Orbs are NOT spirits

I would love to see one photo of "orbs" that has intact exif data, where a flash wasn't used. Or, where there wasn't some sort of light source causing flare

Lights reflect dust and lights cause flare. It is a LOGICAL explanation. Finding little round dust specks as ghosts is really a stretch as BEST. I think your point and shoot digitals, with their flashes so close to the lens really exaccerbate this effect. Not that any of the cameras used in these photos are poor cameras, but, the design of the flash to lens is probably contributing to ORBS.

I am pretty opened minded about most things. This is just one of those that one must deny ignorance. It is a lack of understanding of flash photography/strong light sources that leads to the belief in orbs.

Of course Orbs are not spirits.

A spirit can not be viewed as it has no parts and no definite shape. t is not seperated into any defined parts and just is. To claim that you have seen a spirit with your eyes in your house is a flasy outright. Spirits are not 3 demensional and with no shape/ parts it is impossible to say you have seen one.

BTW I am not a believer in Ghosts, or any of the paronomal stuff.... well some of it. I am comming froma pure theological point and philosiphical point on this one.

Glad to hear a voice of reason amongst choirs of lemmings.

And I do believe in some, though very few, ghosts. Too often people are overly mystified by things that could have a normal, simple, explanation. Very rarely is it that something exception actually happens - and I mean very. Most often when you hear stories of things happening they're either a) purposefully made up, or b) some truth, but are inadvertently exagerated because the person was overwhelmed by the experience. Since it's then typed out and spoken out as a story, curcial elements of information are either missing or added that bend the story one way or another.

Thank God i am not alone in thinking that! They are quiet obviously dust or insects in 99.9% of cases.
I think its an inherent problem on the board that people are too ready to believe any old rubbish, and the excellent high standards of this place are slipping. I think we should hold people to account over there claims so we can know at least to ourselves that we have eliminated every possibilty, and actually make some progress in understanding the paranormal!

Sorry about the rant but its so nice to hear people talking rationally for once!
Get off the Bandwagon and put down the Hanbook

[edit on 5-2-2006 by bigdanprice]

Originally posted by bigdanprice
Thank God i am not alone in thinking that! They are quiet obviously dust or insects in 99.9% of cases.
I think its an inherent problem on the board that people are too ready to believe any old rubbish, and the excellent high standards of this place are slipping. I think we should hold people to account over there claims so we can know at least to ourselves that we have eliminated every possibilty, and actually make some progress in understanding the paranormal!

Sorry about the rant but its so nice to hear people talking rationally for once!
Get off the Bandwagon and put down the Hanbook

[edit on 5-2-2006 by bigdanprice]

Amen to that brother!

Nothing annoys me more than some moron coming on here with a completely ridiculous story and people feeding their stupidity by agreeing with them and flaming people who crticise their story.

ie:

The Ancients

This place used to be a great forum of conspiracy debate, where people seriously and credibly debated.

Now it seems all you need is a crack pot story and a band of ignorant followers.

Some of them are dusts/lens, some are real spirits.

Check out this NASA movie and this picture of a orb

Well the picture above the sphinx is almost definitley a piece of dust or sand on the lens... theyre in a desert! As for the Nasa Video, as amazing as it is, I dont think it offers up evidence for orbs in the sense in which we are looking at them i.e. paranormal as opposed to UFO.

Here is an article I found on orb photography

External Source
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.

I dont want to be closed minded about any topic, but I find that people claiming orbs are real cannot prove to me how they know this, in any meaningful or scientific way.

I find it funny that people see white ladies ,cavaliers,spectral beings and the like but when they are photographed only ORBS???? I agree these things are just dust etc.Thats not tosay people don't see the other things though.

in my research I have come across a video, that really takes an honest view. Its by a british paranormal investigator called Phil.

Orbs

Check it out, you made need a broadband connection.

Dan

ORB Fly-by

Don't think it's an insect could be someone throwning a ping pong ball maybe? Or it's an orb.

