Inside the Supernatural. Jean Ritchie

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СКАЧАТЬ and date on the tape recording partially obscures what happened,’ said Howard Wilkinson. ‘It is possible today to get edge detection equipment which analyses video tape frame by frame on a computer, blocking out anything which is stationary and only showing up movement.

      ‘We need this equipment. We also need sound-analysis equipment. And we need to miniaturize what we already have, so that we don’t have to hump a great load of gear about with us.’

      Where possible, SPIDER is rigged up with two cameras per room, each in the field of view of the other to eliminate the possibility of tampering. Even after taking as many precautions as possible to ensure that his equipment is as tamper-proof as possible by using tape to secure cables and leads, however, Wilkinson has experienced an unusual number of ‘technical’ faults.

      ‘I was very excited when I thought that at Arnold there would be some film recording chairs moving. I screeched down there to pick it up, but when I got the film back there was nothing on it. I checked all the equipment and it appeared to be in full working order, but eventually I realized that the F-stop on the camera had been changed so that it did not record in the dark. Everyone swore they had not touched it, and because I had by that time spent weeks on the case and knew them well, I was inclined to believe them, after initially feeling I’d been set up. On other occasions and other cases, I’ve had plugs pulled out of the back of recorders, even though they were taped in. Part of the psychology of dealing with these cases is deciding whether you believe that the people involved did it or not. We will always have the problem of making equipment tamper-proof: until we work out how “spirits” tamper with things!’

      SPIDER has been tried out at the scene of various hauntings, without much success. It was installed for fifty-two days at Carnfield Hall, near Nottingham, a large home with a long history of haunting but the most that was recorded were a few strange photographs.

      ‘One of the problems with hauntings is that they are so unpredictable,’ said Tony Cornell. ‘We’re seriously thinking of advertising for anyone with a large stately home that is haunted to let us install the equipment in a part of the building where it would not be in anyone’s way and where the haunting is supposed to happen.

      ‘Failing to pick something up on the cameras does not necessarily mean that nothing happened. If someone clearly sees a ghost and it does not appear on the film, that tells us something about the nature of the phenomenon. We have to appraise every bit of technical evidence we get rigorously: so many doubtful photographs have been produced over the years, purporting to show paranormal events, and there seems to have been no effort to eliminate lens flares, double exposures, reflections of light off furniture …

      ‘If we can get a lot more on video we will really have made a breakthrough. The advantage of filming something is that you can look back at it afterwards. Witnessing an event takes only a couple of seconds and, in retrospect, you start to query your own senses. Did I really see what I thought I saw? A film of it means you can look at leisure, picking up lots of things you missed at the time.’

      Robin Furman runs an organization he calls Ghostbusters UK (it used to be called Grimsby Ghostbusters but they have spread their wings to take in the whole country). A psychotherapist who works from home, Furman and his son Andy, with Rodney Mitchell, a computer consultant, and Janice Paterson make up the Ghostbuster team, and, in great contrast to the low-key style of Dr David Fontana, Dr Alan Gauld, Tony Cornell and other serious investigators, they court publicity. They travel to their cases in a 1959 Austin Princess, an ex-mayoral limousine, which they have dubbed the Ghostmobile. Furman says they do not have the registration plate ECTO 1 (as in the film Ghostbusters) but you get the impression that they would if they could.

      The equipment the Ghostbusters use also has a cute name: they call it the Roboghost. It is an Acorn computer which can monitor changes in temperature, light and vibrations, as well as being attached to sound-recording equipment. Any change registers a blip on the screen of the computer and Furman and his crew are hoping to build up a sufficient body of printouts of different types of paranormal events to be able to find patterns.

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