Ghost Hunting from your Keyboard part 3

Managing Your Ghost Hunting Data Collection

Once Webcam Viewer collects a volume of streamed images to your hard drive, the final step is to search through those images for something that jumps out as unique or different than the rest.  This would signify a potential anomaly that you may want to check out.  The best method I've found to do that is to view the images in sequence using thumbnail view in Windows Explorer.

As you scroll through the frames, you may spot a shadow, mist or movement from one frame to the next. The next step is to conduct a more thorough analysis of the movement or change.  To do this I use ImageDiff, a free image comparison application that allows you to conduct a complete pixel-by-pixel comparison between two images.

The settings I use are: use overlay, monochrome colors, and set the threshold over 90%.  This will force the difference in pixels to be at least over 90%, and the differences will display on the bottom window as big red dotted areas.

It's never a good idea to trust only your eyes.  Even though you may spot a difference in the video frames while you're scrolling through, this pixel comparison will scientifically verify that you aren't just seeing things.  As you can see in the photos above, the only differences were the time stamp, and some very slight lighting or shadow differences.  If someone (or something) were to walk across the hallway, the lower image would light up like a red Christmas Tree.

How Internet Technology Can Help Ghost Hunting

In time, ghost hunters around the world will recognize that they can't be everywhere at once.  And while there's some chance of capturing something interesting on film by sitting for a few hours in a haunted location, those odds are multiplied exponentially when you set up a webcam to monitor many locations over hundreds of hours, around the clock.  Let your computer do the watching, and you can capture that elusive ghost on camera at your leisure.