Skepticism

Fact or Faked Review: Really Terrible

Today I had the good fortune to discover the show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, which is available for free viewing on Hulu for those in the United States. This is, apparently, a Syfy Network original series that has already been running for two seasons, with a third premiering this spring. According to its website, FoFPF (pronounced: “fawf-pfffff”) “revolutionizes paranormal programming by investigating the evidence witnesses post on the Internet every day.” Finally, someone is paying attention to “amateur paranormal researchers” who post fuzzy videos on YouTube!

Read the rest on CSICOP.org!

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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12 Comments

  1. No fair stacking the deck with really smart kids. Those adults with fake jobs didn’t stand a chance.

  2. I watched the premiere of this a couple of years back, and I nearly herniated a disk from laughing.

    btw, people will drink donkey semen for a chance to be on tv… but tv will trick them and not air the episode, so they will have done such a thing for nothing.

  3. Yeah I have seriously mixed feelings about the show, on one hand they often do a great job matching the original video and getting good reasonable explanations for paranormal images but… they seem to do the most obvious methods last (I figured out the witch thing the moment I saw it). I suspect that’s done in editing and the rest is just padding. The worst though was this one episode (s2:E11) where they had a really neat pareidolia effect which they matched perfectly (‘woot’) and then they said “let’s do a Night Investigation” (‘Noooooooooo!’) From then on I might as while have been watching Ghost Hunters or for that matter spent ten minutes bashing my head repeatedly against a brick wall for the same effect…

    1. It’s like Scooby Doo if after they pull the mask off the bad guy they go looking for the real ghost and nothing happens for the rest of the episode…

    1. Wait, do you mean to tell me that there *wasn’t* an alien invasion in 1938?

      Have I been practicing speaking Martian all these years for nothing?

      Well that just sucks nix glaxxt shektlerp!!!

  4. Really great review! I reviewed a different episode in March of last year, and I pretty much came to the same conclusion. They do some things right… but if they run up against anything a little too complicated they feel free to just throw up their hands and say “it’s paranormal!”

    My review: http://bit.ly/A8VJrq

    1. Thank fuck. I had the same feelings when I watched that episode. They did such a good job with the ghost car and yet turned totally…lazy? Stupid? when it came to the lights in the sky. Because ALIENS or something.

      1. Fun fact that I found out after I wrote that article: the illusion where a car’s headlights can seem to be moving lights in the sky is called a “Superior Mirage”

        You’d think that would be a possibility that investigators would want to look into in cases like this. You’d think people who are serious about investigating these things would regularly read the literature and be familiar with these kinds of possibilities.

        But sadly, it seems pretty obvious that these guys really aren’t taking their investigations seriously.

  5. FYI: My vote for the all time lamest show in this catagory would be History(-less) Channel’s “Apocalypse Island”. I caught this turd on On Demand and was able to scroll past a great many of the most mind numbing parts. Afterwards, for grins, I got on the net to see if there were any reviews of the show, and found this forum:

    http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message977743/pg1

    The comments are a litte crude, but many of them are flat out hilarious and fun to read.

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