The power of prayer? What a load of cobblers!

A few months ago I'd been talking to someone about the power of prayer. We were both coming from opposite directions ie. she believed in the power of prayer, I didn't. Now, there are several studies out there that each put forward their claim for prayer working, or not working. Surely both claims can't be true? By default, one must be true, the other false. The claims made by the various reports seem to be influenced by the investigating body producing the report. Believers in prayer always find in favour of prayer, and vice versa for the non believers.

I thought it would be interesting to discover how much time people spend in prayer.
I limited my study to Great Britain

Christian church figures state that 6% of the UK population regularly attend Sunday services. 6% of the UK population is roughly 3,684,840, so thats quite a few people plodding to church on a Sunday.

Now, lets assume that in the standard church service there is five minutes of prayer. From services I've attended this figure feels about right. So we have 3,684,840 people each praying for five minutes. This equates to 18,424,200 minutes, which in turn equates to 307,070 hours, which then equates to 12,794 days.
12,794 days is roughly 35 years, give or take a few days. 35 years!

So there we have it. Every Sunday from the churches of Great Britain there will be an accumulation of around 35 years worth of prayer. This doesn't take into account people praying away from church so, in reality, the figure would be much higher but impossible to measure.

The point is this (and remember, my figures are for the UK alone, the prayer total for the entire world would be much, much higher) If prayer works, and church-goers are praying for 'good' things, this world should be a utopian paradise by now.

OK, I know this is proof of nothing, but I think it's interesting all the same.

Where has Most Haunted gone?

Many people who have visited this blog recently have asked me the same questions. Where has Most Haunted gone? Why has Most Haunted finished?

Well, the answers are available within this blog for anyone to see. But very briefly, here are some of the main reasons.....

1. Poor viewing figures - click here for details
2. A track record of being less than honest with the viewing public. Click here for details and here.
3. Showing footage of questionable origin. Click here for details.
4. Perhaps the number one issue and one which will eventually see every single ghost hunting program fail......ghosts do not exist!

Of course, it's more complex than just these reasons alone but if you browse the articles and videos in the blog archive you'll get a good understanding of why Most Haunted is no more.

Bonsall UFO video - Debunked.

The following footage was taken on October 5, 2000, 21.15 and is said to be amongst the most important UFO videos ever taken.....



This is a posting I made on a forum in response to the Bonsall video.....

Well, I froze my bits off for 15 minutes last night filming UFO's. Well actually the moon and jupiter.

The results are similar to the Bonsall youtube video. I'm guessing the guy who filmed the Bonsall video used a similar hand held camera to mine. The effects on the video seem to be explained by the way the camera tries to focus on an object and also by the poorer quality of distant objects when zoom is used.

I used full zoom on jupiter and the planet had a definite illusion of movement. It appeared to move at both ends and it's shape was somewhat distorted, almost onion shaped for a time. It also took on a red hue which would occasionally turn blueish. The illusion of movement was caused by my camera contantly trying and failing to focus on the distant planet.

Also, as the camera tried to focus, I noticed I was getting some very funky effects similar to the last few seconds of the Bonsall video. I can see how these effects could easily be mistaken for detail on the underside of an alien craft, if someone was of that mindset.

Another point about the Bonsall video that's just occured to me. In the foreground, just before the camera zooms in, we see a strong light source. It's interesting that the UFO is always filmed directly above this light. This source would have been giving off, at the very least, a slight heat and the object, when viewed through this heat, would definitely have taken on an illusion of movment.

It's a planet people!!!!

The BadPsychics 'Most Haunted Mole' article.

With the sad demise of BadPsychics, I thought it important that the following article was still available for people to read.  So here it is.....

From pretty much the very beginning of Most Haunted, the good folk here at BadPsychics have exposed the show at every turn, from cover ups like Coingate to the most famous incident of all the Kreed Kafer incident, but we could never have done this all on our own.

We had help!

But who helped us all these years? We have affectionately reffered to this person as the Most Haunted Mole, but who is the Most Haunted Mole and what was their motivation in helping us?

Was their motivation money? We we never paid them a penny, so why would they help us, unless something much more sinister was happening.

The tale of the Most Haunted Mole is a tale of ego, fame, bullying and most of all greed!

I will not go over every incident that the mole helped us with, instead I will cover the main incidents, the source of the leaked video clips, the true instigator of the Kreed Kafer set up, and of course who really threw the spoon.

From pretty much the very beginning of Most Haunted, the good folk here at BadPsychics have exposed the show at every turn, from cover ups like Coingate to the most famous incident of all the Kreed Kafer incident, but we could never have done this all on our own.

We had help!

But who helped us all these years? We have affectionately referred to this person as the Most Haunted Mole, but who is the Most Haunted Mole and what was their motivation in helping us?

Was their motivation money? We we never paid them a penny, so why would they help us, unless something much more sinister was happening.

The tale of the Most Haunted Mole is a tale of ego, fame, bullying and most of all Greed!

I will not go over every incident that the mole helped us with, instead I will cover the main incidents, the source of the leaked video clips, the true instigator of the Kreed Kafer set up, and of course who really threw the spoon.

The story starts over 2000 years ago, in a small village in Ethiopia, a wise man would frequently visit, he would tell of times of change. One day the village was a destroyed and this wise man took care of the lone survivor, a small boy.

We now move forward 2000 years, and that small boy from all those years ago has been reborn into this world, his name Derek Johnson, later to be known as Derek Acorah.

But is Derek Acorah the mole? No, Derek is not the mole, although he knows the man who is very well.

You see the Most Haunted mole is a 2000 year old Ethiopian spirit called Masumai, or Sam for short.

Sam approached me many years ago in a dream, he told me of a time of change, he told me that this world needed someone, someone to speak the 'truth' and that man was to be me.

And this is where we get to Most Haunted. We had already written about the show on the site many times, done reviews and so forth, but something was missing. Then one day I received through the post a jiffy bag containing an old style VHS tape.

Written on the tape was simple "Most Haunted - Sam" I knew instantly that this tape was from my Sam, from Masumai.

I quickly put the tape into my DVD player, but then realised that this was 2005 and not 1995, so I quickly ran to the electric store and picked up an Alba VCR for £20!

Back to my house and I played the tape. It showed quite clearly Yvette Fielding faking stuff on Most Haunted. I watched through the tape, there was 8 hours of uncut, unedited material (8 hours cause it was on long play!).

I sat in amazement as I watched Ciaran O'Keeffe measure Yvette farting with a £25,000 thermo imaging camera, then there was the infamous coingate, where by Karl Beattie admitted that they could not air Stuart getting hit in the head by a coin because it was obviously faked.

Then a shocking clip as an ancient spoon flew towards Yvette, as if from the very cameraman's hand, the cameraman being Karl Beattie.

As I sat amazed looking at the tape, suddenly in full colour Derek Acorah, Yvette and Phil Whyman were stood in an underground area. Derek Acorah started speaking to spirit. "Mary Loves Dick, Mary Loves Dick, Mary Loves Dick" indeed whoever this Mary was, she really loved Dick.

But what did this mean? What did it show? It showed that Most Haunted was pre recorded and faked. Over the years we have shown all of these clips and much more on BadPsychics.

The reality is that I didn't receive the tapes in the post, nor did I get them from Sam, they were emailed to me from a man with some Satellite equipment, who simply tuned into the live feeds that Antix were sending back to the editing rooms.

This man who was called John, was doing something that anyone with the equipment could do, you see the feeds were unencrypted. In fact when Karl Beattie was told that this is how BadPsychics were getting the footage, he just smiled. And did nothing to stop it. It is very easy to encrypt such feeds, yet they WANTED us to see.

