Filling in for George Noory, Dave Schrader (email) welcomed Bill Murphy from SyFy's Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files for a 4-hour discussion on the origin of hauntings, how the living influence them, and related topics. He referenced the Philip Experiment conducted in the early 1970s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research. The group of Canadian parapsychologists claimed to have interacted with a 'ghost' that they manifested through a collective thought form. "These thought forms tend to break away and they start to give signs that they're thinking and behaving independently of those that created them in the first place," Murphy explained.

Murphy detailed his own Pearl Experiment in which he created a back-story for a non-existent ghost named Pearl and combined it with the actual history of reported hauntings at Glen Tavern Inn in California. Inserting a fictitious ghost history into a place does seem to have an effect on the outcome of an investigation, he suggested. As evidence Murphy pointed to a photograph taken of the Glen Tavern Inn lobby on the day of the experiment. It shows a ghostly image in a mirror that appears to be a female form roughly matching the description made up for Pearl, he revealed.

Murphy referenced the Ghostwriter Case, 'thoughtographs' taken by Ted Serios, as well as his own experience with thought forms manifesting on film. A Polaroid photo was taken of one of the participants (a skeptic) and after developing shows what looks like a black cat sitting atop his head, he reported. "It does appear that we are affecting [these experiments], whether it's digital media or film," Murphy said. He also spoke about his investigation into the purportedly haunted Queen Mary and a ghost called Jackie, and an experiment he conducted with Frank's Box (a device that purportedly allows real-time, two-way communication with the other side) in July 2007 at the Glen Tavern Inn.