Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files premiers tonight (Thursday, July 15th) on Syfy. SciFiChick.com was able to participate in a conference call with stars Ben Hansen (team leader and former FBI agent), Bill Murphy (lead scientist and investigator) and Executive Producer John Brenkus.
Here are some Q&A highlights from the call:
Today, someone with their own software can fake UFO and paranormal events. How much do you scrutinize to determine if you’re investigating a hoax?
Bill Murphy: …If you kind of know the software and you know how it’s done, spotting it really isn’t too difficult. There’s some pretty sophisticated material out there. And a lot of times it isn’t for the intention that somebody would create it just to deceive others.
But sometimes you have an artist that wants to put his work out there and gauge the response of the public as to you know how good he is modeled the object. And that’s okay that people do that, you know they may create UFOs, but there are UFO’s over Haiti models that you know kind of sparked this whole new wave of irregular shaped UFOs have been a lot of fun to look at.
But you know you can spot things. It’s how much time somebody wants to take in creating it is up to that person. Most people that put them out there are going to be students or they’re going to be you know somebody that’s trying to break into the field.
And they will spend a reasonable amount of time to create it and there will be flaws that you can spot whether its flaws in the composite or flaws in you know shadow placement. You know there are things that you can kind of pick up on fairly quickly.
What’s the challenge with the tools you have in the field to spot something that could be faked?
Bill Murphy: Okay, well one of the criteria that we have… is a strong eye witness. And so if there are multiple witnesses, and in some cases that we’ve investigated, you know many, many dozens of witnesses. And that makes for a really strong case because you’re talking about something that is not just a piece of video, that a service with the person who – where they shot it but something that you know physically is there that other witnesses have come forth and said they’ve seen.
And there could be 911 calls or news reports or you know whatever it takes, reporting an object or a sighting or some sort of event that’s happened. And those are strong cases, so the video is bolstered by multiple eye witnesses or if there are limited eye witnesses then there’s a credibility you have to look at.
You know what are the motivations for this video being posted and if we get there we really don’t pull any punches to try to replicate the video. So the challenges are something that I don’t think we’ve had stop us. Generally we try to stop at nothing once we’re there to demystify the video. I mean we stop at nothing. Really extreme stuff and it’s a lot of fun.
John Brenkus: Yeah, let me just jump in real quick. I think in terms of you know thinking that someone just created the clip you know on their computer, that’s part of the debate and discussion, well is it someone who just created an effect. Because we’re all at this point, the audience is pretty savvy at being able to spot it. So the three criteria that we have set up, is the footage actually compelling? You know, does it have credible eye witnesses and it is something that can be testable eliminates a lot of cases that you say well it was just created on a PC.
I think you know the people behind this show and the audience look at these clips in an intelligent manner. I think that what you’ll see is the cases that we investigate aren’t ones that you just automatically say well it must be CG. Because it doesn’t get that far in our process if you can eliminate it that quickly.
Ben Hansen: And then let me add to what Bill’s saying. When we do come up against those cases that are very difficult, either they’re done very well in CG, we’re just not sure, that’s where I like to use my experience and focus on the poster or the witness who shot this video or provided this photo.
Because for me it’s a lot easier sometimes to find the signs of deception through the person themselves and you know with my experience, I’ve conducted thousands of forensic interviews. And on the show it’s no exception. I like to you know isolate the witness and use the neutral questions and everything that I would do in a real you know criminal investigation.
And try to see if there’s deception there and more likely than not when people are pinned down and asked you know if they faked something, most people are not good liars. You know so I rely more on that, Bill usually heads up the clarification of images and things like that, I focus on the human aspect.
What really makes this show special? Why did you want to get involved in it?
John Brenkus: I think that what’s interesting is that Syfy is a network that we feel is the most credible network to explore this sort of thing. We really, from a production standpoint, we really like the fact that the Syfy audience is very intelligent. So we’re not looking to just make a sensational show and to blow things out of proportion and just to tell everybody that the aliens are here or that this place is absolutely haunted.
