Paranormal photos: separate the wheat from the chaff.

Well there you go folks, No such thing as ghosts or ufos. Think you see a ufo in the sky? Don't worry, It's just swamp gas.

reply to post by elevenaugust


People like you take the fun out of life. Debunkers.......

I agree with OP. There are to many fake/misidentified ghost pictures clogging up the net, taking away from the real nitty gritty stuff of it. I myself believe in ghosts, I have seen and heard many unexplained things in my life - I don't need to prove anything to you guys but still - in my opinion there is so much out there we don't know about. If only the 1% of good ghost material was all that was on the net instead of orb bunk.

As for people that don't believe at all, well, haters gonna hate!

With todays technology anything can be duplicated, created and controlled. We are at the point where whatever we see we have to start with the human created theory first.

Originally posted by Ancient Champion
Well there you go folks, No such thing as ghosts or ufos. Think you see a ufo in the sky? Don't worry, It's just swamp gas.

Really, that's all you got from this thread? I can't speak for the OP but it doesn't seem like a blanket denial of any and every paranormal phenomena out there. I don't know what their personal belief in the paranormal is but my opinion, as a believer, is that threads like this are incredibly valuable.

Originally posted by WiindWalker
reply to post by elevenaugust

 

People like you take the fun out of life. Debunkers.......

Someone attempted to bring a bit of common sense and logic to the paranormal field? What a monster.
People who make intelligent threads like this that actually do a service for the paranormal community are intensely disliked by those who indulge in their own fantasies and deceive themselves and others who may be less intelligent or less experienced. Does it offend you because the individuals who use their critical thinking skills end up ruining threads such as this:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

or this?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Don't knock someone who is legitimately trying to educate people. Who knows, maybe if you had the desire you could learn a thing or two yourself.

I know this thread is about photos. I think some director said that a photo is like reading one page of a Novel. Photos are just one element in an investigation. All the evidence, physical and eyewitness accounts, history, etc,. must be reviewed together in order to come to any kind of conclusion that what is called "paranormal" or "other worldly" is legitimate.
Each of us remotely interested have their favorite bits about that. I have personal experience but that is subjective.
Here is a good example of video that The Ghost Hunters made about their early experiences. I don't know about TAPS overall... just like this one.

Eastern State penitentiary. Fixed IR camera. Third tier. Look at the image as it materializes. See the energy "orbs" that accompany the manifestation? See how it "runs off"? Freaky Deaky...

Well Well

My Friend has been Ghost Hunting and taking Photos for the Last 2 decades

made a Book Called Shutter has been in a few websites explaining his Photos

Ive been with Him when he takes the Photos , Ive seen Original Photos and Man Im telling you

of what ive Seen and the Photos that he Took at Grave Sites & Houses

as it Only Shows Up on Film ,,

He has Told me the Best Way to Capture is a Certain Black & White Film that is expensive


His Name is Chris Sharlow


Here is his Book

Shutter: A Ghost Hunter's Communion With the Paranormal
www.amazon.com...

In Google Books with Photos :: Shutter: A Ghost Hunter's Communion With the Paranormal
books.google.com...

Shutter on Scribd
www.scribd.com...

reply to post by elevenaugust


Good thread, thanks for sharing. As someone who's experienced the paranormal first-hand I know there are other entities in this world that exist. There's no denying though that there are attention-starved unfortunates who'll do anything to gain notice even using the paranormal to do so.

reply to post by elevenaugust
Nice thread.

To a large extent, it appears that ghost photography is driven by mistaken enthusiasts and sneaky guys using the images to make people believe they're special. I actually want to see a genuine ghost photograph and simply don't think any exist.

The last one I thought could be real was a hoax and one from 2010 remains unexplained. A huge collection like Janet Bord's 100 Greatest Paranormal Photographs is page after page of the same old double-exposures and 'it is said' kind of background stories.

Not a lot of wheat.

I accept that people see things, feel things and hear things, but suspect most of it takes place subjectively and rarely leaves anything conclusive.

