Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost Video Mystery Solved

Albuquerque, N.M. (June 22, 2007)—Benjamin Radford, an investigator with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a non-profit educational organization, has identified a mysterious glowing “ghost” that showed up on a security camera June 15, 2007 at a courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The “ghost video” has been seen more than 80,000 times on the YouTube Web site and became an international story.

Viewers and bloggers swapped ideas about what it might be, including a ghost, a video glitch, a hoax, or a spider, or even a reflection from a passing car. There were plenty of such ideas, but few facts.

“A lot of people said it was a ghost or spirit or something paranormal,” Radford said. “But before you call something ‘unexplained,’ you have to eliminate the most likely known, natural explanations.” Radford traveled to Santa Fe to seek the facts. After two days of on-site investigation, Radford showed that the YouTube star was—as some had suspected but no one had proven—a lowly bug.

“It takes no effort at all to come up with a list of possibilities, such as a reflection or an insect. But actually proving that one or the other could create the ghost image is a whole different matter; that takes real investigation to come to a definitive answer. Part of the job of an investigator is to separate the probable from the possible.”

“The label ‘ghost’ is often used as a catch-all answer for anything considered odd or strange, and images like this are among the most common types of evidence offered for ghosts,” Radford said. “Unfortunately, they are also the weakest; there's not whole lot you can definitively conclude from a photo or short video clip.”

Radford conducted two sets of experiments with the surveillance camera at the courthouse in an attempt to recreate the apparition. He used various substances, including floating cotton from a cottonwood tree and insects, to determine what might have caused the ghostly image. The cottonwood experiments were inconclusive, but the bug theory was right on target: Radford exactly duplicated the mysterious ghostly image on the surveillance monitor, down to its color, size, shape, and movement.

Courthouse personnel who saw the recreated video footage agreed that the case was solved. Said deputy John Lucero, “I’m convinced it was a bug.”

Radford, along with CSI Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell, is among the world’s top scientific paranormal investigators. “Just because something seems mysterious or unusual doesn’t mean there isn’t a good scientific explanation if you look hard enough,” Radford said. A detailed report on Radford’s investigation of the Santa Fe ghost will appear in the September/October issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

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