GRS: Fake Ghost Photos...

  Orbs! The name conjures up little balls of white light. Most orb photographs are taken with digital cameras under extremely low-light conditions and are nothing more than digital flaws caused by lack of pixelation or filling of the proper colors due to a digital defect. I have viewed thousands of such pictures and they are nothing paranormal, especially when taken with older digital cameras. See the article: Digital Cameras or Ghost Hunting at its Worst by Troy Taylor. Solution: always use another camera in conjunction with any digital camera especially under low-light conditions. Those not taken with digital cameras could be moisture droplets in the air illuminated by the flash unit, rain, blowing dust, snow or sometimes even small insects. Please be aware of the weather conditions under which you take your photographs.

  Troy Taylor is a member of the Ghost Research Society and president of the American Ghost Society As I am sure that you have noticed in the pages that have come before, it has always been the philosophy of the American Ghost Society to try and rule out every natural explanation for a haunting before considering the idea that the cause of the phenomena might be a ghost. This is not because we are non-believers but because we are trying to provide authentic evidence of the paranormal. We do not make false claims about being experts but base our knowledge on our experiences, and not on what we want ghosts to be. We try to caution other ghost hunters about presenting questionable photos and materials which do not serve as genuine evidence. We believe that such evidence should be approached with caution... that is not to say that it is not real but unless there is other evidence to back it up, it cannot, and should not, be presented as ultimate proof of the paranormal. 

  With those statements in mind, let's discuss why digital photography should not be used in paranormal research.... There are many things which can go wrong when taking photos from light refractions, which look like orbs or globes, to items that are caught in the camera flash and turn out looking really spooky in the developed print. It takes experience and practice to be able to realize what are faulty images and what are not. One of the keys is being able to analyze the photo and the negative and to be able to enlarge it and tell if the photo shows a natural image or a supernatural one. Which leads to my biggest problem with the new digital cameras that are becoming so popular in paranormal investigating.... Now, before I tell you why I don't like digital cameras to be used in paranormal investigations, let me just say that I have nothing against the cameras themselves. I understand the benefits of them... the instant pictures, no wasted film and no developing costs. I understand the reasoning behind this. Digital cameras are saving ghost hunters a lot of money ... but is this really a relevant reason to just accept what ever results come along? The idea of saving time and money are, of course, the positive points.... but unfortunately, the negative points to digital cameras outweigh the good ones..... at least for their use in the paranormal field. Let me break down the objections that I have by first prefacing these comments by saying that not all ghost hunters with digital cameras are using them incorrectly. That is to say that they are using them as a secondary, back-up camera and not as the only type of camera used in the investigation. This is really the only way that a digital camera should be used. Unfortunately, not all ghost hunters are using the cameras correctly, which has led to some disastrous results on behalf of the credibility of paranormal investigating. Many ghost hunters are out snapping hundreds of digital photos at random, using nothing else in the investigation but the camera. It is these people who are presenting digital images as absolute proof of the paranormal who are making a mockery of spirit photography. No matter what some people claim, digital cameras CANNOT be used to capture irrefutable evidence of the paranormal and here are 2 reasons why: Some time back, I began to notice that digital cameras only seemed to capture images that were showing mostly globes or orbs and this made me curious. It was possible that many, even most, of these orbs could be genuine... it was only that it made me curious. So, I started talking to tech support people and engineers with the companies who made the cameras in question... including Sony, Canon and Hewlett-Packard. Now these folks had no idea that I was talking about ghost photos.... all they knew was that I was taking photos in dark locations and these digital images were coming back with what looked like balls of light in them. Now these were photos that I was taking, not someone else. I had been experimenting with a digital camera and I had been suspicious of the results I was getting. All of the activity seemed to be just orbs. As most of you know, this is the easiest type of photo to mistake for being authentic (outside of camera strap photos apparently) because of the various natural explanations behind them. I started to question the results, so I started doing some research. I had already noticed that, upon close examination, some of the alleged orbs appeared to be spots where the image had not filled in all the way in the photograph. This was precisely the explanation that was given to me by three different, unrelated companies. According to them, all three companies had been experiencing problems with their digital cameras when they were being used under low light conditions. It seemed that when the cameras were used in darkness, or near darkness, the resulting images were plagued with spots that appeared white or light-colored where not all of the digital pixels had filled in. In this manner, the cameras were actually creating the orbs... which had no paranormal source at all. Remember, this was research that anyone could have done.... but I was soon to find out that some people just don't want to be confused with the facts! When I first made this new information public, I was attacked by various proponents of digital cameras who pretty much said that whatever opinions I had on the issue really didn't matter. I was just flat-out wrong! One of the few logical, and non-personal, arguments that were directed my way, said that the technicians at these three companies really knew nothing about taking ghost photos and would, of course, offer a skeptical view point about the images in question. Okay, now being a person with an open mind, I would concede that this is possible, perhaps even probable. But it still does not solve the biggest problem, nor does it address the fact that digital cameras will still NEVER offer proof of the supernatural. Here's why: To be able to analyze a photo and to be able to determine its authenticity, two things are needed.... a print of the photo and its negative. These are two things that digital cameras cannot provide. Last year, I sent a number of strange photos and negatives to Kodak laboratories, who authenticated them, and pronounced them genuine, but they had to have the photos and the negatives to do this. Both are required to prove that a photo is genuine because it must be possible to reproduce the photo from the negative and prove that no tampering or alterations have taken place. Obviously, this cannot be done with a digital camera. Also, as mentioned before, analysis of a photo begins with enlarging it to study the anomalous images. Have you ever tried to enlarge a digital photo very much? If you have, then you'll know that it becomes nothing but blurred images and pixels. Obviously, this makes it impossible to study it. Hopefully, you get what I am driving at here. Digital cameras certainly have their place and a number of benefits.... I'm just not sure that they can really benefit the study of the paranormal. But who knows? Maybe changes will come in the future that will enhance digital and bring it up to the standards of 35 mm. But until that time, I suggest that you approach the digital photos that you see with an air of caution.... someone may be telling you they are the real thing.... and some of them might even be. As for the rest of them, well, I guess that's up to you to decide.