I like to share this photo, its at the grave of my sister and father, taken in dec 2011, on the only day the graveyard stays open till late in the evening.
I wont say it's a real paranormal photo, but for me, the heart that you can see (above stone heart) it's a personal greating and gave me a good feeling for days.

click again for extra large image

Originally posted by Amanda5
reply to post by elevenaugust

 

Fabulous thread - thank you. You have put a lot of effort and time into compiling a very professional assignment - good for you. I have hundreds of photographs and will share three with you. The ones I share are interesting to say the least. Your thoughts as well as anyone else reading this - most appreciated.

Hi Amanda and thank you!

About your photos, I don't know what could have been the cause for the first one, appears to be very close to the camera though, looking by its unfocused aspect.

The second one is interesting because we can clearly see the shadow of the trail on the wall behind it. My best guess would be that the object that caused it is a tiny one, maybe a bug, and that it moved during the whole exposure. The fact that we can also see the shadow shows that it also moved during the short time the flash was fired. However, the shadow don't exactly fit with the object position, so maybe there was some other lights on the right that could illuminate it.
Could it be possible to take a look at the original photo please? I would like to take a look at the camera settings for this photo and try some experiment, if you don't mind.

The third one is at first glance very surprising, but if you take a look at my bugs/flies/moths examples above, you'll see that it aspect is very close to some of those:



reply to post by Kandinsky

reply to post by Morgenstern89
Thank you! That's exactly my intend here, to try to educate people the best way I can.
I will add that, like in the UFO subject, there are too many misinterpretations, misidentifications and fakes that constantly (and that's particularly true with the Youtube videos) obfuscate the real interesting cases.

Originally posted by Memenquay
I like to share this photo, its at the grave of my sister and father, taken in dec 2011, on the only day the graveyard stays open till late in the evening.
I wont say it's a real paranormal photo, but for me, the heart that you can see (above stone heart) it's a personal greating and gave me a good feeling for days.

click again for extra large image

Hi Memenquay,

I don't know when it happened, but I'm very sorry for the loss of your sister and father.

Reading you makes me feel like a lucky guy as I still have my sister and my father alive and close to me, but in the meantime I perfectly understand what you are saying as I've lost my grand-father 24 years ago and it's still like it was yesterday.
I really loved him and desperately at the time wanted a sign from him and, believe it or not (and I'm more than ever a lucky guy here too), it happened! He came in my dreams in a white bright suit, looking likes he was in its 20's and saying to me "don't worry, I'm ok and everything is fine here".
You could say "it was a dream like another" and you could be right, but for me, it sounded like a sign and since that day, I knew that the death is not the end.
It's a personal feeling and I take it as it, but IMO it could also apply to you.

Nice explanations. Now, where are the pics for the real deals? There should be some real paranormal pics out there, isn't it? You didn't show any wheat. You only showed the chaffs.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Some very interesting articles

Thanks OP for bringing forward your research work. I agree that the examples you have provided are explainable in the way you did it. It's well done forensic work and good to see that someone uses some logic and methodology to explain away the majority of so called "ghost images". That's reasonable.

HOWEVER meanwhile I believe that in your approach lies a serious potential pitfall that is true also for other topics such as UFOs or the Hollow Earth theory. That pitfall is some sort of addictiveness in trying to explain EYERYTHING away using the already found evidence for truely explainable cases.
I do not assume you are doing this. But we have to be very aware of the fact that it's a common human mistake to quickly generalize everything and then to think everything must be this way.

Some examples for failed generalization:
- Many UFOs can be explained by a "rational" cause and are not anything special at all but misinterpretations of something else. Hence ALL UFOs can or will be explained as misinterpretations (some day).
- Some psychic people are proven hoaxters and fraudsters and therefore the whole topic must be nothing else than wishful thinking and lies.
- We assume that the earth is solid based on a rather complicated outer / inner core model with many flaws. Hence all planets must follow this model even if this model is still not fully validated and contains many implausible problems and assumptions.
- We assume that the laws of physics that we have found so far are stable and the same throughout the whole universe.
- Some Islamic people are extremists. Hence potentially all of them must be.

And the list could go on and on. I don't want to go into details for each of the topics as of why they represent always the same thing: inappropriate generalization and / or stereotypes.