So every piece of footage that has appeared on-line from Most Haunted, is there because Antix wanted it to be there.

Does this make Karl Beattie the mole? Lets move on.

The single biggest moment of interest and probably the downfall of Most Haunted was the Kreed Kafer incident. It marked the end of an era, and the end of Derek Acorah on Most Haunted.

When the show started, it was a vehicle very much for Yvette Fielding to relaunch her flagging career. Her young acting career was a disaster, and after finishing on Blue Peter and finding herself replaced with a younger more attractive presenter she needed to do something new.

The whole show was to revolve around Fielding, the problem is that Fielding was never the star, the first series of Most Haunted gave birth to two stars, one was a young Jason Karl, and the other was Derek Acorah. Jason Karl was an actor employed to play the part of Para Psychologist. And Derek was already a TV psychic with a decent following.

During the series Yvette soon realised that she was being eclipsed by Jason Karl and Derek Acorah. So after series 1 Jason Karl was gone. Despite being employed to play a part, he actually played that part very well, and was without doubt the most genuine "Skeptic" to ever play that part. But after he was gone, his career would never reach the same level, and to this day he still tries to make a living off the "As seen on Most Haunted" logo.

But what about Derek? Well the problem Yvette had was that Derek's popularity had soared, it had reached a level where he was basically untouchable. After series two Derek had had enough, many arguments with the crew, jealousy from Karl and Yvette of his fame. Derek wanted to move on.

But Living TV owned Most Haunted, and not Antix as many people assume, so Living TV would convince Derek to stay. As series 5 ended, Derek agreed to one final series, with the knowledge that Living TV would give him his own show (Ghost Towns) at the end. Derek hated his time on Most Haunted, but he had a contract and wanted to fulfil his obligations to the full.

As Series six was soon to start, I received some correspondence from Ciaran O'Keeffe regarding a set up that had been done on Derek Acorah, and that hopefully the final edit of episode 1 would show Derek Acorah being possessed by a fictional spirit. I was excited, I had the main skeptic on the show, the very much respected Ciaran O'Keeffe contact me personally with something I had waited for, for years, conclusive proof that Derek Acorah was a fraud.

My article written, I just had to wait for the show to air. And when it did, 30 seconds after Derek was shown to be possessed by the fictional Kreed Kafer (Which was an anagram of Derek Faker), I published my article. Conspiracy theories were thrown about by fans of Most Haunted. Some claimed it was pure coincidence, others claimed I simple lied and made it all up. Many more set-ups were revealed in the following weeks, more anagram names and so on.

But it wasn't until 6 months later that Ciaran O'Keeffe himself went to the newspaper, and the Mirror specifically, and sold his story, that at the very least I would be proven to be 100% right. Unfortunately what happened next was not quite what I or in fact Ciaran expected. The Mirror ran their interview with Ciaran, which basically just repeated what I had published 6 months earlier, but they also reported on the very videos of fakery that I mentioned earlier too.

This was great in theory, until you realised that Matt Roper (The journalist from The Mirror) had failed to make one thing clear in his article, he did not credit BadPsychics one little bit. In fact he even called the article an exclusive despite me personally publishing the same info 6 months earlier. I was happy that a major newspaper had exposed Most Haunted to the masses, but disappointed that credit hadn't been given.

Years later Matt Roper wanted to write an article exposing psychic Gordon Smith, so who do you think he came to for help? Yep, he came to the UK's most famous internet skeptic, no not BobDezon, he came to me instead. I chose not to help him, and for a good 30 minutes ranted at him for ripping off my site and not giving credit, he apologised and we ended the conversation.

Anyway back to the story. Anyone who works for Antix on Most Haunted has a standard confidentiality contract which they have to sign. This basically prohibits them from revealing things that have happened on the show and so forth, this is very standard stuff in itself. Richard Felix was once threatened with legal action due to this very contract, so that is how serious Antix takes things.

So with Ciaran going to the papers, surely this meant not only the end of his career, but also would almost guarantee a lawsuit from Antix.

But neither happened. Why? Well the truth is that Ciaran was not behind the Kreed Kafer set up, and despite picking up a nice pay check from The Mirror, Ciaran actually went to the papers and broke his confidentiality contract with the full backing of Karl Beattie.

What made things worse was that the very correspondence I had had with Ciaran before episode 1 of series 6 aired, was directed by Karl Beattie. I had in fact been the one used by Karl Beattie, and yet again I had fallen for it.

So not only did Karl know about the so called leaked video tapes, he was also instrumental in the setting up of Derek Acorah.

I then started to get a very nasty feeling in my stomach. It became obvious that I had been used, used to create a kind of anti-publicity for Most Haunted, that would only help make more people watch. You see to Karl Beattie it didn't matter if people thought the show was genuine or if they thought it was faked, as long as they were watching.

One final point about the Kreed Kafer incident, as some of you may remember, the day the newspaper came out with the revelations, just happened to be the day of a Most Haunted Live show and even more "coincidently" the last Most Haunted Live that Derek would ever do before leaving Most Haunted and going off to do is own show Ghost Towns.

Obviously this was done on purpose to cause the most impact, to totally destroy Derek Acorahs career, and also create a ratings boost, after all, people would be dying to tune in to see the reaction to the allegations in the paper.

The problem was that Karl had expected the Mirror article to purely be about exposing Derek Acorah. Whereby instead they had taken info from BadPsychics, seen the video clips I had uploaded on-line, and made the article a more general exposure of the whole of Most Haunted.

Before that nights live, Karl and Ciaran were called into the Living TV offices, where they received a dressing down from the higher ups at Living TV

As you can imagine they were furious, not only had their flagship show been exposed by the very people involved in it, their big star in Derek Acorah had had his reputation ripped to shreds in a tabloid newspaper right before his new show would air.

Karl was told in no uncertain terms that if Derek Acorah did not appear on the Live show that night that there would be no Most Haunted Live at all.

Living TV spoke to Derek, and left the decision to him. He could refuse to appear which would signal the end of the show, and most likely the end of the careers of the very people who exposed him. Or he could be loyal to his contract, grit his teeth and do the show.

In an incredibly move, Derek went ahead and did the show. He appeared on camera, stood next to Ciaran, Karl and Yvette, and Derek held his head up high, and did what he does best, pretend to talk to the dead.

After that series of MHL shows, Derek went on to do the Ghost Towns series, and my personal favourite Paranormal Egypt. Derek continues to appear on TV, has his show on Sky Real Lives, and still performs in theatres around the country. His career and name value still as strong as ever.

Most Haunted did continue, but since Derek left it was never the same, guest mediums were brought in, but none ever captured the imagination of the audience, whether that be the believers or the skeptics.

As soon as I found out I had been used by Karl Beattie, I then refused to be used any more, which is one of the reasons why we stopped covering Most Haunted on the BadPsychics site. Other than the odd viewer submitted review here and there.

I would like to touch on one final thing before I finish, a while after Derek finished from Most Haunted, he appeared on an on-line radio show called White Noise Paranormal Radio. A rather small time rag tail band of nobodies presenting a show to just tens of people. But during the interview Derek went on to reveal much much more than I have ever done.

Now unfortunately I cant repeat Derek's allegations, in fact at the time I did just that, and quickly received a very strongly worded letter from Shillings Solicitors who were working on behalf of Antix. In case you don't know Shillings are a London based, £500 per hour top law firm. You simply don't mess with them.

So I happily removed my copy of what Derek has said. All other sites who had reported on Derek's allegations were also threatened and quickly removed any mention. And of course White Noise Radio themselves were forced to remove the interview.

