f13.net

My Fiancee and I enjoy watching shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. So for my birthday last week she took me to Gettysburg, one of the most haunted towns in the country. We booked a room at the Farnsworth House Inn (http://www.farnsworthhouseinn.com/), one of the most haunted B&B's in the country... supposedly. Now I'm a technical kind of person, I have a degree in Engineering, I don't prescribe to any religions; so it's safe to say that I'm a skeptic with an open mind. I love the TV shows but I'm usually thinking of ways they can produce "evidence" on their shows. So with that I went there to see if I could catch some weird shit.

We arrived in Gettysburg around 5pm on Thursday and our stay was going to be for two nights. We checked in and got a list of a few different activities that we could sign up for like Ghost Hunts and Ghost Tours. The only activity we could sign up for on a Thursday was a Ghost Hunt which started at 8:45pm. So with a few hours to spare we headed to our room to get settled in, and go grab some dinner.

The bedroom looked like any other typical B&B. So once we put away our bags, I broke out my camera and start taking some shots of the room. Take a look at the results.


Ok, even if you are a hardcore skeptic, you can perhaps take those "orbs" as dust or reflections of the camera's flash. Some pictures were taken in the dark, some were taken with the lights on.

So I'm stoked. I'm getting "evidence" right off the bat and even if it's not real, it could make for a cool short story. But this isn't all that I got... We have yet to go on the Ghost Hunt we signed up for.

-----

So we go out and grab some dinner and as 8:45pm rolls around we head next door to meet up with our tour guide. Typically, as I'm told, these tours usually have 10-15 people per tour guide as they go out and "hunt". As my fiancee and I walk up it turns out it'll just be the tour guide and us. Pretty cool.

So we step inside to learn about our equipment. We have the typical K2 meter that you see in Ghost Hunters. It's an instrument that shows off electromagnetic fields in the local area. We have a set of divining rods, a tape recorder (I brought my own) and some night vision sites. The guide had a laser temperature sensor that he used throughout the tour. In the end however, only my camera was able to pick up anything evidence wise, and I have yet to analyze my recordings. So stay tuned with that.

Back to the tour though. After learning about our equipment we walked into the Farnsworth Inn and went into the basement. Nothing really showed up in our pictures really. It was pretty dull. However our tour guide said that just last Tuesday a woman held out here hand, proclaimed that it was ok to touch her, and got "slimed". We only have his word on that, but it was kinda cool. He seemed to believe it.

We then leave the basement and walk across the street. Across the street is the local high school that's been there for quite some time. It butts up against the Gettysburg National Park, nearly 200 yards from Cemetery Hill. Stepping onto the bordering road would be considered tresspassing (after hours) and grounds for jailing. This just goes to show you how close we were to the battlefield.

There are a reported three mass graves that were on this site. All sense dug up and the bodies moved, though the confederate bodies were there a lot longer. These graves were in three spots around the football field. The last body to be dug up happened in 1998 when the school dug up the grounds for the foundation for the cement bleachers. They found the bones of a Confederate Soldier. This was grounds for a reason for possible activity. Some souls might not be at rest!

So during this first part I kept taking pictures and everything was pretty uneventful.

In the first picture below you can see the field house. I took another picture, from the same angle, and same time and something weird came out. You'll see this in the second picture. Trust me when I say it was very dark, and there weren't any lights on or anyone else out there with us at the time.

What is that weird orange light? You can still shrug and pass it off as a weird flash, or maybe I put my finger in front of the lense. It's still worth showing though I think.


We then continue to walk behind the bleachers. There is a story of a ghostly woman who walks the fields in search of a lost loved one from the war. She's seen to be walking around at night with a kerchief up to her face to ward off the smell of the dead bodies. So about ten minutes after learning of this story I suddenly can smell a distinct sweet/lavender scent in the air. And it's strong. Let me remind you that it's now around 9:30pm. It's cold out, around 40degF, and it's a clear night. It recently rained as well so everything had a crisp clean smell to it. It's obviously November so there are no flowers or other vegetation around, and my fiancee was not wearing any perfume.

It's impossible to document this, but I think it adds to the story. You can believe me or not. That's up to you. But this still isn't the best thing that I found.