We will never find out what's really going on if we fall for the easy way which is to find a solution that is most comfortable to us. And by comfortable I mean: found arguments MUST support our CURRENT understanding of the world. Anything that does not fit will be dismissed and put under the table.
In order to find out more about the world, the universe and existance as such we need to look at the ANOMALIES which are NOT covered by so called "rational explanations". And there are many examples for those. E.g. there are many documented UFO sightings which have sufficient data to rule out the "normal" explanations but still can't be explained. There are also pretty serious flaws in the "Solid Earth" theory with its iron core approach where "science" makes crazy assumptions just to uphold their theory. Check out the work of Jan Lamprecht regarding seismic wave anomalies of the current model to find out more about that topic.

I understand that it's hard to accept that there are things beyond our current understanding which might let our current theories break down. But for the sake of the topic and the truth itself we should be prepared that this might happen. The earth once was believed to be flat. For a very long time this was "common sense" and state of the art knowledge. But as you all know it was just damn wrong. This "Flat Earth" theory was upheld far to long and many contradictors had to die in the process for defending a different theory.

I believe we should first look at the anomalies which CANNOT be explained currently to really find out what's going on. I know that this is the hard way as we have to make steps in unknown terrain. Assuming these anomalies can (some day) be explained away as something ordinary is nothing else than prejudice and biased thinking. This is the easy way which leads us to believe the earth is flat (again). We tend to fall for the easy way which is believing we already have understood everything while in fact we still know (almost) nothing.

Always keep that in mind...

Cheers

Thanks a lot! Now I have to clean out my photo album! I won't have anything to talk about at parties! Hell I probably won't have anymore parties! What next? You going to go to some pre school class to tell them there is no Santa Claus? DAMN YOU!!!

reply to post by elevenaugust


Hello again - all three photographs were taken outside at night.The first photograph has been published in Ufologist Magazine here in Australia. My personal thoughts include that I have captured an Orb in motion.

The streak of light on the wall - yes the shadow is a fascinating aspect of the photograph. The white shape is unusual also. All three were taken in my front yard at night. I saw not a single aspect on the screen before I pressed the button. When I press the button - the first time I see anything is as the flash activates - apart from that I see nothing - not before or after - only during the activation of the flash.

Facing the wall - where the streak appeared there are no external lights. There is a street light that is across the road approximately 40 metres from where I was standing (behind me) and I have an enormous tree in between the streetlight and myself. The streetlight may have interacted with the white shape under the carport as I do not have the enormous tree to block out the streetlight. The white shape I also have in the same area as the streak - on the cement ground in front of the wall and it is the other way up or down (if only I knew) they were taken months apart.

My white shape is similar to a couple of the specimens on your example sheet but I have two photographs - taken months apart and each with the shape up and then down?? or down and then up ??

Much Peace...



NB Have sent you a personal message with my camera details - cheers!

Djinns are made of smoke if you knew !!!

Djinn

I live in a haunted house and see orbs first hand with the naked eye, along with friends and family who have also seen them in my house. With first hand knowledge all I can say is this, dust orbs captured in photo's exist as well as real spiritual orbs. I have photos of orbs in motion that my friends and I took from different camers, and all of us had seem them first hand. My freind seen one going behind my couch and snapped a nice pic of it. I have actually seen my one ghost Anne peeking her head around the corner from my living room (scared the hell out of me). I have seen the ghost partially and fully in our dimension. I have a fair amount of first hand proof, of video, photo, and audio evidence, I should put it all together. Some of it (audio recordings of coin spinning) I wouldn't bother showing because people would just say its me spinning the coin anyway...lol. All I can say to people who are on the fence about this stuff, the spirit world is very real. In my opinion, we are being watched from another dimension. Most people don't believe because they have never seen first hand so I can't blame them, I never used to believe, I used to think it was a bunch of hocus pocus, indian spirit stuff that only existed in the movies until I moved into my home 3 yrs ago. I knew someone had died in my house, I looked into the previous owners obituary, sure enough, she passed away of natural causes in the house. All is good now though, she is not keeping my family up at at night anymore by loud banging noises. We are all getting along well now...lol. My friends at work are now seeing the odd orb fly around my work area. If you think you live in a haunted house, get an iphone or galaxy , put it in video mode wihile keeping the main light on, and have just a little bit of faint light in the room, and you will get on video the orb or orbs flying around and pulling wicked turns and maneuvers.