Jeff discusses the cruise ship nightmare involving urine soaked carpets and walls. Jeff also tosses in some this week in history and podcast reviews on this episode of The Jeff Bushman Show.
Listen live Wednesday at 9 PM ET.
Listen to the podcast below.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:56 — 51.2MB) | Embed
Scifake.com – Irrelevant, much like their content.
As some of you know that rag site Scifake.com did a lame story about The Illinois Ghost Society inferring the team were a bunch “idiots” for posting pics on their site that were “fake” and by doing this I guess they were suggesting that TIGS was not a reputable team. I have to assume most of this because the article was so poorly written that any reader would have to assume that the author was using the na na na na boo boo policy of journalism. You know the one that goes something like…Because I said so.
The article not only did not explain why they dubbed the photos fake, it actually told the reader to go prove it yourself, by offering a link to a how-to video on photoshop. (I told you it was a lame article written by an even more lame author.) What ensued was nothing more then a display of sheer admittance of ignorance and lack of actual fact finding.
More than a hundred comments (after I posted the fact that I felt
the author was lazy) were completely off topic and not one of the addressed my original point. They even included posts about people who were commenting on a discussion I started on my site about the situation. How lame can a site be to attack people on their site who were commenting here on this site? Ask Ron Tebo the owner of Scifake.com. He not only participated, but allowed several hundred comments to be posted that broke his own commenting policy.
So since that rag Scifake.com and it’s lame authors seem to lack the ability to report I decided I would offer the pics to one of the members of Global Paranormal. Amy was gracious enough to take up the task. Below is what Amy (this is her first attempt at analyzing evidence) concluded.
Podcast (proveit): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:10 — 81.3MB) | Embed
picture #2- ghost.jpg- This one I didn’t even have to lighten. I actually darkened it a bit because you can see the picture frame and even the shimmer from the original pic.
Exposure: 100
Brightness: -100
picture #3- ghost-in-road.jpg- This one was a bit tricky b/c they used the bright color of the road to mask the edges. BUT with a little tweaking, you can clearly see the edges of the original pic on the left side especially.
Exposure: -68
picture #4- dsc01563.jpg- This one was hard because of all the shadows from the natural terrain and objects. I could see a billion things that looked wrong, but couldn’t put my finger on how to explain it. The only absolutely clear part I could find to prove it is fake is on the left side right under the flowers in the background and next to the tombstone this ‘ghost’ is floating by, you can see the edge of the original pic. That’s why I played with the colors so much because it shows it more clearly.
Exposure: 100
Temperature: -69.9
Tint: -100
Blur: -40.8
picture #5- beverlyunitarianchurch1.jpg- This one was clever. They used the chaos of the foliage in the background to try and mask the edges of the original pic. I couldn’t put my finger on why the foliage looked funny around her. Once I cropped and enlarged the picture, you can see the blur all the way around the woman, especially behind her, where they tried to mask the original pic. Also, right next to her knee, you can see the line of the edge of the original pic.
Exposure: -13.6
B/W Levels: 0%-68%
I would personally like to thank Amy for her work on this project. For a first timer my hat is off to you. TIGS official statement was that the photos were given to them by a site visitor and were posted for public review and were never analyzed by them. A fact obviously missing from the Scifake hack job.
Now I guess we can say that the photos in Amy’s opinion are fake. We can also say for the 30 minutes it took, you think the original author would have offered something like this. Perhaps he/she should have watched the how-to video posted in their story. Keep up the crappy work Scifake.com you are becoming more irrelevant everyday.
Chuck Manning
We have already started to hear the whispers about Prove It! being a program that throws teams and their evidence under the bus. It just isn’t the case as you will hear. Prove It! takes evidence from teams and places it in the hands of other teams to evaluate.
First we interview the team that submitted evidence to us. We allow them to tell the story behind the evidence. You get an opportunity to meet the team and find out where you can find them on the net. We then interview another team that evaluated the evidence that was submitted. This team is told to assume that the evidence was collected exactly as their team would collect. They are told nothing else about the evidence. We allow them to look at the evidence and form an opinion based solely on the evidence provided.
The program is designed to educate people inside and outside the paranormal community how teams determine what they consider evidence and the processes they use to evaluate it. We are in no way suggesting the methods offered in this program are the correct or only way to do these processes, but that we can offer possible alternatives to the processes your team uses.
With the formalities out of the way let’s get into the first episode. Michael Newcome from Florida Ghost Chasers was kind enough to submit two photos from separate investigations. Below we have pasted cropped images to this post. You can view the actual photo submitted to us along with the report at the bottom of this post.