The next place we went to was where they dug up a mass grave and hit an underground water source and flooded the area and created a small pond/lake. Nothing really happened here, but the divining rods that the tour guide was holding kept crossing and uncrossing on command. I did capture a picture of a blue orb, but it really wasn't very interesting.

After this we went to the last place. It was in the middle of a line of trees. I'd say the clearing was about fifty feet by thirty feet, and oval in shape. We were basically forty feet from the battlefield and were surrounded by trees. You couldn't see the night sky either.

Now I wanted to give the divining rods a shot and see how they feel. We start talking and a "ghost made his presence known". My fiancee started taking pictures and got some interesting results. Check out pictures one and two. You can see me on either side of the photo and a "mist" kind o floating around me. These two pictures were taken about five minutes apart from each other.


Now we started asking more questions and the divining rods started going crazy. Instead of merely crossing a bit they start to turn parallel to each other. They were typically forming an "X" all night but this time they came together and formed a straight line so in front of me they looked like an "=" sign.

I decided it was time to snap some shots. I caught this crazy blue orb  after I put down the rods. These last pictures were taken with my camera an arms length away from me at eye level.


I thought that was pretty cool when I saw it, so I decided to take more pictures. The next picture nothing came up.


Then I took the last picture... and well, check it out.


I would like to add that it wasn't cold enough to make your breath mist at all. There was also no one smoking.

Hey!  Let me be the first to  :facepalm:.

My house was built on an Indian burial ground.


"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan

Ha, last picture is cool. Sounds like you had a good time. I grew up in that area. Alot spooky shit to be found everywhere.

One thing with ghosts that has bothered me recently is why is it the more refined out technology gets, the crappier pictures get of them? People were taking photos of full body apparitions back in ye' ol' black and white flash powder camera days. Now we get smoke and orbs. Wha?

Reading your story made me realize how cynical I am. 10-15 person tour group made me immediately go "Yeah, sure, I BET, they just say that for marketing blah blah blah" Jesus. I need to lighten the fuck up.

Well, we did a Ghost Story Tour on Friday night and we saw the Ghost Hunt tour go off with all their little gadgets and there were about 15 people all holding diving rods.  So, yeah it's a good bet that that was true.  My Story Tour had about 30 people in it.

There was a 2am Ghost Hunt in the main building that was pretty expensive, and that was sold out.

Oh yeah, I have about 1-2 hours of audio I took with a recorder that I haven't listened to yet.  If I find anything on it I'll post it here.   :grin:

You have a dirty lens chief, not a ghost problem.

Would you like to see pictures from the same angle with and without the things in them?

 :roflcopter:

Ghost stories crack me up.

I can have fun with them, but there is no way I will ever take them seriously.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/82533/Futurama_Fry_Looking_Squint.jpg)

Fake ghost pics: Orbs (http://www.ghostresearch.org/ghostpics/fake/orbs.html)

I'd love to believe in ghosts if there was even one single shred of evidence to support them that wasn't faith based.

On a friendly note: Sounds like a wonderful trip and a really great birthday present.

Orbs themselves don't really impress me at all.  But can you explain my last image?

I can give it a shot if you can tell me all of the variables involved. 

What do you need to know?

Ghost orbs are lens/glass defects interacting with light.  No glass is perfect, not even your precious Leica.

Water vapor doesn't require cold, only moisture.  Its not uncommon to see ones' breath on a warm summer night to make a photo look like those.  Moisture from the environment evaporating from your clothes and skin will also cause the 'aura' look.

The orange photo is your tan shirt with the flash lit from behind. 

Glad you had fun, but you didn't photograph ghosts.  There's a reason those ghost hunter shows have been TV on for 10 years and haven't once shown a ghost. 

My grandmother's house had an unused room upstairs that whenever we opened it the rocking chair in that room would be rocking on its own.  When I got older I figured out that because the room was always sealed up and we were the only people that would open it for weeks at a time, negative pressure would build in the room and the sudden opening of the door would cause a nice draft in the room and rock the chair.  Sure had us freaked till we were 14 or so, though. 

Air temperature, ground temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed, and the condition of your camera would be a great start to minimizing variables.

I like the elephant in the last picture.

Air Temperature was mid 40F.
Ground Temperature was around 42F through 47F depending on the spot.
Very minimal wind speed.  Most times I did not "feel" any breezes or notice any.  But I don't have any hard numbers.
Camera was about 3-4 years old, though hardly used.  6 megapixal Casio.

