Please can someone help me?!

Ok. I am not military, I am just a stay at home Mom and I do not care if you believe me or not but I think a spirit lives in my home... actually I know she does. I've seen her and so have my kids. So anyway... weird things happen and the newest thing is when I'm sitting outside on the deck after the kids have gone to sleep my flood light goes crazy! It's a newer bulb so please don't suggest that. Plus it doesn't do it all the time. I just want to know if I can send someone about 2 minutes of video that I recorded tonight. I swear its morse code and just want to know what it means, if anything... in the video of the flood light you can clearly see/hear the distinct dits and dahs of morse code. I even believe it interacts when I "talk" to it. Call me crazy, I don't care. I have two small children and just want to know if it's a message or just a stupid loose wire... would really ease my mind.

Please email me at [e-mail] and I will send you the video to decipher.

Thanks in advance!

[Star Strider]

Just upload it here. We’ll consider it. Chances are it’s simply random, but if it’s actual Morse, it could also be encrypted.

You quite definitely do win the prize for the strangest post I’ve seen here!

[Kristin Collins]

Morse code ghost?!: http://youtu.be/gZeMz14I3ug

Here is one of the videos. Tell me what you think.. code or crazy? ;)

[Image Analyst]

Neither, but if I had to pick one I'd lean towards crazy, but like I said I think it's neither and just a simple electrical problem. Change the light bulb. If that doesn't work, replace the socket and/or switch. If the problem persists, call an electrician to track down a loose wire. It's not a ghost but just an plain old electrical problem.

[Star Strider]

I’d lean toward hoax!

It’s definitely not Morse — or at least competently-sent Morse. That the light seems to ‘respond’ to voice commands would seem to me to point to someone out of sight toggling the light switch.

Nothing wrong with a little innocent fun!

[Cedric]

Tada .. ;-)

[Star Strider]

OK. Now I have to ask how you did that.

That deserves an Acceptance and a Vote if anything ever did. State it as a Question and port my comment here along with it.

[Cedric]

Well, here it is (slightly simplified). I was brain dead and I wanted 10 minutes of "fun" (ya, I know ..). I'll move that to an answer once I find out what the darn ectoplasm wants to tell us ..

 vidObj    = VideoReader( 'Ghost.mp4' ) ;   % Attached to my post.
 nFrames   = vidObj.NumberOfFrames ;
 tFrame    = (1:nFrames) / vidObj.FrameRate ;
 ghostCom  = zeros( nFrames, 1 ) ;

 for fId = 1 : nFrames
    grayImage = rgb2gray( read( vidObj, fId )) ;    
    ghostCom(fId) = sum( grayImage(:) ) ;
 end

 figure() ;  clf ;
 set( gcf, 'Color', 'White', 'Units', 'Normalized', ...
      'OuterPosition', [0, 0.1, 1, 0.6] ) ;
 plot( tFrame, ghostCom/max(ghostCom), 'b' ) ;
 set( gca, 'YTick', [0, 1] ) ;
 xlabel( 'Time [s]' ) ;

On that note, have a good night!

[Star Strider]

Thanks! I’m a rather blinding shade of envious green just now.

Definitely not Morse.

That would be a very interesting and functional form or steganography though, and one the NSA would probably never discover.

You too!

[Cedric]

Well, if you want to see what the NSA can do about it, just pick up your phone and spell the URL; you don't even need to compose a phone number ;-)

Thanks! (this time I go)

PS: I simplified the code above; the threshold was unnecessary.

[Cedric]

I guess the next relevant question (might have been the first actually) to ask is: does it happen only when the switch in ON, or when the switch is OFF as well? ;-)

[Star Strider]

Or perhaps it’s Schrödinger’s porch light?

It’s both on and off until you look at it?

[Image Analyst]

Well why does the ghost even need a switch to make electricity flow. Why can't she just unscrew the light bulb, set it on a table and talk to it. No reason the ghost can't make it light then, is there? If it can move a light switch it should be able to move a few trillion electrons.

Answer 1

[Cedric]

You could also ask her to repeat really slowwwwwwly the letter 'M' ( - - ), sync' her with the day/night pattern, and you would get a free automatic night switch for the light on your deck..

[Star Strider]

Zero (-----) might be less fatiguing, while 5 (.....) would provide a neat strobe effect.

[Cedric]

It seems now obvious that you have a much deeper understanding of ghosts management than I ;-)

Hic sunt manes..?

[Star Strider]

Not so much ghosts as Morse. Still, as my credentials as a dilettante in the more esoteric areas of physics attest, string theory posits 11 dimensions, of which we can only directly experience three, but are likely represented (with infinitesimal magnitude) on the rest. Who knows what’s going on in the other eight?

It just occurred to me that Ghostscript might be an appropriate way to communicate!

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

With the Image Acquisition Toolbox you could monitor the light flashing and decode the morse code in real time, if that is actually what your ghost is using. Perhaps you could ask her to write down the messages in English instead. Then with the OCR capabilities in the Computer Vision System Toolbox you could turn her ghostly scrawls into computer text. Please upload your video to YouTube.com or see if you can attach it here with the paper clip icon. Is this interaction repeatable, like the light is always on except when you talk to her and then it starts flashing? Or was it just that one time. Perhaps when you or your kids see her again you can ask her to follow you outside to your deck to capture some good videos, hopefully of both her and her light flashings. With toolboxes like the Image Acquisition Toolbox and perhaps the Data Acquisition Toolbox you might be able to set up a motion/event triggered image capture to get images of her or her activities. Does she flash the lights indoors, or just onto your deck? Does she do anything else, like move things or draw things or make sounds? When you and the kids have seen her, is she always outside on your deck, or does she go inside too? Have you ever had a murder in your house or is it built on an ancient burial ground? Well, that's all just guesses until we see your video.