However the reason I was happy to remove my repetition of the allegations was that I knew them all to be true, and I knew that Shillings would have to then sue Derek, who I also happened to know could prove everything he has claimed.

So I waited, and waited, and eventually they sent the letter to Derek. They told Derek to make a public apology and pay damages to Antix or face legal action.

Derek Acorah basically replied with "See you in court" A bold move from Derek for if he were to lose the case, he would lose everything.

Shillings under instruction from Antix backed down. The court case never happened. Make of that what you will.

So here we reach the end of my little tale of merriment. The video clips came from a normal bloke with some fancy satellite equipment, we published those clips and all the clips of Most Haunted you will find on-line, whether it be of Yvette pushing a glass around on a table, kicking a door, or faking spirit noises, all are on-line with the full knowledge and acceptance of Karl Beattie.

The Kreed Kafer story was told by Ciaran (as you all already know) but was directed by Karl Beattie.

The rest well, if you keep your ear to the ground, everyone talks, yep, everyone who has ever appeared on Most Haunted has at some point literally been the mole. You see the one thing I have learnt about Most Haunted and the people who appear and have appeared on the show is that they cant help themselves. For being on that show was the highlight of their pathetic lives, it was the true peak of their careers.

And these people will talk about it over and over again.

Whether it was a 1 episode appearance, a whole series run, or from the beginning. You are all as bad as each other.

So to end, the identity of the mole is....

Karl Beattie, Yvette Fielding, Derek Acorah, Gwen Acorah, David Wells, Richard Felix, Ciaran O'Keeffe, Phil Whyman, Jason Karl, Richard Jones, Leslie Smith, Cath Howe, Stuart Torrevill, and all the rest of them.

Well either that or it really was Sam who told me everything I know!


By Jon Donnis

Hi :-)

Hello to all my regulars and to new friends!  Thanks for visiting my blog.  Please check out the blog archive - you'll find lots of super fun videos of the Most Haunted team up to no good!

The 'mole' uncovered.....

http://badpsychics.co.uk/thefraudfiles/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1265

To catch a mole......

Jon Donni, of the website BadPsychics, has pledged to reveal the identity of the infamous Most Haunted Mole.  The announcement is expected around 08:30 on 27th June, which is in about an hours time....so watch this space!

Yvette....a tribute

To commemorate Yvette's leaving, here are some of her best bits......

Yvette pushing a glass
Yvette making a ghostly moan
Yvette pushing a table
Yvette kicking a door

Yvette to leave Most Haunted

Yes, it's finally happened.  
http://www.antixproductions.com/ for a looooong statement in a hard to read font.

If you can't be bothered, here's the gist of the statement.

Yvette to leave most haunted.....thats about it really. It's another nail in the MH coffin!

The Moon Landing hoax theories....DEBUNKED!

I found this excellent article on a forum a little while ago. If you think the Moon Landings were hoaxed, read on and educate yourself. Even if you accept the Moon Landings as true this is still an excellent read.


Three compelling bits of evidence (setting aside all the conspiracy theory bad science) lead us by the nose to the obvious conclusion that yes we did go to and land on the moon.


1. 800 lbs of Moon rock (that's a hell of a lot of physical evidence)

2. Lasers left by the Apolo team that are still functioning.

3. Recent HD photos of the Russian rover (yes that's not the Apollo mission but for most conspiracists the very fact that anyone at any time has stepped on the moon is bunk)



A lot of the supposed 'science' that surrounds the conspiracy is in some cases suimply untrue (see Van Allen Belt) and in others just misinterpretation. The Fox TV show 'The moon landing conspiracy' is responsible for a great deal of the popularity in this particular story

Fox TV network aired a program called ``Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?'', hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. The program was an hour long, and featured interviews with a series of people who believe that NASA faked the Apollo Moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s. The biggest voice in this is Bill Kaysing, who claims to have all sorts of hoax evidence, including pictures taken by the astronauts, engineering details, discussions of physics and even some testimony by astronauts themselves. The program's conclusion was that the whole thing was faked in the Nevada desert (in Area 51, of course!). According to them, NASA did not have the technical capability of going to the Moon, but pressure due to the Cold War with the Soviet Union forced them to fake it.


Bad Astronomy wrote an excellent article that takes each piece of conspiracy evidence in turn and points out the flaws. Of course for some no amount of debunking will be enough but for the rational thinkers it will provide sufficient light to see through the nonsense.


The evidence they link to refers to the program but it still addresses all the issues


Bad: The first bit of actual evidence brought up is the lack of stars in the pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts from the surface of the Moon. Without air, the sky is black, so where are the stars?

Good: The stars are there! They're just too faint to be seen.

This is usually the first thing HBs talk about when discussing the Hoax. That amazes me, as it's the silliest assertion they make. However, it appeals to our common sense: when the sky is black here on Earth, we see stars. Therefore we should see them from the Moon as well.

I'll say this here now, and return to it many times: the Moon is not the Earth. Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to fail us.

The Moon's surface is airless. On Earth, our thick atmosphere scatters sunlight, spreading it out over the whole sky. That's why the sky is bright during the day. Without sunlight, the air is dark at night, allowing us to see stars.

On the Moon, the lack of air means that the sky is dark. Even when the Sun is high off the horizon during full day, the sky near it will be black. If you were standing on the Moon, you would indeed see stars, even during the day.

So why aren't they in the Apollo pictures? Pretend for a moment you are an astronaut on the surface of the Moon. You want to take a picture of your fellow space traveler. The Sun is low off the horizon, since all the lunar landings were done at local morning. How do you set your camera? The lunar landscape is brightly lit by the Sun, of course, and your friend is wearing a white spacesuit also brilliantly lit by the Sun. To take a picture of a bright object with a bright background, you need to set the exposure time to be fast, and close down the aperture setting too; that's like the pupil in your eye constricting to let less light in when you walk outside on a sunny day.

So the picture you take is set for bright objects. Stars are faint objects! In the fast exposure, they simply do not have time to register on the film. It has nothing to do with the sky being black or the lack of air, it's just a matter of exposure time. If you were to go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used, you won't see any stars!

It's that simple. Remember, this the usually the first and strongest argument the HBs use, and it was that easy to show wrong. Their arguments get worse from here.






Bad: In the pictures taken of the lunar lander by the astronauts, the TV show continues, there is no blast crater. A rocket capable of landing on the Moon should have burned out a huge crater on the surface, yet there is nothing there.

Good: When someone driving a car pulls into a parking spot, do they do it at 100 kilometers per hour? Of course not. They slow down first, easing off the accelerator. The astronauts did the same thing. Sure, the rocket on the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.

Now here comes a little bit of math: the engine nozzle was about 54 inches across (from the Encyclopaedia Astronautica), which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch! That's not a lot of pressure. Moreover, in a vacuum, the exhaust from a rocket spreads out very rapidly. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. In a vacuum, no air means the exhaust spreads out even more, lowering the pressure. That's why there's no blast crater! Three thousand pounds of thrust sounds like a lot, but it was so spread out it was actually rather gentle.







Bad: The next argument presented on the show deals with the lunar dust. As the lander descended, we clearly see dust getting blown away by the rocket. The exhaust should have blown all the dust away, yet we can clearly see the astronauts' footprints in the dust mere meters from the lander. Obviously, when NASA faked this they messed it up.

Good: Once again, the weird alien environment of the Moon comes to play. Imagine taking a bag of flour and dumping it onto your kitchen floor (kids: ask your folks first!). Now bend over the pile, take a deep breath, and blow into it as hard as you can. Poof! Flour goes everywhere. Why? Because the momentum of your breath goes into the flour, which makes it move. But note that the flour goes up, and sideways, and aloft into the air. If you blow hard enough, you might see little curlicues of air lifting the flour farther than your breath alone could have, and doing so to dust well outside of where your breath actually blew.

