I have been working on a Google site that I had created about a year ago but never quite found the time to finish. I finally finished it!
The site is called Ghost Photos Revealed and is very relevent to this blog as well. The site was created in order to show how easy it is to create (mistakenly or on purpose) ghostly photos and to explain in great detail how these photos are created.
I invite you to visit this site and critique or comment on any of the information.
Please following this link: Ghost Photos Revealed
I look forward to any comments you may have.
I have not received any ghost photos yet. If you have a photo that shows a ghost or other strange phenomena you would like analyzed, please send it to mailto:GhostlyEvidenceEmail@google.com.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Introduction and vision statement
Hello and welcome to my blog.
This blog is about analyzing and speculating on photographic evidence of ghosts. I hope to have readers submit their photos for critique by other readers. I hope to generate discussions about individual photos and select outstanding photos for display.
This is not an original idea of mine. This was recently done by Professor Richard Wiseman (http://www.richardwiseman.com/index.html) in his blog "Hauntings: The science of ghosts" (http://www.scienceofghosts.com/). He accepted photos submitted by readers and posted them for voting on authenticity and comment by his readers. There were lively discussions for many photos and people really enjoyed viewing and offering suggestions for non-paranormal reasons for the photos. The posting of photos was a short-term event used to gather data for Professor Wiseman's research and he stopped taking official votes on 3/20/2009. Many readers asked him to continue posting photos, which he did, but was no longer tallying votes for the photos.
It is in this spirit of continuing the idea of allowing readers to vote and comment on submitted photos that I started this blog. My hope is to get lots of reader-submitted photos and activity from readers on the photos. Another goal is to help educate the public on the methods by which photos may be misidentified as paranormal due to commonly created artifacts and the method for creating these artifacts. I would also like to discuss methods for deliberately creating fake ghost photos either via photographic methods involving the camera, film, or development process, or using photo-manipulation software.
Now, if you are reading this, you probably want to know where I stand on the belief in ghosts in order to interpret my comments. I think this is important to know whether I have an axe to grind or an agenda. My beliefs in this subject will influence how I communicate and respond to comments.
I am a 45 year old white male living in the state of Minnesota in the United States. I work as a software engineer and have for 15 years. I am married and have three kids and a dog. I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but consider myself to be an atheist at this point in my life. Politically, I am a bit liberal. I am not a member of any political party, although I would call myself an independent if cornered.
I consider myself logical and intelligent and understand that I don't have all the answers. I have had an inter erst in the paranormal and unexplained since I was old enough to read (about age 7 or so). I read every book I could find concerning ghosts, UFOs, bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. I was always intrigued by the phenomena, and hoped to witness them for myself. To this day, I have not seen a ghost, a UFO, or bigfoot, but I'm still looking.
The Internet has allowed myself and others to have access to a vast amount of data, and I naturally continued my search of paranormal information on the web. I have been pleased at all the content I can find, but a bit frustrated as well. I've seen the emergence of widespread belief in the phenomena of orbs due to the number of photos posted on the web and acceptance of theories without any real scientific backing. I don't have a problem with people believing that orbs are spirits necessarily, but to me this is just static that gets in the way of better information. If I search for ghost photos on the web, 80% of the hits will be photos of orbs. I have my own beliefs about orbs, and that is that they are caused by normal mundane circumstances and lack of knowledge about how cameras capture photos. Other types of photos showing mists and vortexes fall into this same category.
I am open-minded enough to say that these phenomena might actually exist, but I haven't seen a believable example yet. I would like to help educate people as to how these phenomena can be faked or recreated using simple techniques with their camera. Perhaps then, the number of highly questionable photos found on the web will decrease and we will be able to find more interesting pictures to analyze more objectively.
I also believe that people who see/hear/feel ghosts are not mentally unbalanced. I have heard first-hand stories from people that I find very credible and not at all prone to delusional thinking describing some very strange phenomena. I will apply logical analysis to these stories in an attempt to provide a normal explanation to it. The human brain is quite adept at misrepresenting reality under certain circumstances and this in no way implies psychosis in a person. I may not come up with a logical explanation, and that's ok.
Once I figure out how to do it, I will want to ask people to submit their ghostly photos for analysis. I want to invite other readers to comment on the photos in a constructive, non-demeaning way in order to offer explanations on how the photo could have occurred using non-paranormal and logical means. I expect to see blatant forgeries submitted as well as some that will never have a "normal" explanation. In the end, the analysis of a graphical file is limited, and only so much analysis may be performed. Also, just because it is possible to provide one or more methods as to how a photo may have been created to show a ghostly image, in the end it is just an opinion based on some set of facts. These facts may not represent reality and the conclusion is that a photo may not be explainable. Does this mean that ghosts truly exist? That is up to the reader to decide, because I don't know.
