Wanna know more about Ghost Hunting? Read on...

With the cast and crew of Late Night at the Horror Hotel getting ready for their first paranormal experience/investigation we asked our lead Ghost Hunter and co-host John Cannon some questions regarding the topic and what we may be getting into. Here are his answers to some of the more frequently asked questions by people getting into the field of paranormal research.

LNHH - What are some of the most common terms associated/heard with ghost hunting?

John - Some of the words most commonly associated with ghost hunting and heard on all the TV shows are the following.

EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena): Disembodied voices recorded electronically not heard at the time and only heard once the recording is played back.

EMF (Electro Magnetic field):  A field of energy produced by electrically charge objects
(This is the theory that the paranormal produce and use energy to manifest themselves.)

Dowsing Rod:  This can also be referred to as a Divining rod as well. It is usually a “L’ shaped rod held in each hand and is able to detect the spirit field thus resulting in crossing together, works off of the EMF principal.

Flir Camera: An infrared camera that shows thermal temperatures in the aspect of hot and cold, brighter yellows and red as hot and darker blues as cold. This is a night vision technique used in order to capture possible apparitions that a regular camera might not be able to.

Orbs: Small circles that appear on both video and standard or digital film. These are said to be balls of energy of the paranormal. This is by far one of the most sensitive topics in the realm of paranormal research.

Shadow People: These are shadowy figures that you can physically see as shadows along the walls or through doors or windows without a physical source.

Cold Spot: A spot that is colder than others within a certain area. This is based off of the EMF principal that because of the draining energy a colder spot will develop where the apparition is trying to manifest itself.

Witching Hour: This is the hour in which “magic time” happens when all paranormal is supposed to occur the most. Most people refer to the witching times as the times between 3am-6am.

Instigating: This is the act of intimidating, threatening or pushing the paranormal to do something.

Dead Time: Also referred to as quiet time, this when you leave the equipment running and remove the human element from the investigation. This is to allow the paranormal to do their thing without the interference of the human element, can usually last up to 2 hours depending on the group.

LNHH – Do you always find something such as evidence when conducting an investigation?

John – No you don’t, you can always get the creeks and bumps and odd noises of a place, but that does not necessarily mean it has paranormal activity. Keep in mind that most of the sounds and images caught can be explained though simple logic. It’s the evidence that can’t be explained that you want to focus on the most.

LNHH – Is it as fun as it looks on TV?

John – There are two ways to answer this; the first being is that, yes it is fun. To go out and experience history in the realms of the paranormal is unparallel. However what people don’t see is the hours of investigation time and review. You may be sitting in one sport for close to two hours just asking questions to the dark and hoping for that one EVP, now with that when you go back to listen for EVPS that’s a solid two hours of review, just for that particular session. It is very labor intensive, but the pay offs of finding that piece of evidence is well worth the work.

LNHH – what equipment should someone purchase to begin ghost hunting with?

John – I have seen a number of groups and websites offer starter kits with a bunch of stuff in it or require a long list of items needed for investigations. Now in my personal opinion and experience the thing you need most before all else would be a digital recorder & thermometer, followed by a digital camera. Once you have them and are familiar with them then look into getting a good handheld video camera and the rest of the items will follow like EMF detectors and what not.

LNHH – Are there any tips you have for people starting out?

John – Yes, one thing I would remind everyone is to not let your mind wander. When you’re in the dark and conducting an investigation your mind will start to wander and you’ll want to see and hear things that aren’t there. Make sure you keep a clear and level head, be logical and calm when something does happen. Once you start to freak out in your mind or out loud then you’ve pretty much lost any chance you had of denying or confirming what just happened. 

LNHH – Have you ever been scared on an investigation?

John – If I hadn’t been then I would start to worry about myself. Its dark, the looming though of a paranormal event happening and your imagination wandering, people get scared and even the ones you see on TV get scared, it’s a apart of the experience and research. 

LNHH – Final thoughts?

John – Just one, make sure you keep it fun, but don’t post stuff if it’s not legit. Don’t fake evidence or experiences that never happened because it just takes away from those who are really trying to find something. There is no shame in finding nothing, is it disappointing…yes, but you never know where you will find that next paranormal experience.