The last picture, I was surround by a thin wall of trees.

Relative humidity and barometric pressure are unknown.  I did not measure these.  

I took many pictures before and after from the same angle without moving myself or the camera.  That last photo was the only one with "mist".  The others were normal pictures with nothing in them.  My camera was held at arms length away when used.. so two feet from body.

I refer you to the Carl Sagan quote. You have decided that the things you are seeing are ghosts with no sort of evidence to support that.  Why are they ghosts? Why aren't they orby thing and mist? Did one tell you your great-grandma's recipe for pickles?

Because I'm having fun.  I mean, what kind of evidence do you need to prove there is a ghost?  I thought it was a strange image and would love to debunk it.  But in the mean time and in the spirit (har, har pun intended) of the weekend, I'm going to go with ghost because it's an awesome story.

You fuckers need to lighten up.

That's what it looked like the last time Gozer the Gozerian came into our world. We are fucked.

It's Calgary. Who would notice if it was devastated except a few mooses and a drunk guy with hockey-hair.

Look Around You. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X91ZXqy_8YE)

Caught the tail end of the Ghosts episode (http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/is-it-real/2319/Overview) of NatGeo's Is It Real? series around Halloween. Just the bit I saw showed how to replicate pretty much every 'ghost' phenomena ever filmed/taped. It was quite enlightening.

A trip to the flea market, a brief greenscreen session and some elbow grease in Photoshop would've made this thread about 500% more interesting.

Damn good reason.  Post(s) made me smile because clearly you had a good time.  Good on ya.

"Because it's fun" doesn't fly with some people. Ingmar bitches at me for watching Stupid Ghost Shows all the time.  :heart:

I was off at an old civil war battlefield one autumn night with some friends.  It was all convincingly dark and chilly, but was made ludicrous by the company I was with, as they were painfully city bred.  One of the things that people who never venture to the outdoors don't seem to realize is that the outdoors are loud.  So over the course of the night, they discovered the hoofbeats of ghost horses (a train), the cries of the dead (owl), and voices from beyond the grave (one of them pushed the button on a pedestal that played a recording about the battle).  Watching them freak out over normal nighttime animal noises sorta ruined the gravity for me.

City folk can be highly amusing at night in the country.  Taking them to a cemetery would be hilarious.

HEY NOW.

I don't have hockey-hair.

I have to be careful about the term 'city folk'. My fiancee, despite growing up in the city and thinking hiking is done on a paved path, and has utter disdain for even the thought of the word 'outhouse'....she gets real upset when I call her a city girl.

If you haven't even wiped with leaves, if you haven't bathed in a stream, if you can't properly use a blanket at night when sleeping under the stars, if you have not dealt the killing blow on the creature you eat for dinner, gutted and cooked it, you're probably a city folk. And that's ok. But expect a little rib-poking, especially with the shit country folk have to take from dipshit city folk who would die in two days in the woods.

Do you really need to kill an animal to not be considered 'city folk'? Seems a bit extreme to me.

My sister gets real annoyed when her husband calls her a "city slicker", we grew up Armagh, population <15,000 (smallest city in Ireland apparently).

Are you a vegan?

AP: 15k is a city. I grew up with maybe a couple hundred people within ten miles of me....we called 'em suburbs because it wasn't /real/ wilderness, like our camp in the adirondacks, where there was only one other camp for miles (the game warden's).

Yeah I think it's a city, Armagh people are very proud of it being a city, two cathedrals too, as anyone will tell you within 30 seconds of meeting you.  Think that's why it annoys her.

Edit maybe I'm not being clear, it really is a city http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armagh  (I add apparently because there were always arguments about that when I was growing up)

Holy shit.
I had no idea that drywall was made of ghosts, this explains the Lowes settlement..sneaky bastards.

<15,000 means it would only get the "town" icon on old D&D maps.  :awesome_for_real:

Isn't Armagh close enough to Belfast to be reasonably "citified"?

Ignore me, US & British English meanings for city are apparently different, over here it generally means a really big settlement, funny fail, my bad.  I'm not touching "citified", Belfast is about 35 miles away.

Replying to "Ghost" in the ghost thread.

