strange thing, my landlady has been taking a number of photos of the inside of this house while she's fixing it up. before and after stuff, basically. she's gotten a few with unexplained orbs in them. one of the photos has about 20, literally. any thoughts? i'd post it, but it's her photo and i don't have permission, yet.

I guess whether I beleive in them or not depends on how you define a ghost. I don't beleive in the floating grey ladies and all that. The old woman at the foot of your bed in an old house, I don't beleive in her either. Beleive in an afterlife, and that maybe sometimes things don't go the way they're supposed to.. maybe..

it's a very interesting and somewhat of a "can of worms" subject..

The orbs in the photos are most likely floating particles of dust that are reflecting the camera's flash.

I do not believe that ghosts exist. Demons and Angels do exist, though, and I believe that, for whatever reason, they are what gets mistaken for ghosts.

Is the can-o-worms open yet?

I agree with the dust particles thing. The whole orbs theory kind of turns me off a bit.

I don't know if I beleive in Angels and Demons. Religiously I'm pretty blurry. I'm not a Christian. I was raised that way but at this point I'm not really sure what I think.

hmm..

Ok...my first thought is how this relates to medicine. I can stare at a radiograph for hours and make up a tumor because I don't realize that the prof is sticking me with a tumor, I can look at necropsy photos for ever, and make myself see fibrin where the camera is merely flashing off a glistening organ. I can sit in the dark long enough and scare myself half to death by imagining footsteps in the hall, or a tyrannosaur outside my window (but that has nothing relevant to do with medicine...)

I don't recall having any visions of ghosts in my years on this planet. But I might of forgotten...or perhaps they got to me and altered my memory. I AM, however extremely gullible...and the 'ghost' or whatever in '3 men and a little lady' or whatever, scares me to pieces. So does the movie the blair witch project. The human mind is an amazing thing.

For all you know, I might have made you up.

....
that may not have been relevant, but I went with the thoughts of the moment.

I don't think that we have enough information to assume that the orbs are from dust. Daneel, you failed to answer some basic questions: one, how many people were killed in the house (you can't have more orbs than dead people), and/or was the house built on a graveyard/ancient indian burial ground?

never said that the orbs were dead people. nor that anyone had died here. it wouldn't surprise me if there were natives buried underneath the house, but that wouldn't surprise me of any house. given a long enough time line, all homes are built on the remains of the dead.

the trouble with the dust particle thing is that the "orbs" (for lack of a better word) don't show up in subsequent pictures. and those were taken only a few seconds after that one, and it wasn't the first in the series either. i know they weren't photoshopped because i saw her take the pictures, and we could see them on the camera's screen.

i've never catered to the dead person theory, the demon/angel theory, the psychic memory theory, or the hallucination theory. i don't know what creeps people out or causes them distress of this sort. but i'd like to exhaust all scientific possibilities before i try to think of a supernatural reason for it.

Well, if you want to find a scientific reason, then stick to the dust theory. Cameras--digitals especially, can over or under expose an image. Just because they were taken seconds apart doesn't mean that the camera wasn't doing something totally different inside.

I take pictures all the time. Even on burst mode, the lighting and exposure comes out differently from shot to shot. It could be dust, light particles bouncing around or any number of physical properties that explain it.

actually, why believe in demons and angels, but not ghosts? there is a theory that a lot of physicists are starting to support. what they agree on is the fact that there are more then four dimensions. even to make einsteins theories working there has to be eleven (i think that was the number). anyway, the theory is that are lives continue in a seperate dimension from day one. in some dimension out there i am still three years old, riding my big wheels in the house. now, because these dimensions overlap and such, every once in a while we catch glimpses of them, thus, we think we see a ghost.

i am not sure what i believe, but i have seen many an unexplained event in my life.

like mark said, cameras can do funky things, even from one picture to the next. still, i believe in ghosts (more importantly, do you believe in faeries?) and i took these shots in my house sunday afternoon. notice how you can see the floor line through fox's nose ... and just what is she looking at?


"normal" fox


"ghosty" fox

Mentioning demons/angels and ghosts in the same sentence shows a clear misunderstanding of what angels and demons are about.

See it's a language thing. Language in ancient times (like when the bible was written) was heavy on mythology and very short on natural science and psychology.

I've been studying the texts that effectively made demons popular in western culture quite a bit lately, and I'll tell you this: there is no other difference between what these people call demons and what they call passions, temptations, desire, lust and so on, other then that they might to want to make a different point. They where very aware of how they could use mythology in language like this.

Demons are not spirits flying around getting caught by cameras. They are part of you. The part of you you can't control properly and constantly gets you into trouble. Angels are the same only the other way around.