We want to thank John for taking time out of his busy schedule to sit down with us for a brief overview of the beginning basics of ghost hunting. We are sure there will be more questions along the way, and you can be sure we will ask him. 

You can find John with Rob and Sal on Late Night at the Horror Hotel’s new segment/show Bizarre Realities at latenighthorrorhotel.com and find out all the places they will be appearing both on and off the screen.

Late Night at the Horror Hotel now Investigating the Paranormal

Late Night at the Horror Hotel now Investigating the Paranormal

Late Night at the Horror Hotel is involved with a number of things both on and off the screen and we are pleased to announce a working relationship with the Ghost Investigating group The Midnight Watchmen based out of Eastern Pennsylvania.  (www.midnightwatchmen.com)

The Midnight Watchmen were formed over 3 years ago by a group of friends who all shared the same common interest in the paranormal and everything that goes bump in the night. In that short time they have grown to a generous size group of individuals who have many talents. From psychics to reiki masters to scientists and all that is in between they bring to the table a wealth of information.

As some may or may not know the co-host John Cannon has been involved with Paranormal Research, Cryptozoology, and Urban Mythology for quite a number of years both nationally and internationally. With this experience and background, he with Rob Dimension and Sal Valente have developed a 30 minute style show based upon these strange realities as it were and there will be a 5 minute segment on the regular TV show showcasing this as well. The show will be called Bizarre Realities.

Some may only see the humorous side of the cast of Late Night at the Horror Hotel, but one thing they are serious about are people’s beliefs. If you would like LNHH’s show Bizarre Realities to come out to your location for filming/investigating please send an e-mail to latenighthorrorhotel@hotmail.com

Make sure you check out the Midnight Watchmen’s website: www.midnightwatchmen.com

Ghosts of the dark deep sea. (Updated)

Ghosts of the dark deep sea. (Updated)

There are many tales of the sea, some like the most famous being the Flying Dutchman or the lighthouse keeper who continues to shine the way for lost travelers to even the woman who lost her love and now waits on the rocky shore for her beloved to sail home. Heck there are even three movies that Disney put out about Pirates and Supernatural sea stories that surround them. Now, I bring this up because while we know full well about ghosts of the sea, what about ghosts of the deep?

First off let’s look at the definition of a ghost:  A ghost - or spirit or apparition - is the energy, soul or personality of a person who has died and has somehow gotten stuck between this plane of existence and the next. Most researchers believe that these spirits do not know they are dead. Very often they have died under traumatic, unusual or highly emotional circumstances. Ghosts can be perceived by the living in a number of ways: through sight (apparitions), sound (voices), smell (fragrances and odors), touch - and sometimes they can just be sensed.

Now I think that is an operational definition that we can all agree on as being a good explanation of what a ghost is. So now that we have that out of the way and we pick apart this definition let’s take a look at where it says that a ghost is someone who has died under traumatic, unusual or highly emotional circumstances. What could be more traumatic than seeing a Japanese dive bomber plummeting into the side of a ship and sinking it to the bottom of the sea? What could be any more highly emotional than watching waves and waves of Japanese fighters and bombers destroying the docks at Pearl Harbor knowing you and your fellow soldiers are unprepared for such a massive attack? And that’s is just the tip of the iceberg, this doesn’t include submarine disasters and other ship sinking’s such as the R.M.S. Titanic.

I am talking about ghost hunting underwater, that’s right I said it, ghost hunting underwater. Now before you decide to try and commit me, hear me out and open your mind for a second. If such traumatic events can happen both on the land and on the sea, then what makes it so absurd that it can’t happen underwater? For all the ship, submarines and planes that have been lost out at sea what is to make you think it couldn’t happen?

Now obviously you can’t do normal EVP work under the sea but you can use sonar or put a audio recorder in a water proof bag and take it down with you. The theory is the same that there may be something that appears on the recording because if the ghost doesn’t want you there it will tell you, just as it would if you were anywhere else. As well you can do the same as it applies to a k-2 meter, just simply put it into a waterproof bag or I’m sure there are some highly expensive underwater k-2 meters as well.

