Photographing Ghosts? Netflix Surviving Death: Seeing Dead People - Episode 5 (Part 1)
Reading Time 5 mins 54 sec
Are ghosts real? Do our loved ones visit us after they die?
Do people really see ghosts? What about death bed visions? Do our loved ones come to us as we are about to die ourselves? And what about photographing ghosts? Or recording their voices? That is what Netflix Episode 5 addresses.
*If you are wondering where my review of Episode 4 is, I did not watch it. A close friend and mentor of mine is in it, and she recently passed away. While one day, it might be an episode I cherish, at this point I can’t watch it. But it covers an event I was at - the Forever Family Foundation Grief Retreat. I heard it was good, so watch it!
Read my take on Surviving Death Episode 02 and 03: - Mediumship
Seeing Dead People - Netflix Surviving Death Episode 5
Visit to The Haunted Mansion
Episode 5 - Seeing Dead People, opens with a woman called Mariah Kunao, who is a self-proclaimed paranormal investigator, riding the subway in NYC. She states that she has always believed in ghosts and wants answers to what happens when we die. She takes us on one of her investigations at the Morris-Jumel mansion, which she visits monthly. The house apparently was home to some historic people including Aaron Burr, and the decor of old wooden walls, floors, banisters, and floral carpeting is exactly how a haunted house is expected to look. Mariah shows us her equipment, such as two recording devices for spirit voices and lights that can supposedly be lit by these spirits.
Christopher Davalos, Director of Visitor Services for the mansion, gives a brief history of the famous people such as George Washington and Aaron Burr who have come through. He lets us know that there has been a lot of paranormal and inexplicable activity since the 1800’s when it was a home. People reported voices and footsteps. Today, he loves when people who tour think any phenomena is staged, and then he astounds them by proving it was genuine.
Paranormal Investigation and EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomena
Mariah and Christopher clearly know each other, and take us on an investigation. The lights on the equipment respond when they ask the ghosts to turn them on, and when they play back the recordings the “ghost” clearly states his name as Aaron Burr. And then in the next recording we hear footsteps. That these show up on only one of the two devices is evidential, which I will elaborate on a little later. The thing about the voice of Aaron Burr and another voice recording (called EVP’s - Electronic Voice Phenomena), that she shares with us, is that the first time I hear them it doesn’t sound like anything but a bunch of static. Then she says what we are supposed to hear, replays the recordings, and suddenly what we are supposed to hear is very clear. Maybe it is genuine but maybe we only hear what we are told to hear? Our brains need to make patterns.
I wanted more Sciencey People
To do this more “sciencey,” a room of people should have listened and then written down what they think they heard. Also, it would have been great to have a sound engineer analyze the recordings. If they found no “catch” the footsteps recording could be pretty amazing, but unfortunately there was not enough of a sciencey analysis to be that amazed. Mariah closes by saying that this connection with spirits is really a miracle and you can see how profound this all is for her.
Morris Jumel Mansion - www.morrisjumel.org
Paranormal Investigator and Expert Loyd Auerbach.
As this investigation proceeds, Loyd Auerbach, an expert paranormal investigator, a stage magician who can recognize cheating, and is also the perfect combination of skeptical and open-minded (plus he is a major part of my book) weighs in. He explains how most people tend to think of ghosts as a survival of consciousness (people who have passed away). He then explains that no equipment can actually detect this consciousness (show that there really is a ghost around). What these devices measure is changes in the environment when people report a ghost. Yes, it is possible that ghosts could cause the lights in the device to respond, but there is no way for us to know if that is the cause. A change in these devices is not solid evidence. He clarifies though, that in EVP’s (the voice recordings), if the ghost/spirit/consciousness? is putting its voice on it, it is not doing so acoustically. The human ear cannot hear it. The “ghost” influences and manipulates the device to imprint its voice. This is why Mariah has two voice recording devices. If one has a “voice” on it, and the other doesn’t, this shows that the device didn’t pick up, say voices of people on another floor. Loyd describes different ways people perceive ghosts, such as “death bed visions.” He also explains that if someone sees what they believe to be a ghost in a photograph (spirit photography), that in and of itself is not strong evidence. However, he does say that there really is evidence of “paranormal” and that he thinks we survive death. Millions of people have had these experiences over thousands of years. To dismiss and not look into this is unscientific.