This blog is about analyzing and speculating on photographic evidence of ghosts. I hope to have readers submit their photos for critique by other readers. I hope to generate discussions about individual photos and select outstanding photos for display.
This is not an original idea of mine. This was recently done by Professor Richard Wiseman (http://www.richardwiseman.com/index.html) in his blog "Hauntings: The science of ghosts" (http://www.scienceofghosts.com/). He accepted photos submitted by readers and posted them for voting on authenticity and comment by his readers. There were lively discussions for many photos and people really enjoyed viewing and offering suggestions for non-paranormal reasons for the photos. The posting of photos was a short-term event used to gather data for Professor Wiseman's research and he stopped taking official votes on 3/20/2009. Many readers asked him to continue posting photos, which he did, but was no longer tallying votes for the photos.
It is in this spirit of continuing the idea of allowing readers to vote and comment on submitted photos that I started this blog. My hope is to get lots of reader-submitted photos and activity from readers on the photos. Another goal is to help educate the public on the methods by which photos may be misidentified as paranormal due to commonly created artifacts and the method for creating these artifacts. I would also like to discuss methods for deliberately creating fake ghost photos either via photographic methods involving the camera, film, or development process, or using photo-manipulation software.
Now, if you are reading this, you probably want to know where I stand on the belief in ghosts in order to interpret my comments. I think this is important to know whether I have an axe to grind or an agenda. My beliefs in this subject will influence how I communicate and respond to comments.
I am a 45 year old white male living in the state of Minnesota in the United States. I work as a software engineer and have for 15 years. I am married and have three kids and a dog. I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but consider myself to be an atheist at this point in my life. Politically, I am a bit liberal. I am not a member of any political party, although I would call myself an independent if cornered.
I consider myself logical and intelligent and understand that I don't have all the answers. I have had an inter erst in the paranormal and unexplained since I was old enough to read (about age 7 or so). I read every book I could find concerning ghosts, UFOs, bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. I was always intrigued by the phenomena, and hoped to witness them for myself. To this day, I have not seen a ghost, a UFO, or bigfoot, but I'm still looking.
The Internet has allowed myself and others to have access to a vast amount of data, and I naturally continued my search of paranormal information on the web. I have been pleased at all the content I can find, but a bit frustrated as well. I've seen the emergence of widespread belief in the phenomena of orbs due to the number of photos posted on the web and acceptance of theories without any real scientific backing. I don't have a problem with people believing that orbs are spirits necessarily, but to me this is just static that gets in the way of better information. If I search for ghost photos on the web, 80% of the hits will be photos of orbs. I have my own beliefs about orbs, and that is that they are caused by normal mundane circumstances and lack of knowledge about how cameras capture photos. Other types of photos showing mists and vortexes fall into this same category.
I am open-minded enough to say that these phenomena might actually exist, but I haven't seen a believable example yet. I would like to help educate people as to how these phenomena can be faked or recreated using simple techniques with their camera. Perhaps then, the number of highly questionable photos found on the web will decrease and we will be able to find more interesting pictures to analyze more objectively.
I also believe that people who see/hear/feel ghosts are not mentally unbalanced. I have heard first-hand stories from people that I find very credible and not at all prone to delusional thinking describing some very strange phenomena. I will apply logical analysis to these stories in an attempt to provide a normal explanation to it. The human brain is quite adept at misrepresenting reality under certain circumstances and this in no way implies psychosis in a person. I may not come up with a logical explanation, and that's ok.
Once I figure out how to do it, I will want to ask people to submit their ghostly photos for analysis. I want to invite other readers to comment on the photos in a constructive, non-demeaning way in order to offer explanations on how the photo could have occurred using non-paranormal and logical means. I expect to see blatant forgeries submitted as well as some that will never have a "normal" explanation. In the end, the analysis of a graphical file is limited, and only so much analysis may be performed. Also, just because it is possible to provide one or more methods as to how a photo may have been created to show a ghostly image, in the end it is just an opinion based on some set of facts. These facts may not represent reality and the conclusion is that a photo may not be explainable. Does this mean that ghosts truly exist? That is up to the reader to decide, because I don't know.
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