Now I have brought this up to many people, both scuba divers and ghost hunters and very rarely have I run into someone who didn’t think I was out of my mind until after I explained it to them. Why is it so absurd? If you look at some fundamental aspects in relation to the conductivity of water and electricity this theory starts to make a bit more sense. Water can conduct electricity we all know that, so why is it such a stretch of the imagination that electricity can be attached to something underwater?

In my research I have found one place that actually has taken on the challenge of underwater ghost hunting. They implement sonar technology for collecting evp’s as well as underwater video and digital cameras. Now I am not sure if they got as far as emf’s, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they are currently working on it.

Well I think I am going to have to try some stuff out the next time I go diving, I just have to make sure the equipment isn’t going to implode as the pressure crushes it to death. I guess we will see, and as always you are welcome to dispute my reasoning, but you can’t so you won’t

Be safe and take swimming lessons,
John Cannon

Hands Resist Him real or fiction? We try to find out

Hands Resist Him

John called me about a possible Haunted picture, granted I have 0 experience in this field, he has plenty. I was ready to face it head on...but once we started getting some weird happenings...I took things a bit more serious. Here is more about Hands Resist Him. - Rob

The Hands Resist Him…the temptation to strangle stupid people.

In this world we live, there are many strange things that occur. Things that go bump in the night, things that are unexplained…dogs and cats living together mass hysteria,  sorry had a Ghostbusters moment there. Anyways, I am talking about haunted/cursed items and the stories connected with them. Some famous cursed/haunted items with great notoriety are the Hope Diamond, King Tut’s Tomb & the Poltergeist Movies. Some of you may remember a TV  show by the name of Friday the 13^th, not to be connected to the movies in anyway what so ever, but it was a good show and the premise was that an antique dealer made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. The dealer died and so his relatives and a friend went around trying to get the cursed items back that were sold in order to break the curse on them. It seems a bit far-fetched, but to this day we still believe in cursed/haunted objects.

The object I am going to investigate is the painting called The Hands Resist Him, which is supposedly haunted/cursed to anyone who gazes upon it. The painting itself, when you first see it, is kind of creepy with a little boy standing in front of a door with hands all pressed upon it while standing next to a doll like little girl with jointed limbs. She stands there holding a dry cell battery, which some people think is a gun, and according to the artist she is actually the little boy’s guide through life while the hands pressed on the door behind the little boy represent paths he may choose in life, not sure how hands equal paths in life, but I’ll go with it for the sake of argument.

Some of the back story of this picture is it was sold on eBay in February of 2000 for over $1000 to an art gallery in Michigan. The gallery in which the painting was first displayed both the owner and the art critic who reviewed the painting died within the same year as one another.  As well, some of the story is that the little boy and girl would come out of the painting at night and cause havoc to those in possession of the painting. And if you gaze upon the painting in real life or even a picture of it on the internet you can get a strange sensation and actually have paranormal activity occur around you.

Now my good friend Jason told me about this little urban legend the other day, as he knows I am very much into debunking these kinds of things, and I felt compelled to do some research and investigate this legend. Now let me say that I am very much into Ghost Hunting and the paranormal, but I like to approach it from a logical common sense aspect and try to debunk and whatever I can’t debunk well then who knows…there may in fact be something to the story.

So I set-up the experiment with my co-host in crime Rob Dimension and we would look at the picture on the internet while having EMF, K2, video and voice recorders going in order to see if we could catch some paranormal activity that is said to accompany the painting. Please check out the video below to see the experiment and any evidence caught:

Now in the debunking of this from a research side is that the artist, from what I can find out about him, was that he wasn’t into witchcraft and did not paint this picture under a distressed fashion. So then why and how did this painting, which is becoming an urban myth, get such a story attached to it? Well as I looked into this a bit more it seems it was for money, gee what a shocker there. The painting was not selling on eBay for awhile and so the seller created such a fascinating story in which to sell the painting and got out and around the internet, and it worked too. In fact if you click this link it will take you to eBay write-up on buying haunted/cursed objects off their site: http://reviews.ebay.com/A-Guide-to-Buying-Haunted-Items_W0QQugidZ10000000000778547

