Freedomain Radio

At a party last night, I was with a group of six or so people that went to a dark room to tell ghost stories.  At the insistence of the group, I spun a yarn to live up to my reputation as a story-teller.  After another guy told us about how the laser tag place he works at is haunted, I dramatically shared that little diddy about the mathematician that says that there's a 20% chance that we're living in a computer simulation.  Blew their minds.  Any outside observer would probably have assumed that we were smoking pot.

Then, after completely destroying their confidence in their hold on reality, I confessed that my first story was completely BS, explained what really happened the night in question, and told them that there was no such thing as God.

I managed to direct the discussion in a very productive way.  I even gave a narrated screening of Stef's "Proofs for God!"

It was a very effective path to take.  The last point I made was "you can believe whatever you can want to believe, but please, for the love of goodness, don't raise your kids to be Christian" and I hit them with that insightful line from Stef in the "Happy Easter Jesus" video about how children perceive the crucifixion.  Going into the conversation, everyone else in the group was one of those weak-theists that Catholic education churns out by the pewful, but they left it almost wholly convinced of the case for strong atheism.

BUT!

We were still left with the holdover of my friend's ghost story.  It didn't come back up until early today, but the question of the laser tag ghosts still remains.

I plan on getting together a group of skeptics to spend the night at the laser tag place.  I want to do scientific (ish) tests that explain the symptoms.  Can y'all help me brainstorm tests to run during the sleepover?  Here are my ideas so far:

1. Keep detailed records of everything that hapens.
2. Find the spots where the electrical interference was reported and test for radio interference.  I did some google searches and learned that this model of laser tag (laserforce) uses radio bands to communicate scoring.  This could cause the reported scrambling of cell phone screams and walkie talkies. Try to reproduce the static and find out what factors cause it.
3. Bring as many camcorders as possible and stand ready to record any ghosts.
4. Secretly post one person with the staff of the place as long as possible.  He can record any time that the manager (who originated all the stories) does anything suspicious.  If these times match with the times of the people posted in the arena, then investigate foul play.

Worst case scenario, I meet a ghost and learn that I never have to die.  If I stop posting on this board, feel free to assume that the immaterial is material enough to eat atheists.  

Does anyone have any other ideas about things we can test/do, or any links to other people that have done similar stuff?  I did a bit of googling, but most of the sites I came across reeked of pseudo-science.

Honestly there are no real tests you can do to test for ghosts. As I, and I'm sure you well know, there is no such thing as ghosts. The best way to "test for ghosts" is to observe what happened and then actually look for the source of what caused it. There is always an answer there. Every time I've ever watched those silly ghost shows on television, it's pretty obvious within seconds what caused the "phenomenons". I'd suggest going about disproving this ghost story the good old fashioned scientific way instead of looking for psudo-science tests to prove or disprove it.

You could also make up a story on your own about another location and take them there, to establish a baseline freakyness. Any place can seem scary in the dark, especially if you're superstitous.