Yeah, I'd put my bet on something happeing with the flash or the camera too.

Fearies, on the other hand... Any sane person believes in those.


Patrik

ok, i'm not saying i "believe" in ghosts, but i don't "disbelieve" in many things unexplained either.

here's the story, during OtR's show in northampton last year. kim commented on how emily dickenson was her favorite author, how much she admired her and loved her writing and that she knew that she had grown up around the area and would love to "just touch her house". so after the show, several of us packed up and drove the short distance to amhearst and made the pilgrimage to emily's home. we arrived (and we believe trespassed) a little after midnight and walked a few blocks in the freezing cold and snow up to emily's back door. i snapped a few pictures and below are the results. and for what it's worth, the evening was perfectly clear, no fog, nothing and these images did not show up in any other photos taken that night and it was not apparent to the "eye" that evening as we were there.

needless to say, kim was quite freaked out by the swirling, smokey looking images in the pics...


notice the smokey image above kim and to her right


and the swirling smokey image to karin, linford and kim's left (and also directly in front of kim).

not sure what it is, but it gave me a few goosebumps when i first saw it...

::cueing the twilight zone music:: maybe emily just wanted to say hello to kim too?

I feel that ghosts do exist for one reason or another. Can they hurt us? No. Do they want to - maybe some do. All I know is that this Samhain I will be celebrating the thinness of the veil between this world and the next and hope to maybe see my mom.

Oh, and when I took this photo back in February of this year something warped. This was once a true road, but for some reason the county shut it down. The actual road ends at a family cemetery where some of my family is buried. It was a late February evening when my dad showed me this place. As we were leaving, I got this feeling we were not alone. As I turned to take this photo, I could see a horse-drawn funeral carriage complete with the huge gas lamps on either side with a black top-hatted driver up top and kinsfolk walking along behind. As quickly as it was there - it was gone. It wasn't creepy just a picture from the past.


Welcome To Sleepy Hollow



Cher

There is a very interesting book called "Supernature" (no links as yet!) that mentions: "why should people expect to see ghosts with earthly objects such as clothes, shoes, hats, etc.?".

Rob

Firstly, what is a ghost? Some would say that a ghost is a spirit. My christian theology says that everybody has a spirit (or soul) - and that heaven and hell are full of these souls. Even God has a Spirit - the Holy Spirit - or the Holy Ghost. So in that context, I believe in ghosts.
However, as far as ghosts in terms of spirits (without bodies) wandering the earth, I do not believe in them. Part of it is imagination, part of it is an understanding of the universe that we cannot quite (or maybe never be able to) grasp, part of it may be some sort of angelic and / or demonic activity, part of it could just be a matter of camera foul-ups or what not.

the only way i've been able to look at this sort of thing is to think of footprints. everything that moves leaves a sign behind itself. if everything has a spirit, it could be presumed that a great disruption to that creature could cause it leave a sort of 'footprint' behind itself. meaning that a painful death or a painful situation might leave a lasting impression. for instance, that carriage and the people walking behind it that Cher mentioned. they didn't all die at that moment (probably), it was a painful situation for all of them, and so that footprint stayed there. that's the only explanation i've manage to wrap my head around. the idea started with a story about a haunted battlefield in Europe i once read about.

apparently, every year after the battle on its anniversary for about a hundred years or so, the battle would be reenacted in the sky and was repeatedly viewed by sometimes hundreds of witnesses at a time. mothers would look and see their sons fighting and dying, wives their husbands, etc. but the funny thing was that men who had survived the battle saw themselves fighting in it. naturally, they weren't dead yet, so it couldn't be their soul they were witnessing.

mind you, i have no idea how this applies to Christianity's belief systems. the fact that it sort of legitimizes ESP and psychics bothers me though. i don't pretend to understand all this stuff and typically i think the theories i come up with are laughable.

I think if anybody has a cool "ghost" story they should share it, just becuase Halloween is coming up. I think that'd be interesting. I don't really have any myself.

Emily's Ghost! I was there, and I'm in.

Has anyone written that song yet?

I don't know what to expect. I just know what I see. It's really not that strange once you open your eyes. Maybe what I see isn't ghosts perse, but glimpses of other times.

Just sayin'

Cher

Sunday night Kim Taylor said (from the stage) that she just looked back at the "Women's" restroom sign and it changed to "Whores" and then changed back to "Women."

Just sayin'

Misreading shit happens to me ALL the time. The other sight not so often. All I know is that I've had the sight ever since I was a small child before I understood what it was. My great grandmother who was part Cherokee had it, her daughter and her daughter's daughter didn't, but I do as does a cousin. To me, my belief in the sight is no different than your belief in a God who created the world in six days. Believing is believing.