Is this such a despicable thing to do to people in order to generate sales by scamming them into believing something that isn’t true…the answer to this questions is yes, yes it is wrong. However it’s been going on for centuries. During the days after the crucifixion of Christ people would claim to be selling parts of the cross or even the tip of the spear that pierced his side, which can be seen in the British museum. What I’m getting at is that the sale of fake cursed/haunted items is and will always be going on, are there real haunted/cursed items in the world, I believe there are, but you need to be aware of the fakes out there and there are a lot of them. Just do a Google search and you can find tons of sites/people selling such items and I doubt there are any true cursed/haunted items because if there are would you really be selling it or just trying to get it away from you as fast as possible? If I had a cursed spatula that would make any food it touched taste burnt and it made the walls of my house bleed I am not going to post a sale for it on Ebay and wait for the highest bidder, I’m either taking it to a church to get exorcised or I’m burning it & burying it in the backyard of my neighbor.

It’s amazing how we as people desperately want to believe something is haunted/cursed when nine times out of ten there is a perfectly logical explanation for the events surrounding it. As for that 1% of the time that the object really is haunted/cursed then my suggestion to you is to run…run fast and run far.

Be safe and don’t always believe what you hear.

John Cannon

A little behind the scenes - goings on...

"A Little Behind The Scenes"

By: Rob Dimension

Well, yesterday (June 3rd) was something. I figured I would share some of the stuff John and myself do/go through to make the show better and different. We talk just about everyday and try to keep the website updated as often as possible.

I started off my day heading to the local Comic Book shop to grab my weekly reading material, normally this happens on Wednesday but since it was a holiday week, it fell on a Thursday. Picked up :

Brightest Day #3 - DC continues to be amazing - Aquaman is no longer a pus....lol.

Avengers Prime: Siege Aftermath #1 - Asgard has fallen and Thor, Cap and Iron Man are left to pick up the pieces.

(Reviews will come next week for the above titles)

Anyways, I meet John at our Studio and prepare for our "Ghost Hunt/Debunking" experiment, keep in mind - I have NEVER done anything Ghost related. John has tons of equipment and has worked for and done numerous Ghost hunts. He has shared some of his freakiest moments with me and I am always skeptical. Notice the Ghost Rider pic? It has nothing to do with our Ghost Hunt, just gives me a chance to mention that Nic Cage owes me $8 dollars for watching that turd of a movie.

We will discuss fully what we did, what happened and both of our thoughts after all the evidence is reviewed. I will give you a teaser though - "There was a point during our questioning of the ghost/entity that we were all thinking something was there. Camera Man Mike said his heart was racing. It was a very tense 10 minutes." Watch for it.

We then proceed onto our standard writing, researching for ideas and material for our upcoming episodes. While our shows will have an underlying theme, expect more sketches. We are really trying to provide a little bit of everything into the shows plus, more stuff for the website. I expect with every new batch of episodes, we will get better, since we are both new at this. We are gearing up for a lot of personal appearances and will have our Camera crew in tow, plus we will both be at Wizard World Philly on Saturday June 12th, look for us.

After the thrilling afternoon, we headed to Kurt's Magic World in Lansdale, PA. I will give you guys some insight as to our thinking, it's usually flawed which makes it even better. We are preparing for our upcoming "Tour of Terror" tour and we want to present more than just a standard hosting gig, for many we want to have a stage show. Comedy, movie trivia and some Magic...not bad right? So, I am a huge MARK, plain and simple ( here is a description of what a Mark is, it's a Carny term - A customer that spends a lot of money trying to win a game. This term was coined because carnies would alert each other to the big spender by marking him some way ,usually by patting them on the shoulder with powdered chalk in hand). My translation is - Very Gullible. That just makes it even more dangerous to hit a Magic shop since, it's like a giant kid in a candy store.

