“Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder.” - Princess Leia

I. The Setup

My friend Baxter shoved a printed out photo of a gas station and a blue smudge in my face. “It’s a ghost,” he said, spewing crumbs from his mouthful of Oreos (stolen from me, by the way). I tossed it back to him with a quick exhalation, as if to say “I don’t care about your distant relatives, so would you please let me get back to watching Saved by the Bell: The College Years?”. Zack and Slater were getting into some kind of trouble, only in college this time.

“I’m gonna give that picture to the psychic down at the Renaissance Fair. You know, the one with all the tits? Maybe she can tell me who the ghost used to be. Maybe he hid some money or something before he kicked it”

I slapped him hard in the jaw with the back of my TiVo remote. Since then, I haven’t been able to make it stop recording every show featuring Dustin Diamond. Luckily, there aren’t very many. “What makes you think this blob is a ghost hanging around in some limbo state, waiting to be contacted by a twenty dollar an hour psychic down at the Renaissance Fair?”

Baxter had spewed half-chewed Oreo all over my living room couch, but I didn’t care. I was fuming. I don’t understand why people insist on believing the dearly departed are flittering about in some netherworld between life and death. Where’s the comfort in knowing your loved ones are spending their afterlives playing charades with every crystal-wearing fly-by-night operation who can set up a card table on a street corner? And John Edward.

But this week’s column isn’t about those fraudulent “psychics”. It’s about the ghosts they speak to-specifically, a big blue blob hanging around a gas station in Parma, Ohio.

II. The Findings

Earlier this month, Marathon gas station owner Amed Abudaaria was watching the feed from the security camera above the pumps outside when he noticed something odd. There was a big-ass blue smudge right on the camera lens. He told the local news, “I actually watched it for thirty minutes, and then, actually, I watched it move, and that is when I got freaked out.”

You may think it odd that a moving blue smudge would be enough to “freak” anyone “out”. Unless, of course, there happened to be a rash of moving blue smudges terrorizing the local Ohio countryside in the weeks before. But for people like Mr. Abudaaria and others who eventually saw the video on television, it seems perfectly reasonable to make the jump from blue smudge to something supernatural.

Some have called the smudge a ghost. Others know for sure it was an angel. In either case, you must answer the same question I asked my friend Baxter. Why would a ghost just be hanging around? And in this case, there are even more questions to answer. Why would an angel be guarding a gas station? Why is it bright blue? Why doesn’t anyone filling up their tanks in the video seem to notice it? Why the hell didn’t Mr. Abudaaria go outside and take a peek?

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When I first saw it, I thought the smudge was probably a plastic bag flittering in the wind. Its movements seemed odd, but it was the only way I could think of to account for the artificial blue color. However, when a local news reporter did a story on the “ghost”, she included a shot of herself taken with the same camera. The news cameras showed her in a red outfit, but the shot from the security camera was tinted her clothing blue. Also, several people took the time to actually go to the gas station in question and photograph the camera themselves. The wall behind it is painted a bright blue as well, so any light reflected from the wall to the camera would be blue.

And now, thanks to YouTube user “AnswersInSkepticism”, we have a pretty clear-cut explanation for the blue smudge. Watch this video and see how a wandering bug created a phenomenon.

III. The ConclusionI’m getting a little sick of this ghost obsession. They’re all over the Internet-poorly-framed vacation pictures with little blobs of light all over them. Instead of chalking it up to a cheap disposable camera or a stunning lack of photography skills, people are convinced they’ve captured a spirit from beyond the grave. There’s no effort made to explain why these things show up on cameras but are invisible to the human eye. Watch an episode of Sci-Fi Channel’s ghost hunting “reality” series, and you see a bunch of pudgy geeks ambling about tastelessly decorated houses measuring electromagnetic fields and waving infrared thermometers. Why does anyone think a ghost emits an electromagnetic field? And don’t these people know that infrared thermometers only measure surface temperature? Even if they pointed it at an actual ghost, it would only tell you how hot the wall behind it is.

There’s an ache to believe without any desire to ask basic questions first. I understand wanting to think your beloved granny didn’t just sink into oblivion when her heart gave out, but wouldn’t you rather her spirit move on to some higher plane than hang around here moping and groaning and waiting to be “cleansed”? As long as we’re wishfully thinking, why not wish for something better than blue blobs and ectoplasmic mumbo jumbo?

After I screamed all this to Baxter, he rubbed his aching jaw and explained that some souls are damned to limbo-neither too good or too evil to be accepted in Heaven or Hell. It sounded like something out of The Lord of the Rings to me, but I decided to humor him. “Have you ever seen a ghost?” I asked.

“My great-great-grandfather’s,” he said.

“And why would he be damned to limbo?”

“He raped a Nazi.”

I have to say, Baxter may have had a point there.

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About The Amateur Scientist: Brian Thompson is a professor of amateur science at a major imaginary university. He has been able to read and write for over seventeen years.

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