Arizona truck driver sees suspected ghost on State Route 87, captures figure on dashcam video
Truck driver William Church saw a strange, ghostly figure while driving down Arizona State Route 87. His dashcam captured the head-scratching moment that happened around 2:30 a.m. on March 11, 2023.
"Ghosts" caught on camera and psychics showing off their supernatural powers: These are everywhere today, with millions of views on TikTok and YouTube.
Cabinets appear to open and slam on their own. Cutlery flies through the air. Objects move by themselves. Some people start fires using "only" their mental powers — while in other cases, strange figures appear and then vanish.
Is any of this real or is it just clever video work — with a little help from a fishing line?
Fox News Digital spoke to two content creators who shared tantalizing secrets, while giving tips for others on how to tell what's going on.
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Dustin Dean Mentalist, a New York-based magician and mentalist, has carved out a niche for himself by debunking the "ParanormalTok" channel videos that experience massive viral success.
Dean has garnered over 500,000 followers on his personal TikTok account, while his magic tricks have been featured on national television.
Dustin Dean, based in New York, has carved out a niche for himself on TikTok showing what's really going on with so-called "paranormal" videos. (Dustin Dean Mentalist)
In his TikToks, Dean recreates the "paranormal" happenings in paranormal viral videos, showing how — rather than magic or ghosts at work — there are instead some very clever uses of household items such as magnets, fishing line and even hand sanitizer at work.
"Wow, that's a really good magic trick."
Dean became interested in magic tricks and sleight of hand as a child, he said, eventually taking his craft to the internet.
He was inspired by legendary magician Harry Houdini, who also worked to debunk psychics.
"I'm a skeptic, so I don't believe in the power of [or] believe in ghosts," he said. "So automatically I'm already skeptical of all those things."
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Dean even learned new magic tricks during his debunking efforts, he said.
"I think my favorite trick that I debunked was this girl who … claimed she was doing witchcraft and she was lighting candles, supposedly with her mind," Dean also said.
Dustin Dean was inspired by Harry Houdini, a legendary magician (shown here). In addition to his magic tricks, Houdini also spent a considerable amount of time debunking psychics, said Dean. (APIC/Getty Images)
Initially, that video had him stumped.
"And I thought to myself, 'Wow, that's a really good magic trick.'"
"Haunted Charlotte" got more than 200,000 followers, with her most-viewed video receiving over 13 million views.
After some trial and error, Dean eventually figured out that putting an alcohol-based product on the candle's wick — such as hand sanitizer — would create the illusion of an invisible flame.
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"I replicated [the video] and she eventually came out and said that it was a trick, and she revealed how she was doing it — which was using alcohol on the wick, which was really cool," he said.
"I just thought that was a fun thing to do and for me to even just learn as a magician," he continued. "I was like, 'Oh, that's actually really impressive, honestly, that someone just came up with that.'"
To prove how easy it is to go viral on ParanormalTok, Dean even created a secret account featuring "Charlotte," a supposedly haunted doll that could move objects and "curse" nearby items.
Dean even created a secret account featuring "Charlotte."
Dean purchased the doll on Etsy and got to work on creating videos displaying her "powers," he said.
"Haunted Charlotte" got more than 200,000 followers, with her most-viewed video receiving over 13 million views.
In December, a few months after he made the account, Dean came clean and explained that Charlotte was completely faked, was not demonic in any way — and certainly did not have psychic powers.
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Dean was inspired to create the account, he said, after he spotted another "haunted doll" account that claimed to be real.
These videos "appeal to every type of person," regardless of the level of skepticism, said one content creator.
"That inspired me to say, ‘Well, OK, what if I replicate it and I create this fake account?'" he said. "Will people really buy into this? Will they believe it?" he said.
If the account proved successful, Dean planned to come clean and explain that he was behind it the entire time, as a lesson to others to "be skeptical," he noted.
"Everything can be faked, even if you think it can't be," he also said.
The success of the account exceeded even his own expectations.
"It was kind of insane," Dean said. "I didn't think it would blow up as much as it did."
Hannah Lehmann, a Washington state-based YouTuber who makes videos under the name "HannahTheHorrible," also makes content that debunks these videos.
Lehmann started making videos in reaction to "The Scary Side of TikTok" channel — videos that her subscribers would tag her in.
Lehmann doesn't "necessarily think that ghosts aren't real," she told Fox News Digital. (iStock)
"Since I had already been building my channel, I decided to do the same thing — except look at the videos with a skeptical eye first, assume everything is fake until proven real — rather than the other way around," she told Fox News Digital via email.
After her first video did "really well," she made it into a series for her more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, she said.
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Paranormal videos are popular, Lehmann believes, "because they appeal to every type of person," regardless of a person's level of skepticism.
"If you are a believer — you are more likely to believe these videos as proof [of what you believe]," she said.
Lehmann considers herself a skeptic who doesn't "necessarily think ghosts aren't real" and has never experienced anything to convince her that they are.
Many paranormal videos are posted to YouTube on the internet — as are videos debunking them. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
Yet that has not stopped her, and thousands like her, from enjoying the videos.
"If you're a skeptic, like me, you also enjoy these videos because you want to believe — but you don't — so watching lots of these videos gives you the rush and pleasure of going on the hunt for a convincing video," she said.
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After she is tagged in a so-called "paranormal" TikTok, the first thing she does is go to the comments section and scroll to find "where fellow skeptics lurk," said Lehmann.
"If I've learned anything, it's how far people will go to get views [and] go viral."
"They're the ones that will point out the flash of fishing line they got a glimpse of at the 33-second mark, that the poster is using to move the object," she said.
"If it's a strange object floating in the sky seemingly on its own, the skeptics will comment how it's most likely a deflated spider balloon from Halloween that got caught on the phone lines," Lehmann added.
Lehmann's followers tag her in TikTok videos that they find spooky — and wish she would "debunk" them, she said. (iStock)
Another way to determine the veracity of a video is to look at some basic facts, she said.
"If you're looking for how the average person scrolling through TikTok at home can determine if a video is fake — I would tell them to ask themselves three questions before believing it," said Lehmann.
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A viewer should question the creator's motives for going viral, look critically at the rest of the person's content — and consider any other possible explanations.
"If you go to the person's profile, and all their videos are about how ‘haunted’ their house is, that's a huge red flag for me," she said.
"If I've learned anything, it's how far people will go to get views [and] go viral," Lehmann added.
A cloaked and chained skeletal ghost figure hangs in a tree in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, for Halloween 2022. "I get it. It's fun to trick people and it's fun to get views," said Hannah Lehmann of Washington state. "As long as you aren't hurting others in the process, I don't think we should be ‘mad’ at people for posting these fake videos." (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
"People are good at editing videos, there's magic tricks, there's fishing line, there's magnets under the counter — and people are good actors."
Despite her skepticism, Lehmann said she's been fooled in the past by a well-done video hoax.
"Don't feel bad if you were trusting of a video and it turned out to be fake," she said.
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Debunking "paranormal" videos is "all in good fun," said Lehmann.
"I don't hold any ill will toward people who want to fake ghost videos to go viral," she said.
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"I get it. It's fun to trick people and it's fun to get views," she added.
"As long as you aren't hurting others in the process, I don't think we should be ‘mad’ at people for posting these fake videos."
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