Ghost are so spooky. I do not respond well to spooky behavior (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnia2RQQECc)!

Perhaps you can explain this to Ingmar for me, as he keeps insisting I had a rural upbringing while I consider it much more suburby. I grew up in New Jersey, for God's sake, we have like three feet of "rural" left there.

I'd argue that if you were raised on the Jersey Shore, that counts as a rural upbringing ;)

I lived about a half hour away from Seaside Heights (if I remember right, I hardly ever went there because it was tourists-from-New-York ridden, JUST LIKE THE FUCKING SHOW). I did live right on the edge of the Pine Barrens but to hear Ingmar talk I lived in the WILD.

Rural is a state of mind.  Or Kansas. 

I can't say you or your sister strike me as rural.  Maybe compared to him, but certainly not what I'd consider as such.

Though somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Sky's list wasn't that far off if most of that seems the normal way of things.

The main thing is in my part of NJ, there is a lot of "turn several times in seemingly random directions in a heavily wooded area, then magically appear at your destination" that weirds Ingmar right the hell out. There are also a lot of horse farms.  :oh_i_see:

I'm not a Vegan, grew up on a farm in the middle of no where and never once had to kill an animal.

One day you'll not be crazy, probably when you forget who you are. :grin:

You grew up on a farm and didn't need to kill any animals? That's a new one for me.

And what's crazy about killing animals? Unless you're a vegan, you eat dead animals. You should know what that means. Also, a lot of my family was abjectly poor, so they raised animals to eat and lots of hunters, and we all fished. My grandpa was so proud when I chopped the head off my first turkey for thanksgiving, because it was skills he had taught me splitting wood when I was younger, I was probably 6 or 7 when I did the turkey.

Didn't (and still don't) care for gutting, but after that it's a cut of meat imo, not an animal. Worst part of prepping a turkey is de-feathering, ye gods I hated that.

Anyway. Ghosts. They're spooky.

And they always manage to look like whatever sort of technical snafu is most common to cameras of their era. Clever, those ghosts.

Or double exposures.

Yeah Sky, your definition of rural seems to be "crazy broke ass redneck" lifestyle, not rural.  I grew up in a very small town in the country.  I never needed to wipe my ass with leaves.  Thats just bad planning on your part.  Think ahead!  Plan! 

And bathe in a stream?  I swam in local creeks alllllll summer long, but we usually took showers to wash the creek gunk off afterwards when we got home.   :awesome_for_real:

Yes, but less so after cameras all started being manufactured with double exposure protection. Like I said, clever!

Yes, this is the point I was trying to make. Rural does not mean you're homeless.

Why would you use leaves even if you had no paper? Moss, snow or a stream or lake to wash yourself in. It's not like doing number 2 becomes so critical very often that you have to use whatever is available on the spot you're standing. If it is, chances are you won't be needing much wiping.

Rural to me is more things like owning a wood stove that isn't just decorative. Having to drive a mile or more to reach paved roads. Living in a house that at some point was part of a farm. Keeping free-roaming animals like chickens as pets. Owning more than one pair of wellingtons and zero pairs of pumps. Knowing the full name of all your closest neighbours, including their children and grandchildren. Getting a moped on your fifteenth birthday to help you get around.

Well, atleast in Sweden.

Yeah, rural America does not do mopeds, trust me.   :awesome_for_real:

At least where I grew up, everybody gets car/pickup when they turn 15 to help them get around.

Yeah, it's 18 to get a driver's license in Sweden. Thus mopeds (which are license-less at age 15.)

Edit:
Oh, one more thing: Owning a freezer that's larger than a two-seat sofa.

A buddy of mine from Utah used to pool money with his brothers so they could buy cheap junky cars that would still run.  They would then cut the roof off of the car and then jump it into a huge pond on their property. That's rural. 

No, that's redneck.

Added:  :awesome_for_real:

Just the good ol' boys. Never meanin' no harm...

Of course he's now a radiologist pulling in about $400k, so I guess that worked out pretty well for him, lol. 

Rural only cares about driver's license if going into town.  I was driving by age 10.

This was my experience in rural Texas as well. Driving as soon as you reach the pedals and see over the wheel.

Perhaps there's something lost in translation? Maybe moped = gas-powered dirt bike?

