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On this webpage I will present the conclusion I arrived at from the analysis
of the footage from the Ghost Hunters TV show on scifi channel.
I am by no way trying to pass myself off as an expert, but I do have some experience
with image analysis and enhancement and I have an eye for detail.
My thoughts on the footage captured from the Thermal Imaging Camera of the "apparition" near the locker is that it is a thermal reflection of Grant. I will try to back up this POV with this webpage.
This episode started alot of debate on the TAPS messageboard, with me right in the thick of it. I am using the nick of karllarc.
Analysis
Image
1
This image is a screenshot taken from the episode. I captured the show on my PC during the second broadcast on Wed. This is unaltered, and I will point out in the next image why I think that the figure that was captured was a thermal reflection of Grant.
Image 2
This next image is the same as the previous one, but I have marked it up to highlight certain areas. The top part that I circled, seems to me looks like the shirt that Grant was wearing while you were filming that night. It looks like someone wearing a shortsleeve shirt with the top of the shirt unbuttoned. The bottom part that I circled looks like Grant's arm, the darker part being his forearm. You can also see that the arm in the image looks like it is bent at a 90 degree angle, just like Grant's arms were as he entered the room because he was holding the recorder.
Image 3
Just for reference, here is a pic of what Grant was wearing that night.
Image 4
In this image, they mentioned in the episode that the figurelooked like it was wearing a hat. I have this circled in the screenshot.
In the next image, I will show why I think that the "hat" is actually just Grant's hair.
Image 5
As you can see in this image, Grant's hair was sticking out past his forehead quite a bit that night. I have another screenshot that also shows this.
Image 6
In this image, you can see that Grant's hair is looking somewhat like a hat here, it is almost as far down as his eyebrows.
Image 7
Here is another screenshot from the show that I marked up. I have comments on the image, so I won't point out again what I think it shows.
Image 8
This image is a screenshot from the show when they first got to see the morgue room, this was during the tour.
Image 9
This is a closeup of the previous image. I did this so that I could match up an image of the locker in normal light, and then superimpose the thermal image on top of it. I use Photoshop 7 for all my work, so I used it to accomplish this. The image of the locker and the thermal image where not to the same scale, so I blew up the image of the locker until the "2"'s in both images were the same size.You can see that this image is slightly tilted to the left, so I tilted the thermal image to match up, and then put into a new layer, on top of the locker. I then set the opacity to 40%.I also made another image with the opacity set to 50%, just so the thermal is more visible.
Image 10
This is the one set at 40% opacity.
Image 11
This is the image set at 50% opacity.
Image 12
The above image is the same as the first one, but I isolated just the blue channel, since it seemed to have the most contrast of the three color channels. Some people on the TAPS messageboard seem to think the part of the image that the yellow arrow is pointing to is a hand. But if you look in the area between the dark spot and the body, there is an empty space. I think that this spot is either a digital artifact, or maybe another affect of the thermal reflection. It is in the area of the locker where the edge of the door and the edge of the locker are.
One more comment addressing the "hot" number 2 on the image. If you look at the temp scale on the right of the image, while the camera is focused on the locker, it looks as though the scale is from about 83 degress at the top to 79-79 degrees at the bottom. The number 2 is white to red in color , which is at the top of the scale. The rest of the locker is shades of blue and green, which is in the center of the scale, which would be about a 2 degree difference with the white/red number 2. So the temp difference of the door and the 2 isn't very great, and the color difference might have been caused by some other souce, maybe the IR from your broadcast camera's light that you use to shoot in darkness, or maybe it was just the cameras having problems changing the scales since the thermal camera was always moving.
Another possible explantion for why the 2 looked so "warm" might be that the surface of the locker was heated by the sci-fi channels lights for their normal broadcast cameras. Then if the painted 2 cooled at a different rate then the rest of the surface of the locker, this would have caused it to be a "hotter" color.
Another possibilty for what caused the reflection might be the recorder that Grant was holding. On the third page of this site, I have posted images showing the recorder as viewed by the thermal imaging camera. It seems to be giving off a good amount of heat and IR energy, which might have added to Grants IR energy and allowed the reflection to be picked up by the thermal cam.
