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Ghosts Be Gone!

Entry 458, on 2007-01-17 at 17:30:57 (Rating 3, Skepticism)

Last night I watched a program about haunted houses. Well to be more accurate, I half watched it while making scathing comments while my family watched it. The program was called "Haunted Home" and was made in Britain last year. It features well known psychic, Mia Dolan; skeptic and professor of psychology, Dr. Chris French; paranormal investigator, Mark Webb; and presenter, Alan Rook.

I'm always suspicious of TV programs of this type because they are generally made with the major aim of being entertaining more than being unbiased and informative. Finding ghosts is much more entertaining than not finding them, so most TV programs distort the truth and edit their material to make it more sensational.

Well they tried their best with this program, but at the end I just thought: what did we just see? Absolutely nothing. The (so called) paranormal investigator set up all sorts of detection equipment, including an infrared camera, conventional cameras, motion detectors, and temperature recording devices. None of them showed anything at all, but the psychic and family who owned the house on several occasions mentioned seeing shadows, feeling the touch of the ghost, etc.

There was nothing that wasn't best explained by over-active imaginations, or psychological problems with the participants. The presenter tried hard to make it sound scary and significant, but he just made himself look like an idiot. At the end he made a big fuss about what had happened, but what did happen? Absolutely nothing. Its no wonder so many people have stupid superstitious beliefs when they are exposed to this sort of tripe.

The TV channel advertised this program like this: "This new series uncovers the ghostly goings on in the lives of six frightened families, too scared to even live in their own homes. To help them discover what's behind the hauntings we send in the experts: top psychic Mia Dolan, a paranormal investigator and a professor of paranormal psychology. They will take over their house for 48 hours in an attempt to find out what's going on and see if they can rid them of their terrifying spirits. Prepare to be very scared."

Prepare to be very scared? Are they joking? If this is an example of the material contained in this series I'll be about as scared as I would be watching Friends!

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