Podcast (proveit): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:18:24 — 71.8MB) | Embed
This image was taken by the 7 year old son of the team founder with a Kodak camera and no flash. They are pointing what appears to be an apparition in the center right of the photo
The Nun Photo – Date unknown
This photo was captured by by a team member on a training investigation at a local cemetery. As you will hear the story of how the Nun has come to haunt the cemetery is a good one.
After speaking to Florida Ghost Chasers, it was off to Arizona to speak to the founder of Dirty South Ghost Hunters Meggy Hines and her Tech Guru Shawn Bechtel. We gave them the images from Florida Ghost Chasers and told them to assume that they were taken using their teams exact methods and to analyze them as they would prior to submitting them to a property owner as evidence. Below is the their findings.
EXIF information
| Camera Make {0x010F} | EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY |
| Camera Model {0×0110} | KODAK EASYSHARE Z8612 IS Digital Camera |
| Picture Orientation {0×0112} | normal (1) |
| Last Modified Date/Time {0×0132} | 2009:10:31 12:51:25 |
EXIF Sub IFD
| Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) {0x829A} | 1/2 second ===> 0.5 second |
| Lens F-Number / F-Stop {0x829D} | 28/10 ===> ƒ/2.8 |
| ISO Speed Ratings {0×8827} | 1600 |
| Original Date/Time {0×9003} | 2009:10:31 12:51:25 |
| Shutter Speed Value (APEX) {0×9201} | 1/1 |
| Shutter Speed (Exposure Time) | 1/2 second |
| Aperture Value (APEX) {0×9202} | 3/1 |
| Aperture | ƒ/2.83 |
| Flash {0×9209} | Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode |
| Focal Length {0x920A} | 585/100 mm ===> 5.85 mm |
| Image Width {0xA002} | 3264 pixels |
| Image Height {0xA003} | 2448 pixels |
Comments: The ‘Last Modified Date/Time and the Original Date/Time values match so it appears the photo has not been modified. However, there are other issues revealed by the EXIF information that work against this photograph validating anything paranormal.
High ISO Speed Rating: 1600 – at this high a setting the light signal to noise ratio will create some noise in very low light settings (as in the photo examined). This could contribute to some of the ‘misting’ seen.
.5 sec exposure time – This is a good setting for low light photography, but a tripod is needed or blurring can occur.
Conclusion: It is doubtful the picture was taken with a tripod (but not known). The fact that there is a faint light source in the upper left hand corner of the photo may have created additional light noise in the photo as well. While it appears that the photo is genuine, the low light camera settings appear to have created a situation perfect for creating enough grainy blur and noise in the photo that would allow a viewer to experience matrixing to do see an image of a man in a robe, or a Ewok. Based on the given data the odds that the photo provided is paranormal are very low.
EXIF information
None – EXIF tag removed, evidence of photo tampering
Upon opening the photo it was mentioned that a sRGB IEC61966-2-1 black scaled color profile was embedded in the photo. This is another tell-tale sign the photo has been modified in PhotoShop or another graphics image editing software package of some sort.
Since the EXIF tags were missing, a closer examination of the nun image was examined. The following section was sampled and a surface plot was created to check for pixel height inconsistencies that would be present in if the nun had been pasted in as a layer using an image editor.
To interpret the results, understand that lighter colors appear more elevated than darker. While there are inconsistencies (such as the right hand tree plot is darker, yet appears more elevated than the left. However there are enough lighter sections in the bark to possibly explain this anomaly), for the most part the light patterns appear to be consistent enough. It should be mentioned that the image being analyzed is very small in reality so it is impossible to know for certain that it is not a merged layer, but after looking at several variations of the plot, it was the opinion of the analysis that it is probably not a merged layer.
Conclusion:
While the photo seems to pass the tamper test, closer examination of the image shows that it is most likely an illusion. If you look higher up the tree you will see the same discoloration band that matches the ‘nuns’ habit throughout. When you zoom in to the face and compare the color contrast and texture to the non-discolored trunk, they are virtually identical. (See photo cutout below of tree color band). Based on the examination the probability that the photo is paranormal is very low.
Prove It! would like to thank Florida Ghost Chasers and Dirty South Ghost Hunters for their effort in provide this valuable information to help the public and other teams in advancing the paranormal community. If you would like to place your evidence in our proving grounds please feel free to send them with a bio and investigation background to proveitpodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 1 video of podcast from the Prove It! Podcast Youtube Channel.