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'Supposably.' Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are plumbers by trade but paranormal investigators by calling. If only the pair and their team exercised a bit of skepticism up front, Len could cut them some slack. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY SCI-FI CHANNEL
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TAPPED
Pseudoscience finds a fan base
BY LEN SOUSA
Now entering its third season on the Sci-Fi Channel, "Ghost Hunters" is a weekly program chronicling the real life adventures of a Warwick group of paranormal investigators. The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) is considered one of the top ghost hunting teams in the United States and uses state-of-the-art equipment to detect all matter of strange phenomena. They often claim that their investigation tactics are scientific and based on actual evidence, but after watching all 33 episodes of the show aired to date, I have to wholeheartedly disagree.
Led by two Roto-Rooter employees named Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, TAPS was formed in 1990 and is essentially a hobby for the duo. Plumbers by day, the two are lead investigators of the unexplained by night:
"Plumbing is a problem-solving field," Hawes says in one episode. "You're being called in to try to understand what they're saying is the problem, then diagnose the problem and then fix the problem. And a lot of times that's what you're doing in the paranormal field as well."
Both men claim to have had personal experiences with the supernatural but refuse to reveal just what those experiences were.
TAPS says it disproves 80% of its paranormal investigations. A good start, but by all laws of physics, the group should disprove 100 percent of them. Claiming to be entirely scientific in its methods, the society's science proves to be mere pseudoscience masquerading as the genuine article. TAPS also never makes its evidence available for peer review - a common practice among scientists and those serious about accurate research - nor does it investigate a haunting for a period longer than a few hours. And just where is its control haunted house?
One problem arises from the group's ever-changing criteria for judging a haunting. In one episode, Wilson sends two team members to an attic to see if they might encounter the same strange readings and feelings that he and Hawes had found. When the other members don't find anything out of the ordinary, Wilson claims it proves a ghost had been there but changed location. Other times, when a similar event cannot be replicated, the team dismisses it as mere coincidence or a fluke. (Someone might want to remind TAPS about consistency.)
Another troubling aspect of the TAPS work ethic is that they conduct all their research in the dark. Is the afterlife closed during the day? Because seeing a shadow at night is not evidence of a ghost nor is watching a lamp move "by itself" in a dark room on a grainy video feed. Everyone knows our eyes can play tricks on us at night, and Fluffy the cat could be pulling the lamp's power chord just out of camera range. In short, turn on the damn lights.
But the most glaring problem TAPS faces is that every member of the team believes in ghosts. While they claim to arrive at each scene ready to disprove a haunting, time and again members confess that they hope to witness a paranormal event before they've even arrived at a location. Imagine if a police detective entered a murder investigation hoping to prove it was a suicide. Wouldn't the officer's bias instantly ruin his or her credibility?
TAPS and other paranormal investigators take pride in dissecting their evidence and ruling out reasonable explanations; however, more often than not, they run into many problems fostered by their belief in bunk science. For example, no experiments on ghosts have ever been conducted to prove A) that they exist or B) that a high electromagnetic field (EMF) reading translates to a ghost's presence, yet TAPS members state it as near fact in each episode. Further, the use of dowsing rods (read up on the ideomotor effect) and psychics (don't get me started) are useless for genuine investigative purposes.
Misinformation is also fueled by technological ignorance. Miscalibrated instruments can lead to unexpected readings, and using only one type of recording device in an area cannot rule out the possibility of equipment malfunction. For paranormal researchers, a recording device that may pick up snippets of an AM broadcast instantly becomes proof of spooky disembodied voices; and a common camera glitch becomes a spirit's unwillingness to be photographed.
Experts labeled with fanciful titles such as "demonologist" and "reiki master" litter the TAPS family but contribute little to a skeptical analysis. TAPS should instead be staffed with genuine, trained professionals, who are familiar with electrical and environmental anomalies and camera/radio transmissions to help prevent false positives.
One TAPS member, a research scientist named Paula Donovan, is the jewel of the group -unfazed by EMF readings, anecdotal evidence, or cold spots, she routinely dismisses haunting claims in episode after episode. (At last!) If more TAPS members were like her, the group might actually be doing the serious work they believe they do.
Despite the Sci-Fi Channel's amusing editing, which regularly exposes the group's faults (and repeated use of the word, "dude!" and other Rhode Island trademarks like "wicked" and "supposably"), I can't help but think that TAPS is honestly intentioned. Their first words to every client are "We're here to help," and they truly want to bring some piece of mind to those who believe their homes are haunted. But while TAPS is a well-meaning group that works for free, it's ultimately trapped by its faith in detectable paranormal activity and its readiness to believe in the impossible.
Some psychologists estimate that 4 percent of the general population has fantasy-prone personalities - an ability to construct distinct fantasies involving sight, smell, and hearing, even to the point of creating new memories of events. This research has led to debunking alien abduction claims and could be used to do the same with ghost hunting.
While ghosts may not exist, belief in them certainly does. The simple solution is to educate. It's delicate work since most people won't take kindly to being told they didn't actually see what they believe they saw. But until they can take a firmer grasp on reality, TAPS and their haunted clients will still be fumbling with their equipment in the dark - the blind hopelessly leading the blind further into the realm of the underexplained.
Len Sousa is willing to be proven wrong and offers his skeptical services to the TAPS family at any time. As a complete nonbeliever in all things paranormal and a Rhode Island resident, he is willing to investigate any haunting and provide concrete reasons behind the seemingly inexplicable. (In truth, Len is merely a disembodied spirit eager to throw TAPS off his trail.) Visit his Web site www.len-sousa.com.
Grant and Jason and the team explore the Shanley Hotel, inspiration for Stephen King's "The Shining" in a six-hour live broadcast starting at 11 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 31, on the Sci-Fi Channel.
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