Do Home Surveillance Cameras Double as Ghost Detectors?

If there’s a strange ghostly anomaly terrorizing your camera, who you gonna call? No one, because ghosts don’t exist. Despite the mountain of videos on the internet pointing the other way, the truth is that all the CCTV footage and found camcorder clips with otherworldly visions are either fake or the result of poor equipment quality.

There are two distinct groups: the first involves tampered footage where people photoshop images or edit the video in order to create an illusion, while the second utilizes practical stunts to trick the viewer into believing there is an invisible poltergeist in the building. Luckily it only takes a little know-how to debunk these pranks and con jobs.

Faking a visitor from beyond

Have you ever wondered why all spooked videos have such poor quality? For one, the crappy aesthetic lends an authentic vibe to the footage, as if it were affected by the anomaly’s presence. But most importantly, low-resolution feeds are harder to analyze; the pranksters are using low-end cameras so that the video cannot be enlarged to properly detect small details such as wires that might move, the objects or hands shaking that are the cabinets from the side and the like. Others use heat or night vision modes of a camera to replicate the presence of a ghostly being. The truth is, camera tricks are almost as old as film making itself, yet many people fall for them to this very day.

Most common reasons behind the effect

Of course, a ‘ghost’ can be easily spotted by one of your own cameras, taking the form of strange light particles, moving blobs of transparent shapes, and even showing signs of teleportation. But fear not, there is a rational explanation for everything. Let’s take lens flare as an example: when a small cone of light is shined directly at the lens – instead of the dedicated sensor – the camera produces a wall of light resembling a will-o’-wisp. Lens flare might be the result of nearby car’s headlights or the neighboring kid shining an LED light at the camera.

CCTV feeds often display phasing shapes at the side of the screen too, which can be either a smear or transparent object like a spider’s web. The giveaway behind this is that with a smudge the ‘ghost’ will appear out of focus. Motion sensitive cameras would be able to focus on an object if it were in the foreground, but if the anomaly remains blurry throughout the footage then it’s certain to be something on the lens. Lastly, your home may well be overrun by specters if the recorder’s shutter speed is slow or the DNR/DWDR is too high, since this affect blends frames together to make moving objects look ethereal.

Fixing your occult recorder

So let’s say your camera has a nasty habit of portraying otherworldly phenomenon on the footage. It’s either cursed or poorly set up. If you think it’s the former then call an exorcist, but the chances are high that the issue can be solved with a little fiddling in the settings or by purchasing a low-cost add-on. For example, installing a hood could eliminate any annoying lens flare and therefore increase the quality of the footage by a large margin. You should also clean the lenses on a regular basis; it’s a no-brainer yet many homeowners forget to tend to their equipment.

One important thing to consider is that the camera is equipped with a high-quality resolution. It’s important to think about the cables, too, since looping, weathered wires may very well damage the recorded video or mess with the stored frames. And finally, adjust the shutter speed and change the DNR/DWDR settings. This could be quite a messy business as you will need to manually disable and re-enable each of them to experience the best results, but the effort is worth it if you want a ghost-free camera.