The Beauliue Abbey light is an interesting orb. I would be interested to know a few things
whether the light source, be it actual or infared

1. Was the orb visible with the naked eye
   
2. Was a light source, visible or infared placed near the lens
   
3. has it been professionally analyised
   

It is easy to explain away invisible orbs, those that are only apparent on the photo. But if it was visible by the naked eye it would be a lot harder to explain.

orbs

i posted some pics on a previous thread :
www.abovetopsecret.com...

i have my views

Orbs? Well, they are just orbs.

We know that some are just artifacts from camera flashes; let's not be stupid enough to assume they all are.

Spirits? We have lots of anecdotal evidence about orbs that seem to be directed by consciousness, but let us not be too quick to assume it's spirits, or even that there are spirits - unless you're doing so from a religious (belief w/suspension of logic) framework.

Most of these 'appearances' are so evanescent that they can't (yet) be studied - all we can do is concatenate the anecdotes and speculate. The ones we can easily study usually turn out to be natural phenomenon, misinterpreted.

I once "saw" two "orbs." They were simply colored globes with a faint visual presence, about 18 to 24 inches in diameter, as if the air itself had a faint tint to it. I couldn't see them when I looked right at them, only in my peripheral vision. When I asked the person I was visiting if she had spirit guides, she looked toward the area where I had seen these 'orbs' (they followed her into the room) and said simply, "Yes."

Were they manifestations of spirits? Perhaps, there's no proof one way or the other, and I've never seen it (or that person) since. It's also likely they were reflections or some other natural phenomenon.

Frankly, I think it's immature and unscientific to take a position on anything before there's adequate evidence to demonstrate the reality of your assumptions. The same for assigning ONE explanation to EVERY occurance.

Skepticism and paranormalism are just two more religions: belief systems. Useful only for giving comfort to those who fear the truth.

Some things are still a mystery, and solutions to mysteries require objectivity, not positive or negative belief systems.

If you want a few good pics of orbs then here is something you can do. A fellow mod did this and it worked wonders. I wish I could remember who and find the thread but instead i'll just give you the jist of it.

Take a few pics in your living room of certain areas and upload them to your computer. then beat the crap out of your favorite chair in the same room and take some more pics.

You will have orbs in the second set of pics.

It's simply dust.

I've seen some ghost pics that scare the crap out of me. Orbs are too easily explained and duplicated to be taken seriously.

Just my opinion,

wupy

Some time before Christmas my Mum got a digital camera. She used it a few times and all was fine, then she started noticing orbs in the images.

Although mine is not a particularly religious family there are many members who are quite spiritual on both sides including a renowned psychic who read for, amongst others, a number of foreign dignitaries. So when my Mother noticed this it was immediately recognised as 'orbs' with the emphasis on something spiritual. These didn't seem to appear in every single picture, just ones of certain people at certain places.

She brought the camera round to show me and it was plain to see what she was referring to. In some of the images they appeared to be static and in others in motion. We spoke and I suggested it was just the camera and as the last few pictures had been clear it was probably some artifacts. She continued to use it again and the orbs returned seemingly in images of the same people or the same areas, by this time she was a little... not concerned but unsure.

After seeing these most recent of images and speaking to her again suggesting the same as I had before I perusaded her to take my camera and if she happened to catch any more orbs to immediately take a picture with mine and then with hers again so we could compare, which she did.

There were no orbs to be seen anywhere on the pictures taken with my camera as opposed to some appearing in hers only moments before. In reference to someone mentiong it earler, for all the images that displayed orbs the flash was used and the pictures taken inside. As far as I know the camera isn't used very often so when I see her next I'll ask if the images are still on there and post if possible.

Jak

I've captured a lot of orbs in photos and seen a lot of orb photos as well, most of them are easily ruled out. The only one that confuses me is a video I took that inadvertantly had a bunch of orbs in it, actually moving. There were about 4 orbs within approximately 10 seconds. They swooped from the top left to bottom right, top right to bottom left, one went up, etc. My camcorder did not have a light or any sort of flash on it. Although I tend to chalk it up as somehow being similar to seeing dust particles showing in a ray of sunlight. Although these were one at a time, appearing and disappearing and moving sporratically.

For me to give an orb photo even the option of not just being dust, it has to be non-round (blurred slightly at a tail like it's moving), and non-white. I've seen some crazy orb photos before, but never any amazing ones.