Skepticblog

The Cast and Crew of The Skeptologists aboard the Queen Mary

As we continue our journey through the production of the Pilot for The Skeptologists, we venture into the RMS Queen Mary. The majestic ocean liner now relegated to be a hotel and conference facility in Long Beach, CA, but more importantly, according to claims, one of the most haunted places on the West Coast.

The grandeur of the ship helped set the stage for what we hoped would be a fantastic paranormal treasure hunt.

Three of our Skeptologists, Yau-Man Chan, Phil Plait and Mark Edward were joined by an astrophysicist from NASA, Michelle Thaller and three Paranormal Investigators, who claimed that their experience and professional use of their scientific instruments would produce measurable evidence of the paranormal.

After we shot our introduction outside the ship, and heard the “warnings” from the investigators, (see my February 10 Blog entry) we proceeded to the indoor first class pool. The pool, now empty of water, is a very beautiful location. It’s completely surrounded with tile mosaic and features a grand staircase leading to the diving board. No windows, and naturally very dark, I can’t imagine sloshing around in that pool under sail. Legend says that the laughter of a young girl named Jackie can be heard in this area. Apparently she drowned in another pool abroad the ship, but for some reason she likes to float about in this pool area. Well, it is the first class pool after all.

The First Class Pool (brightened) Supposedly where the Ghost of Jackie likes to play.

Because this pool room is a treasured part of the ships daily Ghosts and Legends Tour, we had only a precious few minutes to shoot our segment in the pool area. The room is rigged with special effects equipment in order to simulate a ghost sighting for the tour. A constant eerie music track is played through the area, which we didn’t get to shut down because it was on a timed track set to play the scary part of the music when the tour arrived. The paranormal investigators introduced the pool location, told the story of Jackie and described some of their instruments giving unexplained readings in that location.

Since we didn’t have much time, we didn’t plan to do any investigations there. Both Phil and Yau-Man asked them to clarify a few things, but mainly we were documenting the claims that had been made around the ship. The production crew did a great job getting setup, shooting the footage and striking the equipment all in under 12 minutes. We had some pretty big lights, and we were able to create a great looking scene very quickly, it was a fast and furious setup but it came out nice. The music posed a challenge but later our music composer quickly wrote a movement that would fit the same key and it all blended together transparently.

Michelle Thaller, Audio Arran Murphy, Cinematographer Jonathan Hall, and I at the First Class Pool

From the pool we moved on to the engine room. The investigators told us about the story of John Peddar, an 18 year old fireman that was crushed when one of the ship’s watertight doors closed on him. He has supposedly haunted the ship ever since. We brought the whole crew into the cramped, hot space amid the now-still engines, and the paranormal folks made their case. Well, to be completely honest, they just told the story about others that had lots of fantastic experiences. It’s very easy to tell a story when you have absolutely no physical evidence to support it.

The gang inside one of the engine rooms.

At the conclusion of that scene we all moved to the ships boiler room. Here we would spend more time really working to find evidence of the paranormal.

The boiler room is a very large open space (The boilers have since been removed) and it’s all very dilapidated and rusty, a great setting. Surely if I was a ghost with an eternity to spend haunting places, well, this might as well be one of my stops.

We went through the equipment that the investigator’s brought. The leader, Dan, described his tools of the trade. They consisted of: A still camera, a compass, a flashlight, a stud sensor–uh, I mean: electromagnetic field sensor, a laser thermometer and some really cool black cargo pants. And just to be thorough we brought Michelle Thaller from NASA who came packing heat, with a FLIR infrared camera that could peer into the darkness and display heat as visible light and colors. The “experienced” paranormal investigators, really drooled at the sight of this.

Astrophysicist Michelle Thaller with NASA's $50K FLIR camera.

We split into the teams and proceeded to examine the tools. Now, at this point I could tell you a long-winded story about how we began an adventure wrought with unexplained phenomena and unearthly sights, but I’ll tell you the truth instead.

We found a section of the boiler room that opened into an adjoining room that was very dark. Dan, Phil and Michelle peered inside with a video camera, the FLIR and a temperature spot meter. They found a hot spot that seemed interesting. Through the FLIR they saw a heat signature from a small, distinct spot. Was it something supernatural? On the FLIR it appeared to be a light glowing brightly. It was a lightbulb. The unusual thing, however was that it did not shine, there was no light to the naked eye. We brought in the movie lights to get a look at the object, and sure enough it was a light bulb that wasn’t shining at all but on the FLIR, it was clearly warm. It was likely on a dimmer that was set very low but not completely off and so the filament was creating warmth, but no visible light was coming from it. No ghosts there.

Brightened shot of the Boiler Room

If we hadn’t brought in the movie lights, a person could, using the “ghost hunting tools,” think that this was something paranormal. To his credit, Dan never claimed anything paranormal about that, however.

We moved into some smaller, cramped and dangerous areas of the ship that were mostly twisted, torn and rusted pieces of the ship that had fallen into disrepair. Using the FLIR we were able to see all kinds of interesting things that we were not able to with our naked eye. We quickly found all of the security motion sensors that had been installed throughout the ship. They were small little hot spots that were high up on the walls. We could also spot power lines that had lots of electricity coursing through them warming the cables, as well as all the hot water pipes.

In another area, Mark and Yau-Man worked with the other two investigators as they demonstrated the EMF meter and how they would get their baseline readings and then wait for something to happen that they couldn’t explain. It all looked very fun and cool, but as you can probably guess, nothing outside of baseline readings were measured. As Yau-Man pointed out, since we were on the lowest section of the hull of the great steel ship, it was indeed a very electrically quiet environment. The steel hull effectively reflected away most radio interference. We did see movement on the EMF meters however, but that occurred when they got close to our cameras, the boom microphones that always swung overhead of our on-camera talent just outside the camera view and the radio mics that were attached to everyone… Did you catch that? RADIO mics. Yes, almost everyone on camera is wearing a small radio transmitter that transmits their audio in the form of FM radio waves to a receiver on the camera! This is VERY common with most all shoots of this type and it is easily one of the most predictable ways to get a reading from one of the EMF meters, (Just get it close to your wireless mic hidden under your clothes.) We were aware of this of course, and pointed this out to the viewer. This is possibly a reliable and easy way for the other TV Paranormal Investigators to get a reading when things are too quiet on the set.

Mark venturing into the "off limits" areas of the ship.

All in all, it was a fun day. We learned a lot about the history of the ship, it’s crews and the many ghostly stories that had permeated through the years, which they now blatantly capitalize on.

The Paranormal Investigators were careful, once they knew who they were dealing with, they played it pretty straight. They had a lot of stories and claims that were outright ridiculous, but in terms of finding anything unexplainable aboard the ship we were left empty handed, except for one very interesting event that happened inside a small supposedly haunted room called the “green room.”

The crew working to find evidence of the paranormal

This event quickly became the focus of much attention and excitement. But, for some reason, we the producers never put it into the show. What was this event, and why the cover-up? You’ll find out next week when we disclose for the first time in public what happened, as we continue our adventure aboard the Queen Mary!