On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 13:12:39 -0700 (PDT), TimR
wrote:

I was curious enough to carry the ladder and both meters back out to the shed.

The digital meter consistently read about 120 V at the outlet, 50 V from the hot side of the outlet to the aluminum ladder on concrete.

The Simpson 270 consistently read 120 V at the outlet, and barely a twitch of the needle from the hot to the ladder, on any scale. (thanks for the tip about the scale, I hadn't know that one)

Same results for a 240 outlet nearby - the Radio shack reads phantom voltage from both legs, the Simpson does not.

You make it sound like it's the brand of the meter that makes the
difference. It is that one has high input impedance and one has low
impedance.

With one excepton that I know of, this corresponds to the fact that one
is digital and the other is analog. The exception is FET meters. I
think they were only sold for a few years, and I think they must have
all been analog (with a moving needle). Nonetheless they had high input
impedance, and may have shown the ghost voltages, Even though I have
one, I don't know.

The input impedance is usually written on the face plate of an analog
meter, and iirc somewhere on a digital meter. Typical values are
50,000 ohms per volt** for analog (not FET)., and 11 megohms/volt for
digital.

**Sounds high, but it's relatively low.



So probably the ladder is not at ground, though I wouldn't test it across my body.

Darn right. Even a bad ground can kill you.

I wonder if the ladder is an antenna. I'm about a block from a huge radio tower.