Ghosts and Ghouls?

It isn't just the UFOs though, is it?  Digital TV 'factual' channels also seem to be full of stuff about the paranormal and unexplained.  Not that any of it is unexplained - there is one programme called, I think, NASA's Unexplained Files, supposedly about anomalies and weird shit going down on recordings taken by NASA astronauts and the like.  The trouble is though, that every time I've seen an episode, by the end, they've always explained it all away in scientific terms, thereby obviating the title.  Mind you, this is taking us back to the UFO shows, while I really wanted to talk about their paranormal equivalents.  The problem with the paranormal programmes is their lack of any supposed visual evidence to show us - while the UFO shows have their grainy mobile phone footage of fuzzy looking lights, the paranormal programmes have no equivalent footage of ghosts, for instance.  About the best I've ever seen is supposed CCTV footage of poltergeist activity: chairs moving around, cupboard doors opening and shutting, accompanied by knocking noises.  The trouble is that this sort of stuff can so easily be faked with something as simple as fine threads attached to door handles and chair legs and being pulled from off screen.  I know that they always claim to have had this stuff 'analysed' by 'experts' who claim they can detect no fakery, but the fact is that you can't see the fakery in the tricks performed by stage magicians, so this is hardly conclusive.

This, though, is the big problem with paranormal phenomena - the lack of evidence in the form of photos or videos.  Back in the day, there was always the excuse that cameras, particularly film or video cameras, were expensive and uncommon, making it unlikely that anyone encountering such phenomena would be unlikely to have such equipment.  Today, however, just about every smart phone has a video camera and just about everyone has a smart phone.  So, where are the videos of ghosts and apparitions?  This is so problematic that, when writing his 'Rivers of London' novels, Ben Aaronovich felt it necessary to furnish a fictional explanation of 'magic', by its action, destroying microchips, thereby preventing the videoing of ghosts, etc.  But in the real world, there are no such constraints - simply falling back on stuff like 'ghosts can't be photographed', won't wash without a proper explanation.  Not if these paranormal investigators want to be taken seriously, that is.  Anyway, possibly my favourite type of these paranormal shows are the self-made ones featuring ghost hunters.  You can find loads of them on You Tube and there is a series of them which show regularly on the American Horrors channel on Roku.  

They always feature a group of these self-styled investigators visiting some old building, or graveyard, by night, hoping to record paranormal phenomena.  Inevitably, they never do.  Instead, all they seem to do is to try and scare themselves by suddenly exclaiming 'Did you hear that?', then playing back an audio recording, to which I reply, 'Yes. I heard that - it is typical, normal, nocturnal noise, probably made by the wind, local nocturnal fauna or just the building's components contracting as the temperature drops'.  In one episode I saw, even a car horn sounding was taken as 'evidence' of something spooky going on: 'We're miles from any busy roads', they exclaimed.  Yes, but there are, nonetheless, roads there - you drove down one to reach this location, not to mention the fact that sound carries remarkably long distances at night.  Apart from trying to hype up normal sounds as something sinister, these ghost hunters are always carrying various devices with meters on them which register, well, I don't really know and, in truth, neither do they.  At best, they might register electromagnetic fluxes, but these don't provide evidence of anything, let alone the supernatural.  There seems to be a cottage industry out there knocking out these 'ghost detectors', one not actually backed by any science.  In the final analysis, though, if forced to make a choice of viewing one or the other, I think that I prefer these paranormal show.  If nothing else, the people involved seem less fanatical and don't engage in wild conspiracy theories.  That said, it is still all bollocks.