Skeptical Analysis of the Paranormal Society

"Le doute n'est pas une condition agréable, mais la certitude est absurde."

—Voltaire

More on Cloaked Figures

An all lights on look at cloaked figures.

"Shadow People" are a common theme of paranormal shows. Why a spirit has to appear as a shadow rather than something more easily identifiable like... a green easily distinguishable humanoid mist is beyond me. It could be because the people who make these claims have footage of people wearing dark clothes. In the paranormal sense, there is no rationale, though I could probably go off on a rant about dark matter and sound somewhat convincing. But it's not the job of SAPS to be convincing in paranormal matters. We're fed that stuff daily. Instead, let's look at the less paranormal explanation.

People wearing dark clothing can more easily fool a camera, especially at night. Their every move is blurred and confusing. Are they moving forward or backward? Did they materialize out of thin air? These questions are hard to answer without being able to SEE what's going on. If there's grey area, we tend to believe what other people tell us about what happened.

Below are links to two different clips. The first was not made by me, but from someone off our Links to Debunkers area.

See his full debunkation here: Revealed! Eastern State Penitentiary

The second clip, which can be viewed here, is a lightened version of the same footage used on the debunkation site:

Lightened Version

The third clip is an all lights on reveal created by SAPS to show how easy it is to run in a straight line, backwards and then forwards. The person in this footage is wearing an actual cloak instead of a sheet for increased visibility. Being able to see really helps when you're trying to run in a straight line. See it here:

Unedited Cloaked Figure, Lights on

Keep in mind that yes, in order to make it look as though the figure is doing this at incredible rates, the footage would have to be sped up. This is unaltered footage, solely to debunk the supposed inability of someone to run backwards and then forwards.

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