Why Paranormal Shows [Sometimes] Suck

I love the paranormal; which I really think -is- normal, just something we do not understand yet. I also love watching paranormal shows. Some of the shows are more fake than others, and I know that and I still watch them for the sheer entertainment value of it rather than looking at it as "OMG! I need to base my whole belief on ghosts on this one show and this one bit of footage!" Other times, I just like watching the investigators scare themselves.

There is one show that I was excited to see coming on the air because I thought it would be something great about debunking things and weeding out the crap from the gems; but I have been proven wrong. The show Fact or Faked on the SyFy Channel was on this night. I have enjoyed watching this show and have agreed with most of what they have done and explored on there. Tonight, however, they really annoyed me.

It was not their dissection of the Oregon Vortex that bugged me (as I pretty much already knew about those), but rather this footage they had of a "ghost" on camera. This "ghost" was so very clearly a bug. I have seen a lot of bug-on-the-lense footage and they all can look very different and strange depending on the insect type, the camera type, the time of day, etc. However, this one was so very much a bug I felt almost stupid watching them argue over it.

In the footage, you can SEE the bug (I will assume a fly since it was in a pub and the way it moved) clean it's legs, flicker it's wings, and then crawled off the screen. Rather than come to this conclusion, they flew ALL THE WAY to England, tested the footage against bugs, smoke, fabric, and heat to see if they could mimic the original footage.

While in teh begining, they were so admiment that it was not a bug, and they had even said  after their bug test, "This cannot be a bug!" they agreed IT WAS A BUG! Really? Ya don't say? Wow. I'm so glad it took you all that money and time to tell us something that was so clearly obvious in the first place.

I was less upset that they had wasted the time and money and fuel and more mad that they had just drawn this out, so very very very long only to go: Oh, I guess it was a bug... you guys agree? Bug? Ok, it's a fake video. END EPISODE.

Great job.

And, why is a video "fake" if it's a natural thing? "Oh, this black ribbon in the sky ... people think it's paranormal, but is is fact or faked?... Faked! These are bats!" How is that fake? It's a REAL bat flying in a REAL sky during a REAL event. Even if someone -tried- to pass it off as something paranormal, the video it self is not a FAKE, but the story around it is. I guess they don't care to try and explain that to people. If it's not paranormal it's fake and that is all we care about. Again; great job.

I am not a skeptic, but I am also not stupid.