Seriously Spooky Stuff: Psedoscience At Its Best (Or Worst, Perhaps)

It's one of my little guilty pleasures, but for the sake of all things gloriously TOK-related, I'll share; I absolutely delight in watching those paranormal investigation shows. From 'Ghost Lab' to 'A Haunting' to 'Fact or Faked', I've seen most of what the Syfy channel has to offer. Here's the truth, no matter how much it may disagree with my Saturday morning viewing habits: What I've seen has been pretty scary. Not in the creepy-crawly, nightmare-inducing way, but in a way which, strangely enough, reminds me of TOK. (What doesn't eventually lead back to TOK? It's rather like finding the philosophy page on Wikipedia.)

'Ghost Adventures' is one of those shows. It's not amazing or surprising in any way, really. It doesn't deviate from this particular genre's usual style. It simply features three men, two 'investigators' and one 'technical consultant'. Together, they travel to reportedly haunted locations and gather 'data' overnight in order to back up the claims of those who have experienced the hauntings. Overall, they seem fairly convincing, but a bit of further inspection on the viewer's part reveals that there seems to be a fair bit of pseudoscience going on.

On the surface, the explanations offered up by the crew seem appealing in their simplicity; any sort of sound, temperature fluctuation, or equipment failure can easily be explained as a manifestation of the haunting. The problem is that their so-called evidence hardly seems to support the conclusions they make. Between their findings and their final reports, there exists no bridge of logic, instead, assumptions and unsupported assertions are the basis of their reasoning. They offer up what seems to be valid, properly gathered information at first, noting and reporting fluctuations in temperature, oddities found while recording, and variations in the local electromagnetic field. However, even this information, which seems to be the most scientifically sound part of their investigation, is reported with no frame of reference or context, making it impossible to tell whether the data is actually significant or not.

After the actual information is taken in, however, things go from bad to worse. The crew as a whole tends to make leaps which can't be accounted for by logic, assuming a settling sound or a clunky noise in an older building must be a spirit. Additionally, they offer the temperature and EMF fluctuations as conclusive evidence of ghostly encounters, citing these two factors as known indicators of otherworldly involvement. There is, however, no standard for the detection of spirits, if they even exist. Their misguided logic is more of a logical fallacy, an appeal to an authority or standard which does not, in reality exist.

It's easy to see the appeal of what the investigators claim to find. After all, beliefs regarding the existence of some sort of afterlife are common, both in the traditionally religious and in those that are of other beliefs / persuasions. The idea of a continued existence is comforting, at a basic level, and thus, it is a preferable belief to hold. On top of this, the simplicity of the explanation, as well as the seeming-confidence of the investigators, could easily lead to wide-spread belief in what is supposedly being shown.