That's the heart of this problem. We are used to air helping us blow things around. The air itself is displaced by your breath, which pushed on more air, and so on. On the Earth, your breath might blow flour that was dozens of centimeters away, even though your actual breath didn't reach that far. On the Moon, there is no air. The only dust that gets blown around by the exhaust of the rocket (which, remember, isn't nearly as strong as the HBs claim) is the dust physically touched by the exhaust, or dust hit by other bits of flying dust. In the end, only the dust directly under or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust. The rest was left where it was. Ironically, the dust around the landing site was probably a bit thicker than before, since the dust blown out would have piled up there.

I can't resist: another Hoax Believer argument bites the dust.








Bad: The next evidence also involves pictures. In all the pictures taken by the astronauts, the shadows are not black. Objects in shadow can be seen, sometimes fairly clearly, including a plaque on the side of the lander that can be read easily. If the Sun is the only source of light on the Moon, the HBs say, and there is no air to scatter that light, shadows should be utterly black.

Good: This is one of my favorite HB claims. They give you the answer in the claim itself: "...if the Sun is the only source of light..." It isn't. Initially, I thought the Earth was bright enough to fill in the shadows, but subsequently realized that cannot be the case. The Earth is a fraction of the brightness of the Sun, not nearly enough to fill in the shadows. So then what is that other light source?

The answer is: The Moon itself. Surprise! The lunar dust has a peculiar property: it tends to reflect light back in the direction from where it came. So if you were to stand on the Moon and shine a flashlight at the surface, you would see a very bright spot where the light hits the ground, but, oddly, someone standing a bit to the side would hardly see it at all. The light is preferentially reflected back toward the flashlight (and therefore you), and not the person on the side.

Now think about the sunlight. Let's say the sun is off to the right in a picture. It is illuminating the right side of the lander, and the left is in shadow. However, the sunlight falling beyond the lander on the left is being reflected back toward the Sun. That light hits the surface and reflects to the right and up, directly onto the shadowed part of the lander. In other words, the lunar surface is so bright that it easily lights up the shadows of vertical surfaces.

This effect is called heiligenschein (the German word for halo). You can find some neat images of it at here, for example. This also explains another HB claim, that many times the astronauts appear to be standing in a spotlight. This is a natural effect of heiligenschein. You can reproduce this effect yourself; wet grass on a cool morning will do it. Face away from the Sun and look at the shadow of your head. There will be a halo around it. The effect is also very strong in fine, disturbed dust like that in a baseball diamond infield. Or, of course, on the Moon.

http://www.weatherscapes.com/album.php?cat...=heiligenschein








Bad: Another argument by the HBs deals with shadows. Several photos from the Moon are shown where objects on the lunar landscape have long shadows. If the Sun were the only light source, the program claims, the shadows should be parallel. The shadows are not parallel, and therefore the images are fake.

Good: This is an interesting claim on the part of the HBs, because on the surface ( ) it seems to make sense. However, let's assume the shadows are not parallel. One explanation is that there are (at least) two light sources, and that is certainly what many HBs are trying to imply. So if there are multiple light sources, where are the multiple shadows? Each object casts one shadow, so there can only be one light source.

Another explanation is that the light source is close to the objects; then it would also cast non-parallel shadows. However, a distant source can as well! In this case, the Sun really is the only source of light. The shadows are not parallel in the images because of perspective. Remember, you are looking at a three-dimensional scene, projected on a two-dimensional photograph. That causes distortions. When the Sun is low and shadows are long, objects at different distance do indeed appear to cast non-parallel shadows, even here on Earth. An example of that can be found at another debunking site. The scene (near the bottom of the above-linked page) shows objects with non-parallel shadows, distorted by perspective. If seen from above, all the shadows in the Apollo images would indeed look parallel. You can experience this for yourself; go outside on a clear day when the Sun is low in the sky and compare the direction of the shadows of near and far objects. You'll see that they appear to diverge. Here is a major claim of the HBs that you can disprove all by yourself! Don't take my word for it, go out and try!

Incidentally, the bright Earth in the sky will also cast shadows, but those would be very faint compared to the ones made by the Sun. So in a sense there are multiple shadows, but like not being able to see stars, the shadows are too faint to be seen against the very bright lunar surface. Again, you can test this yourself: go outside during full Moon and you'll see your shadow. Then walk over to a streetlamp. The light from the streetlamp will wash out the shadow cast by the Moon. You might still be able to see it faintly, but it would difficult against the much brighter landscape.







Bad: The program has two segments dealing with what they call ``identical backgrounds''. In one, they show the lunar lander with a mountain in the background. They then show another picture of the same mountain, but no lander in the foreground at all. The astronauts could not have taken either picture before landing, of course, and after it lifts off the lander leaves the bottom section behind. Therefore, there would have been something in the second image no matter what, and the foreground could not be empty. Obviously, the mountain background is a fake set, and was reused by NASA for another shot.

Good: Actually, the pictures are real, of course. As always, repeat after me: the Moon is not the Earth. On the Earth, distant objects are obscured a bit by haze in the air, and we use that to mentally gauge distances. However, with no air, an object can be very far away on the Moon and still be crisp and sharp to the eye. You can't tell if a boulder is a meter across and 100 meters away, or 100 meters across and 10 kilometers away!

That's what's going on here. The lander is close to the astronaut in the first picture, perhaps a 20 or 30 meters away. The mountain is kilometers away. For the second picture, the astronaut merely moved a few hundred meters to the side. The lander was then out of the picture, but the mountain hardly moved at all! If you look at the scene carefully, you'll see that all the rocks and craters in the foreground changes between the two pictures, just as you'd expect if the astronaut had moved to the side a ways between the two shots. It's not fraud, it's parallax!

Another example of the difficulty in estimating distance is due to the shapes of the rocks on the Moon. A rock small enough to sit down on doesn't look fundamentally different from one bigger than your house. Humans also judge distance by using the relative sizes of objects. We know how big a person is, or a tree, so the apparent size of the object can be used to estimate the distance. If we don't know how big the object is, we can be fooled about its distance.

For an outstanding example of this, take a look at video taken during Apollo 16. There is a boulder in the background that looks to be about 3 or 4 meters (10-13 feet) high. About 3/4 of the way through the segment the astronauts walk over to it. Amazingly, that boulder is the size of a large house! Without knowing how big the rock was when we first see it, we have no way to judge distances. That huge rock looks like a medium sized one until we have some way to directly judge its size; in this case, by looking at the tiny astronauts next to it. [My thanks to Bad Reader Martin Michalak for bringing this video to my attention. My very special thanks goes to Charlie Duke (yes, the Charlie Duke, Apollo astronaut and lunar lander pilot) who emailed me (!) about the difficulty in judging distances due to not knowing the sizes of rocks.]

I will admit the Fox program had me for a while on this one; I couldn't figure it out. But then I got a note from Bad Reader David Bailey, who set me straight. However, the producers of the show should have talked to some real experts before saying such a silly thing as this. If they had checked with the folks who run the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, for example, they would have been set straight too.








Bad: The other ``identical background'' segment shows an astronaut on a hilltop. A second video shows two astronauts on the same hill (and this time it really is the same hill), and claims that NASA itself says these two videos were taken on two different hills separated by many kilometers. How can this be? They are obviously the same hill, so NASA must be lying!