Still a mystery when it comes to ghosts, the afterlife, and the paranormal.
Deborah Blum, Director at MIT School of Science Journalism - a voice of reason.
Deborah Blum, Director at MIT School of Science Journalism is another voice of reason. While she seems to fluctuate as to whether or not she believes in paranormal phenomena, she firmly states that believing in ghosts, afterlife, and the paranormal does not mean someone is stupid. For example, William James (yes THE William James), an obviously intelligent person (mentioned by Loyd as well), was very involved in this research after the loss of his toddler. He founded the SPR (Society for Psychical Research) in the 1800’s to scientifically investigate mediums, paranormal, survival etc. She explains it is human nature that we want to believe there is more than just this one life and material world. This human need makes it easy to dupe us - it is not stupidity that makes people fooled. At times she seems to be saying this is a normal human fantasy, and at times she seems to be saying there really is something worth investigating. She shares a highly evidential story of a man who in the 1800’s, was shocked to see his brother in the crowd at a theater. His brother was out of the country! He tried to chase him down and couldn’t find him. He later received a letter (the 1800’s - no phone or internet) that his brother had passed away, and the date and time coincided with when he “saw” his brother.
Crisis apparitions: a loved one appears and visits when they die
That is called a “crisis apparition.” Right when someone dies, they make an appearance to their loved ones. This can get really evidential when situations like the above occurs and no one knows that this person has died! Especially when multiple people experience a crises apparition of the same person at the same time.
Deborah Blum shares an equally astounding and profound crisis apparition story that occurred in her own family when someone appeared to, as she describes, her very grounded father in law. Throughout the episode, she remains humbled by the profundity of it all. She states that writing about ghost hunters has made her shed any arrogance, and that we really do not have all the answers.
Leslie Kean, the author of Surviving Death, the book that the series was based on, shares that studying apparitions is really hard and that those who do so have to make peace with the fact that there will always be a lot of unanswered questions.
Ghost and Spirit Photography - Photographing Ghosts
Now middle-aged, John Huckert, takes us to his childhood home, where he used to take photographs of the ghosts in his house. First, the bathroom door had opened on its own - something that would not just happen due to the setup of the house. When his father gave him a polaroid camera in 1991, as a young teen, he decided to take a photo of that bathroom door. There was an inexplicable light.
After he realized his dad had not bought him a prank camera, he had friends over to take pictures, and eventually even parties where people brought their own cameras and took photos as well. It was inexplicable. Each photo had this weird light, but only when people took photos with a polaroid camera, using (now discontinued) spectra film.
What was absolutely incredible was he would ask the spirit”?” questions such as “are you a good ghost,” anthen the light would seem to create words in the photos such as “friend.” When they asked the ghost their name, the name “Wright” showed up in photos. Then they tried to investigate if the name matched with a person associated with the house (such as someone who had died there) but had no luck. There were many more questions and subsequent word replies on more Polaroid photos. They showed us those photos, and yes, words were really clearly written.
If true, this would be so remarkable, it needed more than just this man saying it was true. I would love to have had someone, an appropriate expert, or team, analyze the photos. I also think someone should have come to investigate the house, lighting etc, and see how this could have occurred. Although this would add some insights to the phenomena, anything found out would most likely remain inconclusive since so much time has passed.
Chris Row, PhD president of the SPR - Society for Psychical Research
Chris Row, PhD who is the current president of the SPR, delves into spirit photography and archives of “ghost” photos, and the investigations of them done in the past by the SPR. He explains that yes, some seem to be fraudulent, but some seem to be genuine, or at least inexplicable. Loyd also discusses spirit photography. He explains that you need to know the conditions in which the photos are taken and that it can be very easy to misinterpret photos.
Conclusion: Life after death is not about belief. We needed a more sciencey investigation and skeptical analysis of the ghost photography, haunted mansion and EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomena.
While I wish more science and investigation had been applied to the ghost photography, EVP and Morris-Jumel mansion, there was a beauty and profundity of the mystery and sacredness of ghosts and the communication between two worlds.
The depth of the life after death question is also touched upon in this episode as hospice doctors and patients discuss death bed visions - when people are dying and they see loved ones who have passed. I felt that was worthy of its own review, and I cover that in the next article.