*Correction*
It has been pointed out to me that it is unlikely that the IR from the sci-fi camermans IR illuminator would be detected by their thermal imaging camera. I had thought that some IR illuminators also worked in the range of the spectrum as thermal cameras, but apparently I was mistaken. I did a search online and couldn't find any IR lights that operated at wavelengths below 2000 nm, where the thermal imaging cameras I found for sale start at 3000nm and go to 15000nm.(For more on the science of IR and thermal cameras, you can go to the bottom of page 2)
This image is a screenshot taken from the episode. I captured the show on my PC during the second broadcast on Wed. This is unaltered, and I will point out in the next image why I think that the figure that was captured was a thermal reflection of Grant.
Image 2
This next image is the same as the previous one, but I have marked it up to highlight certain areas. The top part that I circled, seems to me looks like the shirt that Grant was wearing while you were filming that night. It looks like someone wearing a shortsleeve shirt with the top of the shirt unbuttoned. The bottom part that I circled looks like Grant's arm, the darker part being his forearm. You can also see that the arm in the image looks like it is bent at a 90 degree angle, just like Grant's arms were as he entered the room because he was holding the recorder.
Image 3
Just for reference, here is a pic of what Grant was wearing that night.
Image 4
In this image, they mentioned in the episode that the figurelooked like it was wearing a hat. I have this circled in the screenshot.
In the next image, I will show why I think that the "hat" is actually just Grant's hair.
Image 5
As you can see in this image, Grant's hair was sticking out past his forehead quite a bit that night. I have another screenshot that also shows this.
Image 6
In this image, you can see that Grant's hair is looking somewhat like a hat here, it is almost as far down as his eyebrows.
Image 7
Here is another screenshot from the show that I marked up. I have comments on the image, so I won't point out again what I think it shows.
Image 8
This image is a screenshot from the show when they first got to see the morgue room, this was during the tour.
Image 9
This is a closeup of the previous image. I did this so that I could match up an image of the locker in normal light, and then superimpose the thermal image on top of it. I use Photoshop 7 for all my work, so I used it to accomplish this. The image of the locker and the thermal image where not to the same scale, so I blew up the image of the locker until the "2"'s in both images were the same size.You can see that this image is slightly tilted to the left, so I tilted the thermal image to match up, and then put into a new layer, on top of the locker. I then set the opacity to 40%.I also made another image with the opacity set to 50%, just so the thermal is more visible.
Image 10
This is the one set at 40% opacity.
Image 11
This is the image set at 50% opacity.
Image 12
The above image is the same as the first one, but I isolated just the blue channel, since it seemed to have the most contrast of the three color channels. Some people on the TAPS messageboard seem to think the part of the image that the yellow arrow is pointing to is a hand. But if you look in the area between the dark spot and the body, there is an empty space. I think that this spot is either a digital artifact, or maybe another affect of the thermal reflection. It is in the area of the locker where the edge of the door and the edge of the locker are.
One more comment addressing the "hot" number 2 on the image. If you look at the temp scale on the right of the image, while the camera is focused on the locker, it looks as though the scale is from about 83 degress at the top to 79-79 degrees at the bottom. The number 2 is white to red in color , which is at the top of the scale. The rest of the locker is shades of blue and green, which is in the center of the scale, which would be about a 2 degree difference with the white/red number 2. So the temp difference of the door and the 2 isn't very great, and the color difference might have been caused by some other souce, maybe the IR from your broadcast camera's light that you use to shoot in darkness, or maybe it was just the cameras having problems changing the scales since the thermal camera was always moving.
Another possible explantion for why the 2 looked so "warm" might be that the surface of the locker was heated by the sci-fi channels lights for their normal broadcast cameras. Then if the painted 2 cooled at a different rate then the rest of the surface of the locker, this would have caused it to be a "hotter" color.
Another possibilty for what caused the reflection might be the recorder that Grant was holding. On the third page of this site, I have posted images showing the recorder as viewed by the thermal imaging camera. It seems to be giving off a good amount of heat and IR energy, which might have added to Grants IR energy and allowed the reflection to be picked up by the thermal cam.
*Correction*
It has been pointed out to me that it is unlikely that the IR from the sci-fi camermans IR illuminator would be detected by their thermal imaging camera. I had thought that some IR illuminators also worked in the range of the spectrum as thermal cameras, but apparently I was mistaken. I did a search online and couldn't find any IR lights that operated at wavelengths below 2000 nm, where the thermal imaging cameras I found for sale start at 3000nm and go to 15000nm.(For more on the science of IR and thermal cameras, you can go to the bottom of page 2)