Good: Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a mistake. A videotape about Apollo 16 ironically titled ``Nothing So Hidden...'' released by NASA does indeed make that claim, but in this case it looks to me to be a simple error. I asked Eric Jones, who is the editor of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, and he told me those two clips were taken about three minutes apart. Eric's assistant, Ken Glover, uncovered this problem. He sent me this transcript (which I edited a bit to make links to the video clips) of the Fox show with his comments, which I will highlight in red:


Narrator: Background discrepancies are also apparent in the lunar video.
[...]

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#stars

[Video showing John Young at Station 4 on EVA-2, with Fox caption "Day One". Click here for the transcript and here for the RealVideo clip.]

Narrator: This shot was taped in what was purported to be the first of Apollo 16's lunar excursions.

[Audio of John Young dubbed over clip: "Well, I couldn't pick a better spot", actual MET of 123:58:46]

[Next, video of John Young and Charlie Duke at Station 4, EVA-2. In reality, about three minutes after the first clip. Fox caption "Day Two". Click here for the transcript and here for the RealVideo clip.]

Narrator: And this video was from the next day, at a different location.

[Audio of Charlie Duke dubbed over clip: "That is the most beautiful sight!", actual MET of 124:03:01]

Narrator: NASA claims the second location was two-and-a-half miles away, but when one video was superimposed over the other the locations appear identical.

[Audio of John Young dubbed over "Day Two" video: " It's absolutely unreal!", actual MET 144:16:30]

Narrator: Conspiracy theorists claim that even closer examination of the photos suggest evidence of doctoring.

That last line is pretty funny. The audio you hear of the astronauts in those clips was actually all from different times than the video!

So that's why the hill looks the same. It's the same hill, and the two clips were not taken a day apart, but from three minutes apart or so. Again, had the program producers bothered to check their sources, they would have received a prompt answer. That's all I did: I emailed the editor of the ALSJ. It was pretty easy to do, and he answered me in minutes.









Bad: Ralph Rene, a self-proclaimed physicist, claims that the astronauts shifting in the cabin would change the center of mass, throwing the lunar lander off balance. They couldn't compensate for this, which would have crashed the lander. Thus, the landing was faked.

Good: Rene is wrong. Evidently he doesn't know how the internet works either, because there is a website which describes how the attitude control was maintained on the lander during descent and ascent; it's the Apollo Saturn Reference page. There was a feedback control system on board the lander which determined if the axis were shifting. During descent, the engine nozzle could shift direction slightly to compensate for changes in the center of gravity of the lander (the technical term for this is gimbaling the nozzle). During ascent, the engine nozzle was fixed in position, so there was a series of smaller rockets which was used to maintain the proper attitude. Incidentally, every rocket needs to do this since fuel shifts the center of gravity as it is burned up by the rocket, yet Rene and the other HBs don't seem to doubt that rockets themselves work! So we have a case of selective thinking on the part of the HBs.

[Note (July 20, 2001): My thanks again to Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke for correcting a technical error in a previous version of this section. After describing the above scenario to me, he said the ascent stage of the lander was "a sporty ride".]



Bad: The program claims that when the top half of the lander took off from the Moon to bring the astronauts back into orbit, there was no flame from the rocket. Obviously, every rocket has a visible flame, so the takeoff was faked.

Good: There is actually a simple reason why you cannot see the flame from the lander when it took off. The fuels they used produced no visible flame! The lander used a mix of hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide (an oxidizer). These two chemicals ignite upon contact and produce a product that is transparent. That's why you cannot see the flame. We expect to see a flame because of the usual drama of liftoff from the Earth; the flame and smoke we see from the Shuttle, for example, is because the solid rocket boosters do actually produce them, while the lunar lander did not. Here is a brief webpage describing this. Note too that fuels like this are still used today, and indeed rockets in space produce little or no visible flame.

I heard an account (sorry, no citation; the link has since gone dead) that the cameras used for the ascent of the lander were fairly primitive, even for that era (this is usually the case in space travel, where it takes extensive testing to make sure things work properly; during that time the state of the art advances). Even if it were visible, the flash of the exhaust may have easily been missed by those cameras.

[Note added April 9, 2001: My original assertion about not seeing the flame was because the Moon has no air, and we see flame from rockets on Earth because we have an atmosphere. This does have some effect (the pressure of air constrains the rocket exhaust and helps produce the effect we see) but the larger reason the flame is invisible is due to the fuel used. I gratefully thank the dozens of people who sent me email about this.]








Bad: When the movies of the astronauts walking and driving the lunar rover are doubled in speed, they look just like they were filmed on Earth and slowed down. This is clearly how the movies were faked.

Good: This was the first new bit I have seen from the HBs, and it's funny. To me even when sped up, the images didn't look like they were filmed in Earth's gravity. The astronauts were sidling down a slope, and they looked weird to me, not at all like they would on Earth. I will admit that if wires were used, the astronauts' gait could be simulated.

However, not the rover! If you watch the clip, you will see dust thrown up by the wheels of the rover. The dust goes up in a perfect parabolic arc and falls back down to the surface. Again, the Moon isn't the Earth! If this were filmed on the Earth, which has air, the dust would have billowed up around the wheel and floated over the surface. This clearly does not happen in the video clips; the dust goes up and right back down. It's actually a beautiful demonstration of ballistic flight in a vacuum. Had NASA faked this shot, they would have had to have a whole set (which would have been very large) with all the air removed. We don't have this technology today!

This is another case of selective vision on the part of the HBs.








Bad: When the astronauts are assembling the American flag, the flag waves. Kaysing says this must have been from an errant breeze on the set. A flag wouldn't wave in a vacuum.

Good: Of course a flag can wave in a vacuum. In the shot of the astronaut and the flag, the astronaut is rotating the pole on which the flag is mounted, trying to get it to stay up. The flag is mounted on one side on the pole, and along the top by another pole that sticks out to the side. In a vacuum or not, when you whip around the vertical pole, the flag will ``wave'', since it is attached at the top. The top will move first, then the cloth will follow along in a wave that moves down. This isn't air that is moving the flag, it's the cloth itself.

New stuff added March 1, 2001: Many HBs show a picture of an astronaut standing to one side of the flag, which still has a ripple in it (for example, see this famous image). The astronaut is not touching the flag, so how can it wave?

The answer is, it isn't waving. It looks like that because of the way the flag was deployed. The flag hangs from a horizontal rod which telescopes out from the vertical one. In Apollo 11, they couldn't get the rod to extend completely, so the flag didn't get stretched fully. It has a ripple in it, like a curtain that is not fully closed. In later flights, the astronauts didn't fully deploy it on purpose because they liked the way it looked. In other words, the flag looks like it is waving because the astronauts wanted it to look that way. Ironically, they did their job too well. It appears to have fooled a lot of people into thinking it waved.

This explanation comes from NASA's wonderful spaceflight web page. For those of you who are conspiracy minded, of course, this doesn't help because it comes from a NASA site. But it does explain why the flag looks as it does, and you will be hard pressed to find a video of the flag waving. And if it was a mistake caused by a breeze on the set where they faked this whole thing, don't you think the director would have tried for a second take? With all the money going to the hoax, they could afford the film!

Note added March 28, 2001: One more thing. Several readers have pointed out that if the flag is blowing in a breeze, why don't we see dust blowing around too? Somehow, the HBs' argument gets weaker the more you think about it.









Bad: The program makes a big deal out of how well the pictures taken from the Moon were exposed and set. Every picture we see is just right, with the scene always centered perfectly. However, the cameras were mounted on the front of the astronauts' spacesuit, and there was no finder. They couldn't have taken perfect pictures every time!

Good ... and of course, no one claims they did. Thousands of pictures were taken on the Moon, and the ones you see will tend to be the good ones. If Buzz Aldrin accidentally cut off Neil Armstrong's head, you probably won't see that image in a magazine. Also, everything done on the Moon was practiced endlessly by the astronauts. The people working on the mission knew that these pictures would be some of the most important images ever taken, so they would have taken particular care in making sure the astronauts could do it cold. When fabled astronaut Story Musgrave replaced a camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, someone commented that he made it look easy. "Sure," he replied, "I had practiced it thousands of times!"

The program goes farther than this, though: they actually contacted the man who designed the cameras for the astronauts. When they asked him why the pictures were always perfect, he hemmed and hawed, and finally admitted he had no answer for that. This is hardly evidence that NASA must have faked the missions. All it means is that he couldn't think of anything while sitting on camera! I think this is pretty evil of the program producers to do this; a bit of editing on their part makes it looks like they completely baffled an expert.








Bad: Crosshairs were etched in the astronauts' cameras to better help measure objects in the pictures. However, in several images, it looks like the objects are actually in front of the crosshairs, which is impossible if the crosshairs were inside the camera! Therefore, the images were faked.

Good: This argument is pretty silly. Do the HBs think that NASA had painted crosshairs on the set behind the astronauts? I heard one HB claim the crosshairs were added later on, and NASA had messed up some of the imaging. That's ridiculous! Why add in crosshairs later? Cameras equipped with crosshairs have been used for a long time, and it would have been easy to simply use some to take pictures on the faked set. Clearly, the HBs are wrong here, but the images do look funny. What happened?

What happened becomes clearer when you look more closely at the images. The times it looks like an object is in front of the crosshair (because the crosshair looks blocked by the object) is when the object photographed is white. The crosshair is black. Have you ever taken an image that is overexposed? White parts bleed into the film around them, making them look white too. That's all that happened here; the white object in the image ``fills in'' the black crosshair. It's a matter of contrast: the crosshair becomes invisible because the white part overwhelms the film. This is basic photography.

[Note (added February 18, 2001): I have been informed by David Percy, a photographer quoted in the Fox show, that he does indeed believe that man went to the Moon, but he believes there are anomalies in the imagery taken which ``put into question many aspects of the missions'', which is a different matter. While I disagree that there are anomalies, I have edited out what is essentially a personal attack on Mr. Percy that I had here originally. It is an easy matter to let one's emotions get carried away when writing these essays, and I apologize to him and my readers for letting that get in. I make it a policy to correct Bad Astronomy based on facts, not personalities.]







Bad: A big staple of the HBs is the claim that radiation in the van Allen Belts and in deep space would have killed the astronauts in minutes. They interview a Russian cosmonaut involved in the USSR Moon program, who says that they were worried about going in to the unknowns of space, and suspected that radiation would have penetrated the hull of the spacecraft.

Good: Kaysing's exact words in the program are ``Any human being traveling through the van Allen belt would have been rendered either extremely ill or actually killed by the radiation within a short time thereof.''

This is complete and utter nonsense. The van Allen belts are regions above the Earth's surface where the Earth's magnetic field has trapped particles of the solar wind. An unprotected man would indeed get a lethal dose of radiation, if he stayed there long enough. Actually, the spaceship traveled through the belts pretty quickly, getting past them in an hour or so. There simply wasn't enough time to get a lethal dose, and, as a matter of fact, the metal hull of the spaceship did indeed block most of the radiation. For a detailed explanation of all this, my fellow Mad Scientist William Wheaton has a page with the technical data about the doses received by the astronauts. Another excellent page about this, that also gives a history of NASA radiation testing, is from the Biomedical Results of Apollo site. An interesting read!

It was also disingenuous of the program to quote the Russian cosmonaut as well. Of course they were worried about radiation before men had gone into the van Allen belts! But tests done by NASA showed that it was possible to not only survive such a passage, but to not even get harmed much by it. It looks to me like another case of convenient editing by the producers of the program.







Very, very Bad: Kaysing says that the Apollo 1 fire that killed Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom was no accident. Grissom was ready to talk to the press about the Moon hoax, so NASA killed him. Kaysing says NASA also killed other people who were about to blow the whistle as well.

This is so disgusting I have a hard time writing a coherent reply. Kaysing has no grasp of basic physics, photography or even common sense, but he accuses NASA of killing people to shut them up. That is a particularly loathsome accusation.









I'll end this on one more bit the HBs don't talk about. When Jim Lovell, two time Apollo astronaut and commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, was told about Kaysing's claims, Lovell called him a kook. Kaysing, ever the rational thinker, sued Lovell for slander. Imagine: Kaysing, who says that NASA murdered three men outright and arranged for the murders of others, sued Commander James Lovell for slander! After some time, a judge wisely threw the case out of court.

There's still hope.

Most Haunted's viewing figures.

I'd always assumed Most Haunted was one of Living TV's most popular programs.  It turns out this is not the case.  In fact, of the current series, only one show has managed to squeeze into the Living TV top ten most watched programs for that week.  Yes, Most Haunted was beaten by such timeless classics as Four Weddings and Drop Dead Diva.  It seems the public finally caught on to the truth.  About time too!

Joe POW - POW-Power!

 A great article from Merseyside Skeptics

The sinister side of cold reading.....

....although the medium has been stung with an £8000 bill. 

Click here for the full story.

At long last....

....the official forum has at last been humanely destroyed.  Now if someone would just take pity on the show and pull the plug....

The official forum limps forever onwards.

Well, it seems the official Most Haunted forum is still up n' active, despite what we've continually been told by the powers that be.  Actually, the word 'active' is somewhat misleading.  The forum is as dead as the proverbial Dodo, owing to the fact that over-zealous mods have banned anyone for having the cheek and sheer audacity to  express the "wrong" point of view. 

Grapevine latest.....Living and Antix have parted ways

Nothing official has been said, but word on the street is that Living TV and Antix have now parted ways. I also understand Living TV still own the rights to Most Haunted. Does this signal the end of MH as we know it????

http://moh2005.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=mhl&action=display&thread=8538&page=1

Just watched the latest MH and......

.....I'd like to know how I get that wasted hour of my life back. I mean, is there some kind of appeal process that will refund my wasted time?? If not there damn well should be! And the show itself? Well, if you've only ever seen one single episode of MH (lucky you), you'll know what happened. Some of the faces may have changed but the on-screen action remained the same, actually as it's done for the past eight years. Yes, they've tweaked the format slightly, maybe even tinkered with the graphics a tad, but it's still just a load of people with video cameras blundering around in dark places managing to scare themselves. It's all done in an attempt to justify their own existence and grab yet another series.

Is anyone watching anymore?

Is anyone bothering to watch the dross that is 'Most Haunted' anymore? Not me, I can tell you. I occasionaly cast an eye to the forums in search of rumours of more trickery in the ranks. For me thats as far as it goes. After all, if you've seen one episode of Most Haunted, you've seen them all.

The official Most Haunted forum is really closing this time...hooray.

Hi everyone,

It is with sadness we announce the closure of our Most Haunted forum. Many of our forums have been running for several years and have proved hugely popular, resulting in close-knit communities and friendships being formed. Unfortunately, recent usage has declined, and due to this, we have made the difficult decision to close all Virgin Media forums on Tues 15th June...blah blah rhubarb chunter etc etc.

Some great thoughts on Conwaygate.

Thanks to BadPsychics for this. Here is a great audio summing up of Conwaygate

An oldie, but a goodie!

