What can this archive certify about alleged ghost videos, and what can it no longer certify without controls and provenance records?

This article examines claims of realistic-looking ghost sightings on video using only the validated institutional record set provided in the brief.

• Single institutional frame for investigating paranormal claims
• Ordinary explanations prioritized before any paranormal conclusion
• Recording limitations treated as non-negotiable
• Controls required as the boundary for stronger claims
• No primary case files, peer-reviewed video analyses, or provenance artifacts for specific clips in this set

These points define the stable edge of certification available here, and everything beyond them remains unverified within this record set.

The National Science and Media Museum explainer webpage, treated as an evidence gate

An institutional explainer webpage is published under the National Science and Media Museum domain and is reachable as a stable documentary object.

The page presents a lead line that sets the posture of the topic in one sentence. It reads: ‘Science has long been used to investigate seemingly supernatural phenomena.’

The act preserved by the record is not an investigation of a specific sighting, but the institution’s decision to frame the subject as something that can be approached with inquiry.

Within the same page, the institution points to investigation approaches rather than offering a catalog of confirmed events. It also references famous examples as an index of how such claims have been approached.

The page’s value, in this archive, is administrative and methodological rather than evidentiary for any one clip that circulates online.^[1]

This evidence gate can certify a documented investigative posture and its limits, but it cannot authenticate any specific recording. This raises the next question: what does the method require before a clip can claim more than allegation?

What the validated record supports about investigation order and tools

The museum explainer supports a baseline claim that scientific investigation of seemingly supernatural phenomena has a documented history.

It also supports that investigations of these claims have used instruments and methods, rather than treating reports as self-validating.

The same posture locks an evaluation order in place: ordinary explanations are examined before any conclusion is treated as paranormal.

Within this archive, that order is certifiable as method, but outcomes for any individual case are not preserved in the provided record set.^[1]

The contradiction the archive cannot resolve: certainty language versus missing documentation trails

Public circulation around ghost footage often uses certainty language such as ‘real footage’ and ‘proof’, but this archive does not include the documentation trails needed to test those labels.

No Tier 1 primary documentation is present here for any specific caught-on-video case, including police reports, court records, official investigations, or lab reports.

No peer-reviewed or university-hosted analysis of particular widely circulated ghost videos appears in the supplied results, so the record does not stabilize a case-by-case verdict.

Because the archive does not preserve verifiable provenance artifacts for any specific clip, such as original file hashes, EXIF, or device logs, authenticity claims remain outside certification in this piece.

Recording limitations and the need for controls as the deciding boundary

The museum explainer can be used to frame video analysis around methodological skepticism, rather than treating footage as self-authenticating proof.

Two constraints are explicit in the brief’s validated frame: recordings have limitations, and controls are needed.

In this archive, controls function as the deciding boundary for what a clip can claim, because they allow ordinary explanations to be checked in a documented way.

That boundary matters because, without controls tied to a specific recording, the best-supported label remains alleged and unverified, even if the clip looks realistic.^[1]

When locations enter the story, what PubMed Central can and cannot add

The validated record set also includes a PubMed Central hosted full-text record for an academic article, but the brief restricts its use to institutional-history grounding.

That means it can separate documented history of a place from folklore that later attaches to it, without treating the history as paranormal evidence.

What it cannot do, within these constraints, is validate any ghost sighting, any supernatural encounter, or any claimed video event tied to a specific site.

So when a clip names a location, the next unresolved requirement remains the same: primary case files or provenance artifacts that connect the claim to a verifiable record.

Where certification stops for real ghost sightings on video in this record set

The opening question asks what can still be certified versus what cannot, and the answer splits cleanly along documentation lines.

This archive can certify that an institutional explainer frames paranormal claims as investigable, and that it foregrounds recording limits and the need for controls.

This archive cannot certify that any specific clip is authentic, because it does not preserve primary case files tied to particular videos, nor peer-reviewed analyses of those videos, nor verifiable provenance artifacts like hashes, EXIF, or device logs.

Until those materials exist with traceable linkage to named video artifacts, the most this piece can do is describe a method and mark where the record stops.^[1]

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FAQs (Decoded)

Explore more paranormal case files for additional documentation standards applied to unexplained claims. For narrower classification within this category, see the ghost reports documentation folder. Related archives include haunted places case files and poltergeist activity case files.

Sources Consulted

1. National Science and Media Museum, science investigating paranormal explainer webpage. scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk, accessed 2025-02-17