in the pursuit of academic curiosity):

Team finds proof of dark matter (Paul Rincon; BBC News; Aug, 21, 2006)

"Dark matter and dark energy are not what anyone would have expected starting from the perspective of what the Universe should be like," said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved with the study, "but we're trying to understand why it's like that and this result puts us on that path." In order to locate the mass in the clusters, researchers used the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes, along with the Very Large Telescope and Magellan optical telescopes in Chile.

Perpetual Motion Claim Probed (John Borland; wired.com; Aug, 21, 2006)

The company hasn't released specific details about the process, other than to say it involves magnetic fields configured in precisely the right way. Using the magnets results in a motor that's more than 100 percent efficient ... For scientists and engineers, this is the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, and is almost unanimously viewed as flat-out impossible.

And proof of what we're all up against: Steorn, the company which has made the claims, has offered unfettered access to test their claims, but according to a poll on the company's website, currently 72% of the 84,000 people polled do not think the scientific community should test their claims. Now why on Earth wouldn't we want to test legitimate claims of "never having to recharge your phone, never having to refuel your car. A world with an infinite supply of clean energy for all"? Simply because we're afraid of proving our other long-held, dogmatic scientific theories wrong?

baby steps

Did some more poking around for "paranormal research" grants, just to see, and still came up relatively empty. The best options seem to be in England, which doesn't help us much, and they all require that you've already got some modicum of research under your belt (which makes sense). The vast majority of "paranormal" grants, however, are strictly geared toward psychic abilities, and even then, mostly toward universities and/or students working on a thesis -- not so much help for average joes who want to catch a ghost.

But don't fret! The ZagAgg has some loose change to get the ball rolling and plans to build up that magical modicum of research that will, hopefully, get some attention. We have leads on several electrical engineers -- which is the first real step, anyway -- and once we have our sensors built, then we can worry about getting that data into a computer, and then we can see about test runs in haunted places we don't necessarily own. And from there ... the moon?

the great divide

As luck would have it, today has an example from both sides of the believers/skeptics camps. First, a researcher in England thinks he's pinned down the source of ghosts in English castles: Infrasound created by sea waves.

“The ‘dead people’ in this country have more reasons to walk round the corridors and towers of the old castles and mansions because of the strong sea winds blowing swiftly across the British Isles,” says [British specialist in information technology, Vic] Tandy. “The winds produce the sound waves of a particular range, which until recently researchers have failed to take note of. The people traditionally see the phenomena created by those sound waves as specters.” ... So far Tandy has failed to explain why the “resonant sounds” took shape in such a form.

As the article from Pravda says, Tandy apparently did not elaborate how an infrasound wave produces a human form, and if true, I would say this is more a case of one researcher seeing a ghost but not being able to believe his eyes, thus producing a thin excuse of some external source that "tricked" his eyes. However, infrasound is definitely something we need to be cognizant of in our Sealed House, since Bose labs has done similar research and has created for subjects the alien abduction experience, using sound.

On the other hand, we have believers like Cindy Starr-Witman of the Chester County Paranormal Research Society who says an "orb" captured on film at the Phoenixville Library "is definitely something." Well, yes, it is. It's what I would call a "photographic anomaly created by a digital camera." I'll have to dig up the photos, but I was once involved in a group picture taken by many different cameras, and the digital pictures unfailingly came back with "orbs," while the emulsion film cameras captured nothing. My feeling is that, if a ghost is truly an electro-magnetic phenomenon of some kind, then it would create distortions on emulsion, but there's no reason the same would be true for digital, which can only capture what the naked eye could see (orbs, most likely, are dust or pollen close to the lens, in my opinion).

And for something completely different, but sort of on topic, wildlife officials and animal control officers in Androscoggin County, Maine have declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of what could be the Maine Mystery Beast, which has been local legend for going on 15 years. Now why would they decline to go and put to rest what the thing killed by a car is? Are they afraid they'll actually find something unexplained?

After reviewing photos of the carcass, [Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist,] said he was bothered by the animal's ears and snout. It reminded him of a case years ago in northern Maine in which an animal shot by a hunter could not be identified. In the end, wildlife officials got a DNA analysis that showed the animal was a rare wolf-dog hybrid, he said.

And now we'll never know what this thing is, simply because the "experts" once again refused to even examine -- and possibly debunk -- physical evidence of something "unexplained."

stories referenced:

• "British researcher says infrasonic wave sounds create ghosts" (Komsomolskaya Pravda), August 16, 2006 (english.pravda.ru)
  
• "You Decide: Ghosts Caught On Tape?" (NBC10.com), August 16, 2006 (nbc10.com)
  
• "Maine Mystery Beast Possibly Killed by Car" (AP), Wednesday, August 16, 2006 (foxnews.com)
  

welcome angela

Angela just joined the Sealed House Project as our resident "electrical designer," which she describes as somewhere near, but not, an electrical engineer -- sort of like an RN to a doctor or something. Actually, she said it would be like, "You know how Disney came up with the first stereo system, and Lucas came up with THX? Well, I'm Disney and an electrical engineer is Lucas."

She has already brought up oodles of things we'd never have thought of in designing our sensors, but she also says that what we want "is doable, but it's going to take some really cool ingenuity and study. The technology is out there, but it has never been combined quite like this."

We're very excited by her excitement with the project. (Let's just hope we can find an electrical engineer to make it all work.)