What are your perfect investigation tools?

I have just finished watching the TV series Finding Bigfoot and Fact or Faked and it seems that there are a number of fairly standard devices investigators need when investigating this kind of thing (and also ghosties and energy patterns too)

It would be good to share where we have found useful devices and what equipment we find useful in these situations.

I am sure that there are members who can and do make their own electronic circuits for these kind of devices. With the Arduino and Rasberry Pi so cheap these days, we can almost have what we want as far as cameras go, as well as various chip/semiconductor sensors to hook up to them.

I have a feeling that some of these beings we are investigating can see into the IR spectrum or possibly UV end too. This means that having an IR camera with IR leds flooding the place with light "waiting to catch any movement" is pretty useless. It would be like advertising the place where I had a camera all set up.

I would not want to go into a floodlighted area to have my picture taken if I was a bigfoot or mothman.

So, suggestions as to what are good devices and equipment to use when out looking for Bigfoot, Mothman, the Beast of Dartmoor, Nessie, paranormal investigations, hauntings, whatever, etc

Cameras
============
IR/low light camera (without/with movement tracking)
Thermal heat signature camera

Normal low light level cameras to set up around the area being investigated
fixed still cameras which capture motion within range
camera monitoring equipment or laptop PCs

electro magnetic field (EMF) meters with buzzers/meters/leds
EVP recorder (how does this differ from a normal dictation machine?)
see-in-the-dark binocs (light enhancing)

Serious high beam torches
parabolic reflector plus microphone plus recording equipment
Sonar
underwater acoustic microphone
temperature meters/thermometers
laser distance reader

Others
=========
other meters?
other cameras?
other devices?

Things to try
===============
polarising filters
filters of different wavelengths
static electricity meters
more?

2 packs of Camel Wides a bottle of SoCo and 1 dozen glazed donuts.

Originally posted by zonetripper2065
2 packs of Camel Wides a bottle of SoCo and 1 dozen glazed donuts.

SoCo and glazed donuts... you just made my stomach hurt lol.

2 packs of Camel Wides and I won't be able to outrun Bigfoot!

PKE (Psycho Kinetic Energy) Meter

You also need a team of people that will periodically say stuff like:

"Did you feel that?! I swear something was touching me!"
"OMG did you hear that?"
"What was that? Did you see that?"

Additionally, anyone and everyone in your team needs to be trained to film with the worst possible equipment while amped up on as much caffeine as possible for maximum hand shake, and by no means should they be allowed to film anything for more than 15 seconds without freaking out and running away in a melodramatic panic.




On the serious side, if you're going to do serious investigation with complete scientific objectivity, then, get the best equipment possible.
A Canon 1Dx DSLR camera will cost you about $10,000 just for the camera body without any lenses. The professional grade lenses will cost about $1500 + 4000 each.
A professional grade video camera will cost about the same, but they can be even more expensive. You can mitigate cost by going with same name brand professional video camera as DSLR where both can use/swap out the same lenses.

That's about $25,000 for one Professional grade Camera, and Video Camera together.

If you go for cheap consumer level Walmart equipment, you're going to get cheap equipment effects that can contaminate your data with false positives.

If you just want to produce results to validate your belief with zero actual interest in being objective, then, you can pick up a cheap abused 35mm film camera at any pawn shop, bang it around a bit just for good measure where some good light leaks might be produced in the casing, and ensure the lens is some cheap ancient spotty thing with plastic casing and a few minor scratches on the glass and you'll get loads and loads and loads of really cool effects that you can peddle off as being "REAL" ghosts, aliens, or whatever.
You can do the same with disposable film cameras; abuse the hell out them before use, dip them in water, toss them in the oven for a minute or two, then the freezer, bury in your yard for a day or two, and once properly abused, interesting effects will show up as a result of the abuse.

reply to post by retirednature


hahaha I'm nasty, I figured he might enjoy sharing a traditional meal of my people.(the hickabilly).

interesting effects will show up as a result of the abuse

Thats all very interesting but where is the place for the serious amateur investigation team? Do you honestly think that a large digital camera hauled over rough terrain and up and down mountains and across streams and rivers will be useful piece of scientific equipment after all that? No, I dont either.

Cameras these days are far better than they were 10 years ago and science was still being done then. My small digital camera has 14million pixels and anti-shake technology which good old scientists never had in the past. What say you to that? Why the negative "If its not done by a scientist with the best equipment, it cannot be valid" attitude I wonder?

Ok, so I guess we need a good megapixel camera which can be shoved into a pocket and protected from abuse.

