Listen to this awesome podcast (embedded at the end of this post) from the guys at HowStuffWorks discussing ghost hunter equipment in a real life, I-actually-understand-electronics-and-science way. Oooooh, this made me sooooo freakin’ happy.

Here is a text article to go along with it:  Ghost Detecting Equipment

I found this goodness via Ryan Johnson’s article on Skepticblog. Let me quote from him quoting them:

I found some really great videos by YouTuber HauntedHoax. He is all about the ghost busting, debunking and hoaxing for educational purposes.

The nice thing is that his videos are also entertaining. A lot of skeptic videos that try to be funny usually fail. I don’t know why, but the humor is just lame. This guy does it right.

Check out his channel here for all his videos:  http://www.youtube.com/user/HauntedHoax

I’ll embed two of my favorites below:

First a funny one:

And a serious debunk:

This is a really great video explaining skeptical thinking. It’s kinda dry, but the info is spot on:

This is a good post by Bryan Farha on the Smoke and Mirrors blog about ghosts and ghost phenomenon that I wanted to pass along.  I’ll excerpt a few good parts below:

Why some murder victims would stick around for eternity to haunt a place while others seem to evaporate is one of the great mysteries of the spirit world.

Scientists who have investigated haunted places account for both the temperature changes and the sounds by finding physical sources of the drafts, such as empty spaces behind walls or currents set in motion by low frequency sound waves produced by such mundane objects as extraction fans.

Ghost hunter turned away in Buchanan

Commissioners vote down request to search cemetery for paranormal

By STAN MADDUX
Tribune Correspondent

BUCHANAN — Officials in Buchanan have turned down a man who asked permission to go into Oak Ridge Cemetery and hunt ghosts.

Some of the city commissioners were open to the idea but voted this week to oppose the request.

One fear was any findings of a haunted graveyard would not be good for the city’s image and draw people to the cemetery for seances and other paranormal related activities.

I remember back in my days of being a credulous youngster reading the “true ghost” books. They would include a section on poltergeist phenomena and invariably mention that such occurences often seem to focus around a child or teen living in the house. The books would state that the poltergeists must be somehow attached or attracted to the kids or that the kids somehow exuded the poltergeist energy.

In retrospect, it makes WAY more sense that events of flying plates and broken windows will naturally center on kids because the kids are throwing the plates and breaking the windows. There are all sorts of reasons why a child would be destructive. I’ll leave that discussion to child psychologists. For the purposes of this post, let’s just talk about the Czech poltergeist.

This is another excellent podcast from Brian Dunning on Skeptoid.com on the tools used and misused by ghost hunters. I recommend you go listen to it! Here is my favorite paragraph from the transcription of the podcast:

“If ghosts did exist and were detectable, you can bet that there would be huge industries behind it. I can’t think of anything that would attract more venture capital dollars from Silicon Valley. However, no rigorous research has ever shown that ghosts can be reliably detected with hardware. It’s easy to disbelieve me, but it’s much harder to disbelieve the lack of interest from greedy corporate America.”

Here is an excellent article by Dr. Steven Novella on the Skepticblog about the effects of fear on the brain.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

Have you ever had the chills? You know, the frights, spooks, willies, nerves, jitters, heebie-jeebies? Do you get these feelings when you have to enter a dark room alone, or if you find yourself on a lonely street at night?

The interesting natural phenomenon of sleep paralysis has, in contemporary times, been the cause of many stories of alien visitation. Back before we concocted the modern myth of aliens, people thought the sleep paralysis was caused by demons or ghosts.

It is notable that when the New England Skeptical Society visited the famous anomaly hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, the Warrens indicated they had never heard of sleep paralysis. The fact that they had no knowledge of this incredibly common condition indicates their utter lack of interest in educating themselves on any explanation for supernatural phenomena beyond what they have already decided is real.

I don’t get why ghost hunters continue to get excited about orb and mist photos. Seriously, even other ghost hunters don’t believe in them anymore.

Look at these posts from people who actually believe in ghosts:

This is from Troy Taylor who wrote The Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: