Skeptomania - Paranormal / UFOs, etc.

Raven · Google Meister

I was just watching the Euro Ghost Hunters from earlier in the week and they had the classic video camera battery drain. When they mentioned this to the care taker of the place, he mentioned that many people have claimed the same thing before.
So, let's say this is true, what could cause it? If it was just them, I would go ahead and jump to the basic rechargeable-battery malfunction—if a rechargeable battery gets over used and old, the charge never really gets completely full anymore despite what the charger may read, and results in quick drain. That answer would really work if it's many different people in the same general place, it's of course possible, but the level of coincidence makes it significantly improbable. So, is there anything environmental that could affect a rechargeable battery that might be in an Irish castle open and set up for tourists? EMF, temperature, etc?

I'll obviously be doing my own googling research on this, but I thought it'd be interesting to bounce this off everyone else too...

Skydiver

Possibly the polarization in the area, being that the castle is made of natural stone, stone sometimes had ore in it and many ore's have polarization or reverse polarization. You can magnetize some ore's like iron simply by striking them with steel.

Or a Leprechaun comes in at night and talks on your phone all night and kills the batteries, those are mischievous little fuckers...

Gren · God Of Oreos

"I was just watching the Euro Ghost Hunters from earlier in the week and they had the classic video camera battery drain. When they mentioned this to the care taker of the place, he mentioned that many people have claimed the same thing before."

Point 1 - Should we trust the word ("many people have claimed the same thing before") of a care taker whose living depends on tourism and the 'haunted' reputation of the place?

Point 2 - How many is "many"? Camera battery drains are common, so what's the significance, if any? It's an insignificant event unless it happens to a ghost hunter team, in other words, events common to all others become significant if they happen to ghost hunters? How many tourists pass through with video cameras? What's the expected normal incidence frequency for camera battery drain? How many of these claimed drains involved cameras manufactured for electrical systems other than the European model?

"So, let's say this is true, what could cause it? If it was just them, I would go ahead and jump to the basic rechargeable-battery malfunction—if a rechargeable battery gets over used and old, the charge never really gets completely full anymore despite what the charger may read, and results in quick drain."

Answered your own question, plus there are other possibilities.

"That answer would really work if it's many different people in the same general place, it's of course possible, but the level of coincidence makes it significantly improbable."

Explain how you calculated the 'level of coincidence' without any data on how often camera battery malfunctions occur, and how that translates into being 'significantly improbable.'

"So, is there anything environmental that could affect a rechargeable battery that might be in an Irish castle open and set up for tourists? EMF, temperature, etc?"

That's an arbitrarily arrived at narrowing of possibilities. There is nothing mysterious about a camera battery malfunction. Anyone who owns a camera for very long has experienced it.

What happened when they replaced or properly recharged the battery? Were they then able to proceed? In that they had a full show, I'm guessing they went right on with it without further problems. Isn't that the expected outcome when you've experienced a common, non-paranormal camera battery malfunction?

I'm not seeing any mystery requiring explanation......

asmodee

The most obvious thing here that seems to have been overlooked is that, while many people may have reported having batteries drained, many more did not. Our brains are wired to only see the odd things. If someone says to you, "Batteries being drained are a sign of presence", you are going to notice EVERY dead battery. You'll pay no attention at all to any battery which did not die or seemed, in your estimation, to last an expected amount of time. But what is the "expected amount of time"? What's the first thing you do when you get on site at a ghost hunt? Hell, even before, on the ride over. You work yourself up. You get yourself excited about what you may see. You get "into the hunt". It's a form of meditation, much like prayers. Your mind is altered before you even get there. The passage of time may not be perceived as it normally would. Also, you have spend the last couple of hours priming your mind for what you expect to find, see or experience. You'll notice every bump in the night which matches your expectations.

The short explanation, it's just a dead battery or a malfunctioning piece of equipment. When EVERY battery in EVERY piece of equipment fails at the same time, then maybe you need to look into environmental issues.

Yaish · Intel Chief

And while camera's are on thing, if cell phones are ever part of equation that's a real easy one.

Castle = thick stone walls. Quite likely in the country side too, probably not too near a cell phone tower. The phone has to ramp up power to maintain connection with the network, thereby draining the battery.

Quite often when I am on site at some of my hospitals, where the location of the office blocks cell phone reception my phone will lose most of its charge in a couple of hours.

But beyond that, batteries die. Unless there is something not mentioned I don't really see a mystery.

Raven · Google Meister

Yaish · Intel Chief

Batteries can die for any number of reasons. First of course may simply be manufacture, the battery may be bad from the factory. This is actually pretty common in aftermarket batteries that have not been made to exacting standards. They may work alright for a while, until the effects of the poor manufacturing accumulate and then the battery can either discharge or even catch on fire from an uncontrolled reaction.

Batteries can also be damaged during the charging process, either from spikes in voltage, improper voltage, or the battery just reaching the end of it's projected life. You won't really see a protracted period of shortened life, it will suddenly and rather rapidly go bad and not hold a charge for very long.

asmodee

Okay, so what you're saying is to assume that there is an unusual amount of drained batteries in a certain area and you want to know what could be causing it, correct? Ignore the fact that the reports may be skewed or misunderstood and go straight to technical possibilities, if I am reading you right.

Well, localized humidity could play a big role. Porous rock such as limestone can often be saturated with water, which could evaporate out and cause the humidity to rise in relatively isolated pockets, I suppose. That's total conjecture as I am not a meteorologist or geologist. Humidity can definitely affect electronics. I seem to remember seeing one such episode on TV where, when they left the area, the battery was fine again. This suggests that the paranormal "theory" (I cringe every time I have to use that term to describe wild speculation) is incorrect as that "theory" states that the entity is drawing power to manifest itself. If power is "drawn", it will certainly not be available for more pictures when you leave the area. Consequently, the high humidity due to moisture in the walls could also bread mold and fungus spores, some of which are capable of mind-altering affects which could be misconstrued as a paranormal experience.

To give any real answer to this I would need to perform some type of study. I would need to identify an area where this was s supposed common occurrence and take in batteries of different types and known charges, some in various equipment with known discharge rates and some not in equipment and run charge tests at regular intervals. Any battery draining would have to be duplicated in more than one device and on more than one battery to indicate even the possibility that anything unusual was happening.

This is precisely what bugs me about paranormal investigation. This test certainly qualifies as repeatable. IF something is going on, you may not be able to make it happen on cue, but you can perform a perfectly scientific test to show, first, that something unusual IS happening and, second, what the conditions are just prior to, during and just after the unusual occurrence. But investigators don't want data, they only want "evidence". That is why investigations are for 1 or 2 nights (long enough to get the "personal experiences" that drive the investigators) and not for months or years (long enough to get relevant data which will more likely than not disillusion the investigator). To the investigator, only that which they can't explain is interesting. Personally, I think a battery killing field being created from the scientific study of such supposed phenomena is far more interesting...at least until the guy you use it on has a camera AND a pacemaker...

GSpoon

well my first thought is simple. people on vacation tend to not pay attention to the amount of battery they have. Most video batteries get about 2-2.5 hours run time, not just record time. Say they put a new one in that morning and take some footage of the outside, more inside, take the tour, the camera is on even if they are not using it all the time, and then you get to a certain part of the tour and bam it is dead even though it is a "fresh" battery.

also even if they do cut the camera off between filming, then the battery runs down but funny thing is the battery indicator tends to always read full charge when you start it back up even when it is not. You look, it reads full and 5 minutes later t it goes dead.

also, batteries will die over time even if they are not used. You pop in a battery that you charged a week ago but have not used it reads full charge and 10-20 minutes later it is dead.

Battery failure is not all that common but it does happen and does so more in different brands. JVC tends to die quickly. Canon gives you a slighty longer life than the battery claims and sony batteries can go any where from 1.5 to 14.5 hours depending on the battery.

of course to really look at this we would have to know how many people claim to have expirenced it happen and when it happens, how many people go through the castle each year, what kind of camera they have and what kind of battery, approximation of how long they have recorded, when was the last time they charged, and we would have to campare it to how many times the camera goes bad in other parts of the castle.

Skydiver

I still like the Leprechaun theory...

Gren · God Of Oreos

Yes, Raven, if you twist things sufficiently and make unwarranted assumptions, and go down only those pathways that turn the mundane into the paranormal, etc.... yes, lol.

Besides, there's another consideration that kills any mystery mongering (and please don't pretend about a camera malfunction being the mystery - you've posted it in the Paranormal forum, not the Science & Tech forum).

1) This is a camera used by a ghost hunting team on ghost hunts.

2) All cameras will malfunction sooner or later.

3) When their camera eventually malfunctions, what are the odds it will be during a ghost hunting? Near to 100%. But, the malfunction is inevitable. It would be closer to a 'paranormal' event, an anomaly, if their cameras didn't malfunction once in a while.