The American definition of rural is going to be different simply because requiring being a hundred miles from the nearest city is pretty difficult in Europe. I always though of rural as being someone who doesn't get freaked out when they see animals that aren't on leads and suffers from a total lack of public transportation. Also having to drive to the nearest pub.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1R11YCsj934/Sf80GCvg1bI/AAAAAAAAAf4/Ialm722Wgf0/s320/drinking+milk.gif)

What the fuck is that?  What is it from?   :ye_gods:

I'm going to assume Vegans.

Or Vegas.

This. Except we lived in the nearest pub.  :drill:

This is where I grew up:


I always thought of it as pretty rural. We lived near two villages (combined population ~800 today!) in a row of four houses and across the road from a dairy farm. I've never killed an animal that I've eaten. Nor have I ever seen a ghost, despite there being stories about hauntings on the site of the nearby Norman motte and bailey setttlement (in the picture), the neighbouring town and the various castles in the area (which date back to the 10th century).

This is how people out in the "sticks" get their milk.  It's all about redneckiness. 




Back on topic a little bit.  I'm not sure why the idea of ghosts has to be religiously based.  There is obviously something special about humans aside from the nuts and bolts that put us together.  The concept of mind and self is unexplainable by looking at our genome or other pieces and parts.  I guess it's possible for that portion to figure out a way to exist without the body somehow.  My personal thought is that when we die we turn into dirt and that part just turns off like a light switch, but I've also seen some weird shit that isn't always explainable.  

The concept of a soul and what happens to it after death is pretty much tied directly into religion. Hell, it is pretty much the reason for religion in the first place. Ghosts are a natural offshoot of that.

I understand that.  What I'm saying is that you just can't dismiss the potential existence of ghosts as purely religious claptrap.  The discussion doesn't have to start and end with religion.  I'm an atheist.  I doubt ghosts truly exist, but I'm not willing to just rule it out based on my bias against religion. 

Sounds like some city folks who weren't smart enough to live in the city, if you ask me.

I'd say that you have it backwards.  In the absence of directed supernatural phenomenon (a Deity or Deities), religion seems like it's a consequence of people trying to explain unexplained "stuff".  

A lot of that stuff can be completely natural, but is just beyond the knowledge of the folks in question (what is lightening, why are their seasons, why does the sun rise and set, etc).

That, to ghost's point (above), still leaves room for undirected supernatural phenomenon (the whole trunk load of "weird stuff", including ghosts) without requiring that there actually are Gods, etc.  I'm not saying that I believe/don't believe, I'm just pointing out that your statement is not logically rigorous as it ignores a possibility.

That said, I believe in ghost because I see him posting!  It's uncanny! :-o

Edit: fixed location of ghost's post and "noot" = "not"

It's hard to dispute hard evidence like that.

There is plenty of weird, unexplained phenomenon in the world. What we understand is only a small sliver of what's out there. Trying to declare something elusive and unknown as supernatual presences of people who have died? That doesn't make much sense to me.

just... just watch this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI)

I think that story and those pics are marvelous. Thanks for sharing, and I'm glad you had a good time.

As for the rest, I'll quote Babylon 5...

If you ask me, it sounds like meth is a helluva drug.

Twenty years from now when cameras use a process that can result in odd little triangular glitches under the right circumstances, it'll turn out that ghosts were triangular all along. Not full apparitions like they were when cameras didn't have double exposure protection, or orbs like they are with digital cameras now. People who want to believe in ghosts will see absolutely no problem with this.

I believe in our other-worldly triangu-spectres!  Why are you so close minded?!

All hail the Great Race of Yith.

That sounded like fun Draegan. I am a person who has gradually become an atheist over the years but I do still believe ghosts, at least, exist. I don't know what they are but they are something. Souls? Leftover energy? Psychosis? I don't know. But I've known too many people, including relatives and myself, that have had "encounters". That said, I don't think they can be photographed. I think Ghost Hunters (and similiar shows) are B.S. that use tricks to play up things for ratings.

I love that guy. He makes the obvious more obvious for those who cannot understand the obvious.

Also it's fun to believe in ghosts. (But that's all I'll say about the topic at hand.)

Dude, I have the answer. (EDIT: Though turkey might be too big)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC051HphyvY

Now that's a smart redneck.

Turkey would only be a problem if it's a domestic one.  A wild turkey would fit in there fine.