Despite happening five years ago I thought O'Keefe's celebrated exposure of Acorah probably deserves an honourable entry on the blog. All so called Spirit Mediums are conning somebody, whether it's self dillusion or intentionally hoodwinking the public, it's always a pleasure when one of their number is exposed. Follow the link for the full story.

O'Keefe ousts Acorah

New series begins

The new series of MH begins tomorrow on Living.  Hope to get some new footage of the team up to no good!

The Virgin forum stays open - yawn...

This forum is not being closed because its an offical most haunted forum and we have a billing contract agreement with anitx productions and living to keep it going although certain other forums will be shut.

I hope this clear things up

Michelle

Virgin.com

The official Most Haunted forum is closing down

Has the job of policing the forum become just too much for Virgin?  We here at Most Haunted - Faked? were tempted to ring the Virgin customer care line to find out, but didn't really fancy a marathon call to who knows which continent.  Anyway, here's their statement......

p.s. if you still want a place to chat about MH just drop me an email.  There's a great forum where you can find lots of old faces from the old place.



Hi everyone,
Due to decline in usage we have sadly taken the decision to close all Virgin Media forums week commencing 12th April.
We appreciate this may be disappointing news and apologise for any inconvenience. If you wish to continue conversations, debates and friendships elsewhere feel free to post links to other online communities.
Moving forward we're looking at ways to significantly improve user interaction and commenting across Virgin Media and hope to have new and better systems up and running soon.
We'd like to thank everyone for participating over the years, we appreciate your contributions and input.
If you wish to make a comment on the closure please email virginmedia@thecommunityhelpdesk.com
Best wishes
Virgin Media Community Team

More touching in the team

Another example of a Most Haunted team member carefully 'touching' another team member.  Gosh - they're a very loving touchy-feely lot aren't they!?
 

David Wells trying to con Yvette?

Here you will see David Wells lightly touching Yvette's hand during a ouija board session. Was he trying to convince Yvette she had been touched by a ghostie?  Very dodgy stuff.

Knock knock knocking on heavens door - part 2

Heres the same footage but with a little zoom technology employed.
If you haven't already you should probably view the un'zoomed' video just so it's clear what you're looking at. Click me.

Knock knock knocking on heavens door?

This video was taken from the recent Live in Prague.  It's been suggested by some that the person standing at the top of the stairs to the right is making the knocking sounds. You'll need to look closely at the persons hand nearest the wall and it may help to view the video in full screen mode. I'm not sure if theres anything dodgy going on here though.  It's one of those make your own mind up times.

The blog is ONE MONTH OLD!!

Well, the first month of Most Haunted - Faked? has flown by. The first few days were great.  It received between 60 and 80 hits per day - far more than I was expecting.   Then along came 'Conwaygate' and we were up to 300 hits per day.  Then, with the Live, we had an average of 1700 hits per day!!!!   In total we had 11,482 page views.  Amazing!

So, I just want to say........

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT GUYS N' GALS!!!!!

Welcome new visitors!

Just a very quick note to warmly welcome all of you who are new to this blog. Please take some time to browse through the site archive. Whether you're a Most Haunted believer or skeptic, I promise you, it will be worth your while. You'll find plenty of video that will, hopefully, give you food for thought. Most Haunted may not be all that it seems. 

Our Top 5 videos are here!

ps - also check out the Ofcom report. Click here to be enlightened

Most Haunted - Faked? Live chat is now online!

Want to discuss Most Haunted in real time without all the bother of a forum?  This is the place for you!.....well hopefully...if it works!  Follow this link or use the menu across the top of the page.

Note - In order to participate in the witty banter of sophisticated Most Haunted pundits, you'll need a user name.  Click 'Sign Up' and follow the instructions.  The process only takes a few minutes and is totally painless!

Believer's Corner - gathering dust.

I'm still waiting for the first submissions to Believers Corner.  Somebody out there must have some proof of Most Haunted finding paranormal activity!!??

Tantric magic failure!

Indian tantric guru attempts to kill skeptic with the power of his mind....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7067989.ece

Believer's Corner

Put away those EMF meters and motion sensors ;-) and take a peek into Believer's Corner!

You can use either this link or the menu running along the top of the blog.

More updates to Conwaygate!

Conwaygate is being updated regularly. Please keep checking back for updates!

Also, thought I'd better add a contents section to the page, as it's getting rather long!

Richard Felix on the reasons he left MH

Thanks Duck :-)

Conwaygate gets it's own page.

"Conwaygate" has now been given a page of it's very own!  As the story continues to rumble on I think it's taking up too much room on the blog. All my previous postings re Conwaygate can be found here.

"Conwaygate"

If you've not heard about Conwaygate....here's the condensed version..

• Chris Conway resigns from Most Haunted...not believing all activity is paranormal **SHOCK HORROR etc etc**
• Most Haunted team members respond...Chris responds..and so on..... 

Re-cap on the Ofcom report.

When watching Most Haunted or Most Haunted Live is always a good idea to bear the Ofcom report in mind. Here are some of the main findings of the report which need to be remembered.

• ....a programme produced for entertainment purposes. 
• ....despite what appears to be occasional assertions....that what viewers are witnessing is real.
• ....the audience is not necessarily in full possession of the facts.
• ....do not believe...these programmes could reasonably be described, in terms of the Code, as a ‘legitimate investigation’.

Click here to view the full report

Don't need to say anything here. There are no words....

Some people will believe anything.

 I sent my 'ghost' pic to a number of local newspapers. They all showed interest in the story and asked to interview me. Of course I owned up, but it just goes to show how easy it is to con people.

Lesson learnt

Never attempt to edit blog posts whilst under the influence of magic water. Invariably you will somehow manage to delete the post and much confusion will ensue. Gahhh!

Warning - Don't feed the Mediums!

Off air footage of Richard Felix feeding Del with names. Shameful.

Richard F: What about his name, Derek. Would that help you?
Derek A: .....it might...

MH capture a ghost?

Some people watching Most Haunted thought they witnessed a ghost in this footage. The White Lady of Maglite Hall maybe? ;-)
Look for the split screen section - bottom panel and about 30 seconds in. What do you think?
Send me your opinions by emailing me at mosthauntedfaked@googlemail.com

Yvette wins National Award!

Report may or may not have been plagiarised!!!! ;-)

The Throwing of the Coins

The Most Haunted team chat about Youtube and their mole problem!

Previously unseen footage!
Video of the team moaning about video of the team appearing on YouTube is now appearing on Youtube....if you catch my drift. Sweet!

Wise words indeed from Billy

A landmark!!!

150 hits in 2 days! Thats a record for any website of mine. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou! Huge thanks to everyone who has spread word of this blog over the interweb :-)

In tradtion with this blog, I've nicked someone else's video to celebate!

Not really cheating here....but funny as Karl realises he's had a crank call.

Stuart lobbing a glass and realising he's been caught.

I'm sure the spirits compelled him to do it, so it's ok  ;-)

badpsychics.co.uk

Check out the excellent Most Haunted section of Badpsychics.co.uk. And when you've done that check out the rest of the site. The website is fantastic!

http://badpsychics.co.uk/thefraudfiles/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=4&storynum=30

A better version of Yvette pushing a glass around.

Yvette : Did that move or was that me?
Team : (mumbles)erm....


For more videos like this check out TVisCOOL.com

Yvette kicking the crap out of a cupboard door and pretending to be shocked at the noise.

For more videos like this check out TVisCOOL.com

Cringeworthy TV on an Alan Partridge scale!

My favorite bit is when Yvette says "I heard the groan"....that would be the groans of everyone watching then? The Simpson's quote "She'll see through me like Grandma's underpants" springs to mind.



As an added bonus, heres the same footage with some appropriate background music. 