Originally posted by Druscilla
PKE (Psycho Kinetic Energy) Meter
On the serious side, if you're going to do serious investigation with complete scientific objectivity, then, get the best equipment possible.
A Canon 1Dx DSLR camera will cost you about $10,000 just for the camera body without any lenses. The professional grade lenses will cost about $1500 + 4000 each.
A professional grade video camera will cost about the same, but they can be even more expensive. You can mitigate cost by going with same name brand professional video camera as DSLR where both can use/swap out the same lenses.

That's about $25,000 for one Professional grade Camera, and Video Camera together.

edit on 27-3-2013 by Druscilla because: (no reason given)

Here comes the technological obstacle course with these exotic targets: UFO signals can scramble any electronic signal recording device. Poltergeists can break your fancy equipment. Agencies can pop in and confiscate your goodies. I've had that happen before; I had camera recording on my encrypted computer and someone from government agency got their hands on it, tried hacking it, wiping everything out in the process. So you could have a million dollars of equipment, and what you can't buy is opportunity to be a witness to something. Even with all that, stuff gets stolen and broken. And even if you had the super fantastic real shots, you'll get an army of disbelievers and critics saying faaake.

Maybe if you had a business solely for woo woo topic coverage it would be worth an investment. If money is plentiful in your universe get all the tools of any detective. Special lighting, containers for finds, plaster for bigfoot footprints, a helicopter for flying over crop circles. All terrain vehicle for driving off road. Some sort of suitcase frequency scanner.

I'd rather get a waterproof hands-free sport camera, maybe two, with extra batteries, a tripod or stick for it. Then a lens that can see far away. Something you aren't afraid to lose. For UFOs I'd want one of the latest affordable night vision goggles, to see infrared and other details. Get a medium for recording your experience in words. It could be a clipboard with paper forms, it could be a spreadsheet program on your computer.

There is nothing wrong with a button camera in the right states for getting information from people who would be camera shy when it comes to talking about potentially embarrassing things.

You need a phone and an attorney, in case you cross boundaries somewhere or get into trouble. A portfolio of your investigations does a lot to support your activities, to keep you out of the nuthouse when the cops ask you what you're doing in a forest or a desert somewhere with a big camera. Or you could just have an alternative story that you aren't after the chemtrails or the UFO, but it's for nature photography or a class project on ecology.

I design electronics for a living. Due to my love for nature and the outdoors many of the devices I design have to do with wildlife research and I spend a lot of the time with wildlife in the field testing and running the equipment and training others to use it. In the winter, to change things up a bit, I do wildlife surveys which mainly consists of identifing animal tracks, behavior, and other sign. I guess I would have the ideal skill set and tool kit for cryptozoology.

Here is my advice. It is probably not quite what you are asking for but it is relevant. One of the most important tools is the knowledge of nature in your research area so that you can detect the unusual and discriminate it from the usual. Take a wildlife tracking course and learn to identify animal tracks, prints and other sign. Learn how to read the story that animals lay down as they go about their daily activities. When you know what is normal you will be able to notice things that are out of place.

I will give you my own recent "cryptozoology" example. My town is not known to have raccoons. There has been the occasional unconfirmed sighting over the years but that is it. In November I was hiking through one of my towns protected natural areas when I noticed a track that I didn't recognize as native to the area. I took photos of the print, rotation, track pattern, and the local habitat. I carry a tiny tape measure on my key chain for identifying animal tracks and I photographed the important measurements; print length and width, center straddle, stride length, weight vs depth, etc. I did what I could to identify the track myself and then for conformation, presented the photos to the company that trained me. What I produced is undeniable evidence that raccoons now exist in my town. I have not seen raccoon tracks since and if I had not had the knowledge to notice that something did not fit the area it would have been opportunity missed.

I also recommend that you attend your local nature organization meetings and join them on field trips. Learn what animals are expected in your research area so that you can trigger on what doesn't fit. Learn animal behavior. Knowing things such as what habitats a particular animal resides in or if an animal is diurnal, crepuscular or nocturnal can provide key diagnostics. The more you are familiar with what really goes on in nature the more powerful your research will be.

When you are not knowledgeable about nature then everything that goes bump in the night is a potential cryptoid and you will just produce false hits like every other armchair expert out there. There is nothing more damaging to the field and to your reputation than not recognizing something for what it obviously is and having those in the know see your mistake. Don't be that person to claim that there is a monkey in an Aspen forest when you hear a Piliated woodpecker call.

Originally posted by qmantoo

interesting effects will show up as a result of the abuse

Thats all very interesting but where is the place for the serious amateur investigation team? Do you honestly think that a large digital camera hauled over rough terrain and up and down mountains and across streams and rivers will be useful piece of scientific equipment after all that? No, I dont either.