The owner wasn't there but John, his assistant, was which of course had both John and I buying some new tricks. I don't want to give away anything, but it should be a lot of fun. I will probably go down as the Worst Magic guy...ever (note: I did not say Magician, that would insult so many magicians)!! I have 0 skills, so if anything...everyone will laugh...that's the real point. John actually has some experience in this department, so he should be able to pull off some very cool illusions, notice how he has the illusions and I have the tricks. We both will be working more stuff into the show for everyone to enjoy.

Thermal Cameras….Really??? Why???

Thermal Cameras….Really??? Why??? (Updated)

By - John Cannon

I know I will probably get crap for this, but if you haven’t learned from this point that really doesn’t bother me too much in regards to ripping apart Ghost Hunting. This topic is apparently a sore spot  for some people. I am not planning on taking apart the people who use thermal cameras, but rather the use of thermal cameras in general and a viable tool for ghost hunting.

Now, most Ghost Hunting groups feel that the holy grail of all equipment would be to get their hands on a thermal camera. Almost every group out there feels that this piece of equipment without a shadow of a doubt proves the existence of spirits as well as the ability to capture their image and ghostly form. I ask why…why do people think this is a great piece of equipment, all a thermal image camera does is to form an image using infrared radiation. It can detect hot and cold spots as well as their point of entry. A lot of plumbers, electricians and builders use them to find where pipes or buildings would need insulation or to point out faulty wiring as well as where the greatest heat loss is in a subject. The thermal image is projected in colors that directly match the subject, hot being represented by bright colors and cold being signified by dark colors.

So, now that we have established what a thermal imaging camera does and what its true intentions are, let’s get to why I am confused about all of this as it relates to Ghost Hunting.  See now on an investigation people use a thermometer in order to find the infamous “cold spot” which for some reason is a sign that a “spirit” is trying to manifest itself. Ok, I guess I understand that if you are under the aspect that spirits feed off of the energy in the air and heat being an energy is an easy power source for them to get charged off of that the temperature would drop. Now that everyone is getting all excited that they found a cold spot they break out the thermal camera to take a look around the area only to find the silhouette of a person standing there. There it is in all its bright yellows, oranges and reds the form of a human/spirit; you have found the ultimate evidence that everyone looks for on an investigation. This is the greatest experience of your ghost hunting life/career to see…oh wait…did you not read what I wrote earlier? I said that heat was represented by bright colors and cold was represented by dark colors. So then what the heck are you looking at, if you found a cold spot then shouldn’t the thing be dark colors rather than bright ones?

That’s right thermal imaging is really fun toy to play with, but it doesn’t make sense. Did you ever think for a minute about the logic behind cold pots versus warm silhouettes on a thermal camera? People get so wrapped up in the great toys they see on TV that they don’t take the time to actually think about what the heck is going on with them. I have never heard of anyone going out to find “warm spots”, it’s always the “cold spots”.  So what could it be? Could it be an actual spirit? Could it be a reflection off of something (which is my vote)? Could it be something much different that people don’t want to talk about? Could it in fact be a demon?

In the years we have all watched the “famous” Ghost Hunting TV show we have all heard about human and in human spirits. Now if you look at this logically and you have a belief structure which allows you to thoroughly accept the fact that there is a heaven and a hell then take a listen to this. If in fact you have seen a warm silhouette of a human/spirit and not one that is dark colors then wouldn’t it be logical to think that something that lives in the pits of hell would be warm? Based upon all accounts of the bible hell is a place of fire and pain, and last time I checked fire was hot and since demons live in the fires of hell naturally they should be hot. I don’t know if this makes sense to you, but my feelings are to not accept everything you see at face value.

People tend to use “ghost hunting” equipment without really trying to figure out what its true purpose is for. I will admit that I have tons of equipment and have used it without really looking into it, but I am willing to admit it. And the more and more I think about thermal cameras I don’t think they are really worth their weight in what type of evidence it produces.

Again if you don’t like what I say then deal with it, I am here to make you think and take a step back for a minute. As always these are my opinions of logic based upon my experimentation and investigations into the weird and bizarre.

Be safe and thanks for reading,
John Cannon

Original version posted on 1/1/2009
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