We feel that the audience is extraordinarily intelligent and this is an intelligent show and really an intellectual approach to what fascinates everybody. And tapping into what most people do with these paranormal clips, they click around, they look at them, they really wonder. But they don’t have the resources to be able to go out and actually test is it real or is it fake? That’s what’s really appealing to us, that we can take over where the audiences left off.
Bill Murphy: I’m just going to comment quickly about what really attracted me to the show. First off, I should state that Ben and I had been operating in the same circles for years. And so when Ben and I met we developed a very quick rapport and we realized we’re on the same page but maybe you know taking it from different angles.
You know Ben’s formal experience has been in law enforcement. Myself, I’ve been involved in the paranormal for a couple of decades; it kind of goes way back with my family. And with my family and growing up as a child with it was very skeptical. It was almost like you know I’m listening to the older folks talk about the tales and you know just about sort of skipped through it without necessarily putting a whole lot of weight into it.
Until I got old enough to see that these things were kind of going on around us but I wasn’t satisfied with just hearing the tales nor was I satisfied with what I thought my own perceptions were. I thought I needed to be able to validate these experiences through technology. And so you know I set about to begin the documentation process.
So when Ben and I met and we spoke it was just like instant connection. And so I felt that this opportunity for me was a really good fit because I had been the skeptical believer you know if you will. And sometimes that isn’t a popular position to take when you’re entrenched in the paranormal community. The community looks for gratification from evidence but is it the evidence of the paranormal? Is it misidentification? Is there an explanation that science more readily accepts? Well this show takes a look at all those things and all those possibilities and we come up with the best possible answer.
Ben Hansen: All right, well going off what Bill’s talking about I think we make a great kind of dynamic duo the two of us because of our two backgrounds. I believe that there are things you know going on in our world that many people, especially in the scientific community will look at as anomalous and when they say anomalous to some that means it does not deserve or merit investigation or exploration.
Within science you have theories that are tested; some of them you know have been accepted for hundreds of years. Anything that comes along that is an exception to that rule, it’s not met with I guess open arms a lot of times. But if we look at the polls of studies that have been done, surveys as far as how many people have experienced some type of paranormal event you know in very minimal estimates one out of every ten people there was a Roper poll done, one out of every ten people has experienced or said that they’ve had some type of event that could be classified as paranormal.
And I believe the numbers are about the same for having witnessed a UFO. So you know we listen to tapes where so many people have access to video cameras, cell phone cameras, technology that I’m not quite sure if there’s a proliferation of these events or it’s just that we now have technology to be able to transmit them to others. But something very real is going on. And I am just really excited to be part of a TV show that at the very least we can just kind of stimulate you know some questions, get the subject out there even more.
And just you know try especially to get the scientific community to look at it as something that really merits further looking into in a very serious respect. And sometimes science is not the best I guess vehicle even to study these types of things because they’re so elusive. So there may be other ways of looking at it as well.
About the show:
Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files revolutionizes paranormal programming by investigating the evidence witnesses post on the Internet every day. Have you ever seen a photo or video online and wondered, “Is this real?” This is the show that will answer that question.
Heading up the Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files team is Ben Hansen, a former FBI agent with a life-long fascination with the paranormal. Now, having left the agency, he leads a young team of intrepid investigators who will convene to dissect the latest unusual images and decide whether they merit further investigation. Grainy videos will be brought to life as the team conducts thorough and elaborate experiments in an attempt to recreate the phenomena, and Ben will make the final choice which cases will require a trip into the field.
Once an investigation is underway, the team will talk to witnesses, carry out experiments using the latest in high tech detection devices, collect physical samples, and determine whether a case should be debunked, or whether it’s a baffling paranormal mystery that might even put the team in danger. It’s all in a day’s work for the dogged investigators of Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files.
Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files premiers tonight on Syfy at 10/9c. For more info, check out http://www.syfy.com/factorfaked/
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