Just sayin'

Cher

Bill -

I love your photos. I can't explain the wisps. I know that I took a photo of a friend of mine one night in a previous apartment. When the photo was developed, there was a wisp in the photo much like those in the photos you posted here. We were both intrigued when we saw it. Could have been something during the developing, but who knows?

Cher

yeah, but there was no developing here, these are digital images. i have no idea what it is, or what it isn't. i just know they weren't in any other pics taken that evening and it wasn't visual to the eye. kinda weird...

Not sure this is a ghost story, but it's one we've never been able to explain away.

I attended both undergrad and graduate school at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL. It's a pretty historical area as Abe Lincoln's father and step-mother had a farm some miles from Charleston, and when Abe was a circuit rider, he would visit with them whenever a case brought him to Charleston which is the county seat of Coles Co.

Not far from their farm is a small now defunct church with many old (pre Civil War) graves. One Friday night/Saturday morning a few of my friends decided they wanted to visit the cemetery connected to the church which is where Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln are buried. It was around 2 a.m. on a cold, snowy January night and we weren't long back from XMas Break.

We got there, and yes, before I go any farther with this story, we had been drinking, but no one was trashed that wasn't our style. So, the guys pile out of the car with flashlights in hand and go exploring among the graves. It was actually quite beautiful and peaceful. There was a bright moon and the snow was bright in the moonlight. I remember getting cold, and as I had been to the cemetery many times during Botany field trips (good place to collect wild flowers and lichens from the tombstones), so I headed back to the car which was parked by the church.

I remember the crunch of the snow as I walked along and the smell of the cold. I looked up as I neared the gate to the cemetery (it was surrounded by an iron fence) and witnessed the lights of the basement come on illuminating the 3 windows one at a time. Now please note this is a Baptist church out in the middle of corn fields. It is a church that is simply a historical site and no longer used for services. I stopped when I saw the lights go on, looked down, and looked back up ... they were still on. I called to the boys saying, "Look at the church!" I said nothing about lights. One guy, John, yelled, "Holy shit! Head for the car!" And the mad dash began. We all piled in and he started it up, and we went nowhere because we were spinning on ice. Suddenly there was a loud banging on a back window. Everyone began yelling. We finally realized it was one of the guys. He didn't make it through the gate and had ran into the fence. He hit it so hard that he carried bruises from it for days afterwards. Anyway, we got outta there.

We went back the next day determined to prove just what it was we saw. We went into the church to see if we could access the basement. Not from the inside. The only doors were the front doors and one back door that opened up to the cemetery. That left the 2 doors on either side of the front entrance. There are 3 steps down that lead to the doors which were locked. The doors opened to the outside and there were matted leaves and snow which were undisturbed. If anyone would have entered the basement, the snow and leaves would have been moved. We looked through the basement windows, and it was more than a little creepy. There were tables and chairs set up and faded paper streamers hanging from the ceiling. But the creepiest thing were the lights. What I saw was like someone turning on 3 separate incandescent light. Each window lit up separately. However, the lights in the basement were fluorescent lights which would have flickered and then come on.

As I've said, it's something I've never been able to explain.

Cher

Yeah, and I think it's plenty cool!

Cher

i like the options given with regard to a footprint or even the multiple dimensions.

i haven't seen anything, but i have felt things in different places.

one example was in an old methodist church in northern florida (mt. pisgah)--i was there with a friend who was looking for a place to get married.

i felt a very opressed, sad kinda vibe whenever i looked up at the balcony seats and walked up there. i figured it was extra seating, but my friend told me that it was where the slaves sat back in the day. who knows? i might've felt the things they once felt? maybe i was just sad, but that doesn't happen all that often.

my parents have had multiple experiences with regard to my sister (dead now for 7.5 years). even old smells of her perfume real strong in places (where she never had been).

my g'pa once found my sister's anklet in the closet (it must have been in there from when she was staying with them a year or so before she passed away). he went in there b/c the light was mysteriously on.

i could just as easly believe she was involved as she was not (i tend to go with "not" though)--who knows what synchronicity is about even? but there have been uncanny experiences by a lot of my family members.

she and i were very close so one might wonder why i haven't had any experiences. i think it's b/c i feel very peaceful about her life and death (even with the pain) and that perhaps i don't need as many comforting reminders? everyone struggles differently with losses like this one, we seem to have different needs in all that hurt. i don't think any of us have experienced the exact same things with our grief from losing her.

i agree with patrik about angels and demons, fwiw.