Question for the spketical mind. Scientific explanations?

Question

I have posted this question before without much response.

Original Question:

TAPS Episode 23 Dr. Ellis' House Footage (2005)? psychics / mediums?

Anyone seen / remember this footage? I was always fascinated by this. Anyone, skeptic or believer, have an opinion as of what happened. Is this evidence of a true psychic? It starts around 5 minutes in the clip. Remember this is a thermal imaging camera, it is recording heat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dem5q0Rj5-4&NR=1

If you would like to watch the regular camera to compare, it is at the end of this clip, around 8 minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HWMNcjLXNk

If you would like to see the answers from the first post, two months prior, it is at the following: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080602123336AAkrb1v

Answer 1

I don't see anything unexpected here. Keep in mind that the FLIR is not measuring air temperature. It doesn't do that. Air does not reflect infrared, at least measurably. When the camera pans away from Jason, it starts to "see" the temperature response of the wall behind, but it is also receiving the radiant infrared from Jason on the side as it pans away. That radiant infrared from Jason is intercepted by the FLIR at an increasingly oblique angle as it pans away, which causes the color bands to move along with the camera (you have to draw this out to understand why). In addition, the IR signal from Jason gets weaker and becomes more susceptible to other temperature signals as the camera pans away. And that's exactly what happens. When the other fellow raises his relatively warm hand, the relative strength of this signal swamps the IR signal being received on the side by Jason, hence the effect seen on the video.

I'm not claiming to be an expert in infrared imaging, but this is no ghost.

Answer 2

I saw that episode. It seems really strange that he seemingly pulls his energy to him and reads it. I think it might be some kind of evidence of psychic powers, or at least that people have energy/auras.

Answer 3

They picked it up on a thermal cam, meaning what they are seeing is a variation in temperature.  I am sure that people trying to validate psychic energy and auras have measured for heat energy variations coming off of people and nothing has come of it.  If it had, that would lend credibility to these phenomena and we would hear more about it.  In this instance I was curious about how flat, with obvious boundaries, the energy is when it is originally coming off the TAPS guy.  That didn't seem natural, although I admit if it was paranormal I wouldn't know what to expect.

Answer 4

No one (outside of the production crew who were there) can tell you much about these clips:

This is TV, it is entertainment; we are not there and special effects could be used.

Also, any equipment used honestly can malfunction (or be misused/misread)

Further, the show openly advocates "hunting ghosts" (paranormal): If we go into this assuming there are ghosts we will be biased to look for confirming evidence and might miss natural explanations.

If ghosts really don't exist, or they consistently find nothing, then these guys have no show. If ghosts really do exist, then this clip still might not show something beyond the natural. They need to play up the unusual for entertainment and we don't have a default reading on the house when odd things are not occurring (i.e. there might be several things in the house that cause such odd readings - old vents or air circulation; reflection of a heat source onto a wall...).

And remember, just because we can't come up with a plausible explanation now does not mean we never will. Nor is our apparent inability evidence for the paranormal. Sometimes things are just beyond our ability to know based on the current information.

Answer 5

I really don't want to jump to conclusions too quickly and say that it is definately paranormal, but I really have no idea, and thus no suggestions of what could have caused this phenomena.

I am really puzzled?

Normally, whilst in this section of Yahoo answer, I find myself reading a bunch of ridiculous questions that can easily be answered, but I really don't know what to suggest.

Answer 6

That was really interesting. It reminded me of when I had my aura picture taken..all the different colors. Could it have been their auras? I know you need a special camera to see auras..but maybe it was so strong it just decided to show itself anyway. Was this man saying that his house was haunted? Wasn't he a psychic? How can you be a pyschic and NOT have spirits around you ?  I lived in a house that a psychic had lived it before. That's the house where my son was raised off the bed in his sleep.  I really don't have any idea what those colors are if they aren't their auras. Thanks for sharing this video. I don't watch those show...except when somebody posts them on here.  

Answer 7

That is a real interesting clip.  I don't trust the media.  But if that was real then something happened.  The visual appearance was not what I would have expected of an aura.  But how cool was that.  It was almost as if in trying to block the psychic Jason sent out a heat wave to surround the psychic in order to accomplish it.  Then the psychic waved his hand and wiped it away.  At least that is how it appeared.

This could be exciting if we could trust the people involved.  There is to much dramatic music on this to make me totally respect whatever these guys find.

Answer 8

hmm interesting...well as you know energy is accompanied by heat, that's all I can really say.

Answer 9

First of all it's a TV show.There's no real way of telling what's going on.Aside from why not turn on the lights?

Why not bring a actual skeptic along with them?There's plenty well known folks,Joe Nickell,Massimo Polidoro for instance.They love being on camera and there's plenty of others.

As for the thermal imaging.Maybe there was a heating duct or draft behind the gentleman.

There are plenty of ways TAPS could be more forthcoming.They leave a lot of questions open.When with minimal effort on their part,they could close the subject.

We have to ask ourselves why?Without knowing that,there's no way to answer this or any other question about their work.

Answer 10

i do remember it. i have it on DVD. i think so. i'm psychic too. i have two abilities. one is i can hear spirit people. the other is that i can pick up on place memory. i can see it but most of the time i hear more than i see.when i get a vision of the past of a certain place it's at extreme close up and hard to tell what exactly is going on. i can sometimes feel as though i am there in the past when in fact physically i'm still in the present.