It seems like every week, there’s new “ghost footage” that is purported to be the be-all end-all proof of the paranormal. Usually the picture of video is pretty easily debunked as a hoax, or a smartphone app, or simply a photographic or video error that looks spooky and supernatural, but really isn’t. This story was all over my social media feed today, and while interesting, it’s far from the Holy Grail of ghostly evidence, and at best, it easily could have been faked. Shyann Rachael set up a webcam in her father’s bedroom, after he said he’d been the victim of his sheets being pulled off of him in his sleep, and she captured some bizarre footage. Take a look…
A daughter claims that her father has been plagued with the feeling of something moving his sheets at night, so he set up a camera. What they saw on the footage has both the father and daughter terrified, and Reddit users wondering if it’s fake.
“My dad has been feeling his sheets being messed with and someone sitting on his bed in the night so he set up a camera. This is what he saw,” the daughter, Shyann Rachael, shared on both Reddit and Twitter. “I’m freaked [the f***] out. Look at the sheets lifting up and what comes out of the side of it.”
My dad has been feeling his sheets being messed with and someone sitting on his bed in the night so he set up a camera. This is what he saw. I’m freaked tf out. @Zak_Bagans pic.twitter.com/JJHv4dxqcB
— shy ? (@shyannrachael) April 21, 2019
The black-and-white webcam footage shows what appears to be a head-shaped figure creeping up to the father’s bed, playing with his sheets and then seemingly dissolving into thin air.
“Look really closely to the sheets lifting in the beginning on the left of the screen. That wasn’t him! He was dead asleep. And if you look really closely something shoots out of the sheet when it drops to the right and then disappears. It’s gray and kinda looks like a head!??” Shyann tweeted.
Plenty of users on Reddit were unnerved by the footage. One wrote, “I’ve watched several times now and cannot figure out how this could be faked … the way the sheets move and the way the thing/person the left just disappears … it’s so freaky.”
“Extremely creepy. The more times you watch the clip the stranger it gets,” another shared.
“Either this is completely staged, or one of the freakiest things I’ve ever seen,” one person responded.
However, there are always plenty of non-believers as well.
“Yeah that’s definitely just the dad rolling over. He’s pushing the covers off his arm as he’s rolling over, making it look like a head is vanishing when really it’s just his arm,” one person said. Another chimed in, “Just looks like he’s moving his arm and kicking his sheets out. I do believe in ghosts but I can’t see anything paranormal in this video.”
If you find yourself a bit too frightened by the footage, take comfort in this comment: “Fake, everybody knows bed sheets are ghost/monster-proof.”
The first thing that strikes me about this footage is that it’s eerily reminiscent of an early episode of Ghost Hunters, where Grant Wilson has the sheets pulled on his bed while he’s sleeping. There have been some videos debunking Grant’s claims, of course. So what can this be, besides a ghost? There’s many issues here. For one, this footage is very low-definition. It’s grainy, it’s blurry, and the supposed “ghost” that people see exiting the bed looks more to me like pixelation rather than anything paranormal. Simply a low-res camera doing its best to represent subtle changes in the ambient light of the room. Another problem is that there’s no sound. Maybe the dad had a hairdryer under the sheets to give them that billowing effect? Or perhaps he had some strings he was pulling on?
Either way, without sound, we can’t rule those things out. Her father could have been pranking her, so maybe Shyann isn’t even in on the hoax. Of course, it’s completely possible this really is a ghost, but because of the low-quality and inability to rule certain things out, it’s just the most interesting ghost video in the world. Until the next one.
