A recent article from Fox News reports that “truck driver William Church reportedly saw a figure on the side of an Arizona highway, and he thinks it could be a ghost.” On March 11, truck drivers William Church and Erika Lake were traveling along Arizona State Route 87 when he noticed a figure along the right side of the road. The truck driver believes the figure is a ghost, and so, in typical fashion, news agencies across the country picked up the story.

Fortunately, we have more than just the truckers’ accounts: a Nexar dash cam in the truck recorded the incident. In the short six-second clip available, we get a view of the front of the truck and the partially illuminated road ahead. The truck passes by an entrance ramp, and a lone figure suddenly comes into view, illuminated by the truck’s headlights, along the right side of the road. The figure appears translucent, as the white road lines can be seen through the figure. When the figure comes into view, the truck is slightly steered into the right lane to provide more space between the truck and the figure. Obviously, Church noticed the figure at the time.

According to the article, Church believes the translucent figure is a ghost standing on the side of the road, citing the apparent translucency as the reason for his conclusion. I have a different opinion of what is seen in the video—and it has more to do with the capabilities of the dash cam than anything supernatural.

First, I located the exact area where the video was recorded. The original article states Church was driving “down Arizona State Route 87” and that “The suspected specter was spotted at around 2:30 a.m. local time while Church passed the highway’s 200-mile marker, which is located between Phoenix and Payson, Arizona.” The video footage begins at an on-ramp, so pinpointing the location was fairly easy—there’s only one, Exit 199 for Bush Highway. I then compared the white lines of the lane and merging arrow to determine which side (north or south) the truck was on. Just to be sure, I compared the patterns of the blacktop repairs to the video. Yup, this was the place.

So, does the footage show a ghost? I doubt it, based on my knowledge and experience with photography and video artifacts. However, I can certainly understand how one could view this as something very strange—I mean, the figure does appear to be eerily transparent. So, what gives?

Dash Cam Video Quality

First, the camera in use is a Nexar brand dash cam. The article does not reveal which specific model was installed, but dash cams in general are not known for their high-end video quality. In fact, the main complaint from several professional reviewers is concerning video poor, or only decent, image quality. Linus, from Linus Tech Tips, spent over a thousand dollars to test a dozen of the top-rated dash cams on Amazon and found that when it came to video quality, “almost every single one sucks to the point of being basically unusable” when it comes to reading things like street signs. Even those that didn’t suck were just okay when details like faces were captured while not in motion. Another reviewer adds that dash cam “video quality has certain limits, and in many situations, it’s simply not going to be able to record some important information such as faces, license plates, or street signs.”

Although models like the Nexar Beam (lowest cost model) states it records at 1080p full HD, videos uploaded to your phone and cloud storage are at a lower quality, coming in at 720p with a much lower bit rate, which means less information per second. To get the higher quality footage, the video must be downloaded directly from the camera’s SD card onto a PC. This is important because the video making the rounds does not appear to be full HD. It was likely taken by Church’s phone.

Keep in mind that the video quality reviewers look at both daytime and nighttime footage. However, the nighttime footage is always in a city setting, complete with streetlamps, highly illuminated businesses, traffic lights, and other vehicles. In contrast, in Church’s footage the only illumination is coming from his truck’s headlights. According to the Missouri Driver Guide, “Your headlights only let you see about 350 feet ahead.” The truck was in the middle lane, while the figure was along the right side of the right lane, meaning much less light was directed toward the figure.

In addition, most of the video is useless—the top half of the video is all darkness (night sky), which wraps around the sides. Because the headlights are the only illumination, light falls off sharply on both sides of the view. The bottom portion of the video is the truck’s hood. We’re left with maybe 20–25 percent of a viewable scene, and the quality of that portion … well … sucks.

This brings up another point: video compression, “the process of encoding a video file in such a way that it consumes less space than the original file and is easier to transmit over the network/Internet. It is a type of compression technique that reduces the size of video file formats by eliminating redundant and non-functional data from the original video file.” Repeating (static) scenes such as a dark sky (taking up half the scene) or continuous white/yellow lines almost become static images, recording much less detail to save space. This can result “in subpar video quality, resolution issues and causing ghosting.” Ghosting is a photographic term used to describe the unwanted double-exposure of an object within a single frame.

Camera Perspective

We also need to consider something called motion blur. This is when an object in your scene is moving faster than the shutter speed/frame rate of your camera. The object in motion becomes blurred and distorted and, in many situations (such as low-light environments), will cause the object to appear transparent.

In our “trucker’s ghost” example, keep in mind that from the perspective of the camera, the truck isn’t moving the scene is, or at least a few objects in the scene. The hood of the truck remains in the same place, as do the extended mirrors. To the camera, the broken lane dividers, the merging arrow of the on-ramp, and the reflective Route 87 sign are all moving through the scene. Crucially, this goes for the ghostly figure as well; in other words, there is nothing unique about the “ghostly figure” compared to other objects at that distance and illumination.

We can assume the truck was cruising along at about sixty-five miles per hour, which is the posted speed limit on Route 87 (the distant point of light at the end of the video is the speed limit sign reflecting the truck’s headlights). Some quick math (cheating with online calculators), the figure is passing by at about ninety-five feet per second, for a total of two seconds (out of the six-second video). This means that a barely illuminated figure walking along the road will absolutely produce motion blur as the camera speeds by. 

All that tech-talk just means that the most likely explanation for the trucker’s ghost is that it was either a (living) person or animal walking along the road and just barely got picked up on some crappy video as it sped by in the night. Church, who was driving, did move over slightly when he saw the figure, so it’s unlike many “ghost photos” in which the spectral extras are not seen at the time and only discovered later.

Because Church didn’t stop/back up to see what the figure actually was, we’ll never know exactly what appears on the video. Although we can only speculate, this is a good example of two opposite types of speculation. On one side, Church thinks it’s a ghost based on little more than “You can see the lines through the legs making the figure.” This kind of knee-jerk reaction has been repeated by many who already have well-established beliefs in the paranormal, leading to a conclusion also based on those beliefs alone.

On the other hand, by taking the time to look at all the information available to us, from the location of the event to the camera properties and abilities, we can speculate what likely happened based on solid data and known properties/flaws with the equipment used in obtaining the not-so-ghostly ghost. I’m never the first to report on a suspected paranormal phenomenon that goes viral, and I never will be. I prefer to get all the information first and offer an informed conclusion rather than click-bait.

Never Stop Learning.