Cameras these days are far better than they were 10 years ago and science was still being done then. My small digital camera has 14million pixels and anti-shake technology which good old scientists never had in the past. What say you to that? Why the negative "If its not done by a scientist with the best equipment, it cannot be valid" attitude I wonder?

Ok, so I guess we need a good megapixel camera which can be shoved into a pocket and protected from abuse.

I beg to differ on some of your statements.
When it comes to wilderness and nature photography where one spends thousands of $ on equipment, that equipment is looked after with care, and carried in protective containers until used.
It's not dragged over rugged terrain out of case, and abused. Yes, this very expensive equipment is indeed taken all over the place; up and down mountains, across streams and rivers, rain forests, deserts, and every condition imaginable on the planet. What do you think the photographers of National Geographic use? They use the best professional level equipment because they're expected to achieve Professional level results..
Meet the Snow Leopard:

The snow leopard is one of the most elusive and rare of all large animals left in the wild.
Does the photo above look blurry? Hazy? Ambiguous? Blobby?
No. that photo was taken using Professional grade equipment by someone who knew what they were doing.

Wildlife photographers pursuing a chance to photograph the rare and elusive snow leopard will spend weeks if not a couple months in the bush, waiting patiently in a blind for the chance to get a shot like above.

It's one of the rarest and elusive large animals, yet, also, for some reason, we have hundreds of specimens in zoos around the world.


As far as equipment goes, if you buy cheap, you're going to get cheap.
Buy at Walmart, and you'll get results that one would expect from Walmart.
Hunting sasquatch, you'll get a blobsquatch every single time, courtesy of Walmart, or whatever consumer-level crap-grade equipment it is

reply to post by qmantoo


If looking for ghosts or beings that exist between frequencies, I believe that all these High Definition, Digital Cameras, Camcorders and Sound Recorders are terrible for detecting such things.

Consider this:
Why is a digital device considered better quality than analog when it comes to sharpness and clearness of video and audio?

It's because a digital (meaning 2 states; on/off, 1/0) device does not record the full spectrum of the light and sound frequency wave. It uses samples of tones and colors to replicate what is being observed and by using higher sample rates the closer it is to the true wave. Thus the quality seems better because it cuts out a lot of the junk data like static and frequencies that can't be seen or heard by humans.

Diagram showing Analog wave vs Digital wave:




Let's use a jpg or bitmap picture taken from a digital camera for instance: When your looking at the picture it seems true to life and more so with higher Megabits (bitrates), however if you zoom in all the way, you will eventually get to the pixel which is only a sample of color/tone that is used as a mosaic to give you the effect that you are seeing a true picture. This means that you could reassemble any picture if you knew where and what color pixel to put in a particular spot. The same is applied when it comes to sound. Instead of pixels it uses tones to synthesize a voice or instrument. The result is not the true recorded wave, but a synthesized one, an illusion.

This however has a down side when you want to observed the entirety of a frequency especially when many believe that ghost and other paranormal entities exists or at least can be observed in between our conceivable frequencies. Think about the movie "Poltergeist" with the little girl communicating through the static television, though it is a fictional movie, I think they were on to something.

I personally think that the use of polaroid or other analog device would do a far better job obtaining evidence of the paranormal for they do a better job at recording the actual sound and light waves which includes the static and disturbance the investigator should be looking for.

reply to post by Druscilla

You also need a team of people that will periodically say stuff like:

"Did you feel that?! I swear something was touching me!"
"OMG did you hear that?"
"What was that? Did you see that?"
Additionally, anyone and everyone in your team needs to be trained to film with the worst possible equipment while amped up on as much caffeine as possible for maximum hand shake, and by no means should they be allowed to film anything for more than 15 seconds without freaking out and running away in a melodramatic panic.

And Erin Ryder. You forgot Erin Ryder!

So perhaps it looks as if a pseudo random noise generator would be a good thing to have as long as we could detect some organising of the randomness which may indicate a communication of some kind. I have heard of machines and websites which claim to allow you to try to influence the randomness of dots, but not sure if they 'work' or if anything can be deduced from them.

As far as I know, a digital sine wave is better the more points it has along the signal curve, so perhaps it is just a matter of ramping up the sample rate until the samples per second are almost as good as the original analogue wave. Of course it will never be absolutely as good, but then electronics and error correction are better at ones and noughts than an infinitely varying voltage.

All I know is that my digital TV is worse now than when it was analogue because in the old days, we could still see a 'snowy' image when the reception was bad, but at least there was some hope of seeing the picture. These days we just get blocky images which completely obscures the picture and nothing can be interpreted..