Responses to Yvette's interview

There's been some interesting responses to Yvette's last interview (link here for you reading pleasure) - in particular that she finds some of the forum posts horrendous, nasty, and hurtful. Follow the link to see responses to this from the VirginMedia Most Haunted forum. 

http://forums.virginmedia.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=vmlvhaunted&tid=15202 

Ofcom report - you really should read this....

Back in 2005, Ofcom published the following report - it's interesting reading when you consider it gave Most Haunted free reign to get away with anything they like.

 

 

Not in Breach

Most Haunted/Most Haunted Live
LIVINGtv, Various Dates, 2005

Introduction
Most Haunted/Most Haunted Live is an established series which takes a team of people into locations where, in the past, according to the programme, there have been allegations of haunting. The series is presented by Yvette Fielding (the production company’s co-owner) and a ‘celebrity’ psychic Derek Acorah. The production involves trying to film, or otherwise record, any paranormal activity. On occasions, the programme is presented as a live broadcast.
Before 25 July 2005 (when ex- ITC Programme Code was in force) 11 viewers complained about various aspects of the programme, suggesting that some of the paranormal elements have been contrived or otherwise pre-prepared. Their concerns were, in summary, that

• this was fraudulent practice;
• viewers were being deceived into thinking the events depicted were real; and
• there could be potential harm to susceptible or vulnerable viewers as a result.

Since 25 July 2005 when Ofcom’s own Broadcasting Code came into force, some viewers have continued to contact Ofcom with similar concerns about the programme.
Response
We asked LIVINGtv for a response and, in particular, to one such complaint which offered a summary of the types of complaints we have received and specifically claimed that parts of these programmes are “faked”.
The broadcaster stated that its programmes included an investigation team. This included: “Dr Ciaran O’Keefe, who is a lecturer at Liverpool Hope University and who has a particular interest in Parapsychology; Richard Felix - a ‘Paranormal Historian’; Richard Jones author and historian; Dr Matthew Smith – another lecturer in psychology at Liverpool Hope University; as well as a host of ‘lay people’ who accompany Derekand Yvette on their investigation.”
It accepts that it is not able to replicate laboratory conditions for, what it referred to, as “experiments”. The licensee stated that it did “not accept that there is any question to be answered in relation to the legitimacy of the programme or the investigations conducted”. However, it suggested that a decision as to what comprises legitimacy in this area of programming is “a question for Ofcom”.
LIVINGtv also argued that although the programme features “…many entertainment production conventions…it does indisputably retain an investigative element”.
Decision
It is not Ofcom’s role to decide whether paranormal activity exists, nor to promote or dismiss belief in the paranormal. Our role is to assess programmes such as Most Haunted/Most Haunted Live against the provisions of our Code.
The ex- ITC Programme Code (which was in force at the time of the original complaints) states that, “Demonstrations of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and similar practices are acceptable only when they are clearly and explicitly presented as entertainment, or when they are the subject of legitimate investigation”. When presented as an entertainment programme, the broadcaster should ensure that it is made clear that such activity is for entertainment purposes.
LIVINGtv is an entertainment channel. Ofcom has therefore taken this into account when reaching a view on the nature of the programming in question.
In relation to Most Haunted/Most Haunted Live, Ofcom has to consider whether or not this series of programmes overall could be described as a legitimate investigation or one that is broadcast for the purpose of entertainment.
If it were considered that this programme contained demonstrations in the context of a legitimate investigation, then allegations that elements are “faked” would be serious.
On reviewing the programmes themselves, we recognised that the series, amongst other things, often featured:

• a celebrity presenter in the studio;
• a studio audience;
• ‘over-dramatic’ responses by the presenters and production team to the events which occur;
• paranormal events occurring with regularity (for example, whenever a ‘live’ show is broadcast); and
• phone-ins.

These, along with the graphics, music, and night-vision camera sequences, all suggested a high degree of showmanship that puts it beyond what we believe to be a generally accepted understanding of what comprises a legitimate investigation.
Ofcom also recognised that, having established the programme over a number of series, it would now be clear to viewers that the intended purpose of these programmes was for entertainment.
On balance - taking into account the context of the programme itself and the presentation within the series - we consider that overall Most Haunted/Most Haunted Live should be taken to be a programme produced for entertainment purposes. This is despite what appears to be occasional assertions by the programme that what viewers are witnessing is real. As such this programme should be seen in the light of shows where techniques are used which mean the audience is not necessarily in full possession of the facts.
We consider that even though there is an element of a ‘scientific’ approach (e.g. the carrying out of so-called ‘experiments’ such as monitoring changes in room temperature) which adds to the entertainment factor of the programme, these are, as the broadcaster acknowledges, not carried out under laboratory conditions. We therefore do not believe that these programmes could reasonably be described, in terms of the Code, as a ‘legitimate investigation’.
In the specific context of these programmes therefore, which have been established and broadcast for over three years, we believe that they contain an appropriate degree of signposting which appears to make it clear to viewers that they are for entertainment purposes.
The programmes were not in breach of the Code
Note
The current Broadcasting Code states that, “If a demonstration of…the paranormal…is for entertainment purposes, this must be made clear to viewers and listeners”. However, the Code does not describe how this may be achieved.
In cases such as these, ensuring that it is clear to viewers whether or not a programme is intended for entertainment purposes can be a fine judgement. Broadcasters should therefore be prepared to demonstrate how they have made clear to the audience the purpose of the programme and seek appropriate advice where necessary.

Yvette's latest interview

http://www.denofgeek.com/television/430426/yvette_fielding_interview_most_haunted_blue_peter_and_zombies.html

"In the early days I used to visit all the forums and fan sites to see what the fans wanted - you got criticism but it came with ideas, like, "This is what we don't like but here's how to make it better, here's what you could do." Then I stopped for a while, but recently I've been visiting the forums again and it's all abuse and it's so upsetting. I'm not going to bother if all they have to say is horrendous, nasty, hurtful things."

If you can't stand the heat Yvette, get out of the kitchen.  I'm sure you find great comfort in the millionaire lifestyle you lead.

It's easy to fake a ghost pic!

This took half and hour to get together. OK, it may not stand up to close inspection...but people who believe in this stuff aren't looking to scrutinise.  Most will simply accept what evers put before them as true. Thinking about it....it's a lot like religion.

My own fake ghost pic.

I was inspired by an article regarding fake ghost pics. Could I  create my own ghostly pic?  This was fun to do and only took my 5 minutes.  I think I could do much better given more time.

Great work by www.badghosts.co.uk!!!!!

 http://badpsychics.co.uk/thefraudfiles/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1182

Yvette trying to push a glass

Note to Yvette - next time you try to push a glass, don't wear gloves!

Yvette making a ghostly moan.

The camera almost misses this...but not quite! Unlucky Yvette!

To catch a medium.

"Respected" medium caught out in Australia!

A great story here from Aus.  Think I may try faking a few photos of my own to catch out a few local mediums.

Ok - so this isn't Most Haunted fakery....but it's funny stuff. Enjoy!

Yvette caught pushing a table

Watch the table cloth bunching under the preasure from Yvettes fingers as she rocks the table to and fro.

Good old christians. Always good for a laugh!

“Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay ‘Rock and Minerals’ but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.”

We can't always trust what we see!

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/etc/100217-when-does-otter-look-like-drowning-man.html

Catholic church changes the rules (I know this is old news from a few years back)

I remember this quote appearing in Viz magazine a few years ago. Made me laugh.

"The Pope has recently announced that he is going to drop the Catholic idea of Limbo because 'it is a theological hypothesis'. What, a bit like God then?"

haha - nice