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"It's climbing up you!"

The famed SLS camera, a classic Ghost Adventures tool, is a Structured Light Sensor Camera System. It allows ghost hunters seeking to capture video evidence to detect spirit forms during paranormal investigations that can't be seen with the naked eye.[1] These forms are then depicted as stick figures that often dance around or seem to stand on top of people's heads.

SLS GAIntro

The screen of an SLS camera from the Ghost Adventures introduction. In the image, one stick figure (a ghost) is standing, and one (also a ghost) is squatting next to it as if it is on the cover of a 90s rap album.


Technology[]

The SLS camera works in absolute darkness (as well as full light) and is fully portable.

It consists of a Microsoft Xbox Kinect camera and sensor connected to a tablet computer running the Windows operating system.

The camera works through an infrared light projector with a monochrome CMOS sensor that shows everything as dots arranged in 3D formation. These infrared dots allow the camera to show depth and detail. The software “sees” people by recognizing joints and movements. The IR will detect paranormal entities that the program recognizes as a human shape based on the body parts and joints. Video can be recorded directly to the camera or an SD card up to 64GB.[2]

Use in Ghost Adventures[]

The SLS camera first appeared on the episode "Saint James Hotel".

Since then, the crew has regularly used it to get raw & extreme. Key episodes which feature the SLS camera in entertaining action include:

  • Palomino Club: The stick figures put on a show and literally dance on command.
  • Goodwin Home Invasion: This one is personal... the stick figures dance around Aaron's kitchen, then vanish. At another point, a figure is on all fours, like an animal.
  • Hell Hole Prison: At the end of the investigation at the Hell Hole Prison the prison band is captured giving a performance, and the lead dancer even bows to the applause of the crew.

Accuracy[]

A 2017 analysis by Kenny Biddle for the Skeptical Inquirer found that technology was not intended for use in paranormal investigations and is highly prone to false-positive readings. Although sold for and widely used by investigators, it consists only of regular consumer technology designed to be used as an interactive video game controller.

Biddle noted that a wide range of inanimate objects including chairs, potted plants, vacuum cleaners and curtains could reliably trick the software into detecting a person (displayed as a stick figure). He further confirmed that external sources of infrared light (used ubiquitously on cameras with night vision functionality) easily interfered with the sensor.

During his research, Biddle also found that the Kinect software utilizes a machine-learning algorithm that was trained to track people while: a) the sensor was stationary, b) the sensor was fixed between 2 and 6 feet above the floor, and c) used within a room no wider or longer than 12 feet. Its ability to detect unseen entities is unproven, and its popularity seems to originate from the 2012 movie Paranormal Activity 4, where an otherwise invisible spirit is revealed by the displacement of points on the infrared light array of an Xbox Kinect.

Biddle asserts that the "jittery skeletons" frequently purported by investigators to be ghosts are simply a product of the Kinect detecting multiple points it thinks could be joints with a great degree of uncertainty. He notes that the "dancing" behavior seen from false-positives are a result of the software trying to identify the most likely new locations of joints as sensor noise causes the previous ones to vanish. This is frequently the cause of distorted or "monster-like" entities.

Trivia[]

  • A new device, known as the "XLS Camera," debuts in Wickenburg. It behaves identical to the SLS Camera, but it maps in a 3D location to map in anything in open space.
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