ORBS debunked once and for all?

Hey hey. So I've been looking around at other"serious"paranormal web sites and there is this one called strange happenings"SHGHRS" and they talk about how deep there investigations are and then right before you start to look at there investigations they have put up a disclaimer about orbs. and how every photo and or video they have used in there reports that contain orbs are left in but by no means do they support them. They have a whole page on orb theories then they disclose there theory and they "after intense investigating" have concluded that orbs are nothing there fore debunked and should not be used in reports.

I kinda lookedf around and didnt see anyone post on this so...
What do you think??

If you will, please see my thread. The short answer is yup.. They are easily explained. Orbs are either dust or moisture exposed to flash or other light sources typically. Unless you see a demon head within an orb.. That I would take notice of. But.. The rest of the orb photos I have ever seen, are pretty much debunked.

s96.photobucket.com...

Part of a series of fake Orb photos I was planning to do.
Orbs in general are to hard to pin down. It's either any of a dozen or so explanations, and even the one s that stray towards the paranormal don't necessarily indicate the presence of ghosts.

Oh Ive always thought they could be explained I was just kinda shocked to see a major investigative team admit it..
I've always disliked the "great paranormal photos" line and then its orbs..
lol I love it

Originally posted by mapsurfer_
If you will, please see my thread. The short answer is yup.. They are easily explained. Orbs are either dust or moisture exposed to flash or other light sources typically. Unless you see a demon head within an orb.. That I would take notice of. But.. The rest of the orb photos I have ever seen, are pretty much debunked.

Orbs are definitely, definitely Ghosts... which can be made to vanish instantly by cleaning your lens with a lint-free lens cloth! How long are people going to desperately cling to this utterly ridiculous fallacy just so they can claim to be a part of something mysterious? It just undermines any serious attempts at capturing truly mysterious phenomena.

To qualify my statement, let me explain: I used to be a professional Industrial and Commercial photographer. All those years I was using good old film in my Hasselblads, Nikkons and Sinar cameras (in every film format known to mankind, and a huge range of lenses) I never once saw an 'orb'. (Granted, I WAS trained to clean the lens religiously, so it became a lifelong habit) But... not too long after I finally sucked up my purist pride and bought my first compact digital camera which I used on a lot of outdoor dusk/nightime events requiring flash, Hey Presto! I recorded an occasional 'orb'.

These so-called orbs are a contemporary phenomenon which exploded with the introduction of digital cameras into the mass market.

Just let it go, folks. Buy a lens cloth from your local camera store and clean your camera lens properly and often - especially if you're using flash.

Bear in mind that tiny beads of moisture or condensation leave a deposit on your lens even after it has seemingly evaporated. The airborne impurities captured in the moisture beads stays behind and lightly sticks to the lens surface, and can also diffract light oddly.

It's not supernatural. It's not alien. It's moisture and certain types of dust and the angle of light diffraction. Believe me.

The so-called 'structure' often alluded to in these 'orbs' is an artifact of the angular diffraction of the flash-light (or streetlights, headlights, bright light sources off-camera, etc.) passing through the lens onto the honeycomb-structured CCD chip.

That's why there is such a striking similarity between all these millions of earthly 'orbs' you can pore over if you do a Google Image search, and the famous 'space-craft' on the notorious NASA Space Tether footage. NASA used first generation CCD devices.

Much as I really wanted to believe they were other-worldly craft/beings, I couldn't help but recognise what I was seeing, and I've got to be honest about this. It's a digital artifact.

The End!

...or is it...?

[edit on 23/9/2008 by jupiter1uk]

[edit on 23/9/2008 by jupiter1uk]

Nope sorry guys I dont buy into the line that all orbs are digital photographic anamolies ie dust , water , dirt on the lens...yes sure many may be...but I have hundreds of pics i have taken myself that are NO WAY photographic anamolies....I have been researching them for 6 or 7 years now after i found i had an innate ability to channel these plasmic interdimensional entiites...i dont believe they are ghosts...my take is that they are windows to other dimensions....probably the most amazing proof is one I took in 2007 which appeared above my digital clock right on 11:11 pm when i was exploring the connection between the orbs and the 11:11 ..in this particular pic appears an orb with a multi colored hologram inside it. ..I have not posted it anywhere as i want to protect my copyright in the pic....I have ADD and am not so proficient in uploading stuff on sites etc if some one can give me advice as to how i can copy protect the pic ..i would be happy to supply it to any expert for rigorous evaluation .....then I feel all the skeptics will retract all their "expert reasoned opinions"

To sum up the above post, no, orbs and rods are not completly debunked. We will still be hearing from them for several years.
Sounds like a bloody euphemism.

"Once and for all"? I'm genuinely surprised it was ever in question. I'm quite open to the idea of supernatural entities, whether it's some kind of life after death or even something more mechanical such as 'stone tape' theories &c.

However, the idea that orbs are evidence of any of this raises so many questions that it's hard to take seriously. I've taken pictures myself that have contained orbs in a variety of circumstances and it's obvious why there might be dust or moisture in the air. However, it's never really apparent as to why there might be so many spirits in a particular place; often the most mundane, non-historical places you can imagine. Yet, I can go to places that are loaded with history whether just through continually being populated over very long periods of time and the evidence of that population still exists (I'm talking about historical cities such as York), as well as very old churchyards and the large Victorian cemeteries and take nothing. Not a single orb. These places should have spirits grabbing the camera out of my hand never mind appearing as something that might or might not be a speck of dust.

On the other hand, I can go an watch a band in a building that was built in the 1960s and had literally been fields for several hundreds before that and there's hundreds of orbs on some of the photographs. Why should that be if there's an indexical relationship between orbs and the supernatural?

Also, what's so special about digital cameras? Whilst digitisation has given access and opportunity to photography - as well as camera phones, just taking pictures and developing them has never been easier or cheaper - it's not as if cameras weren't that popular before. Why did it take digital cameras for spirits to appear? Weren't the old film on reel kind good enough for this particular type of manifestation?

If the ability to 'snap' the supernatural is somehow inherent in the way digital cameras work, then why have I never scanned in an orb by mistake with my flat bed digital scanner? The technology has some similarities, surely?

Nah there not completely debunked at all.
I mean there is millions of cases all different.
Many more will come forth.Not all are properly investigated some are intended hoaxes.
Its impossible to ever say 100% that all are debunked.
Although many are debunked you cant apply that to all of them.

Orbs were simply a way many in the 'ghost hunting' field could get positive results from investigations and photos. By lowering the standard of what constitutes 'supernatural' from, say, full-bodied apparitions, to orbs, they guaranteed themselves more 'hits'.

The whole thing is, in my humble opinion, pathetic. Just like most ghost hunting. Baseless hypotheses passed off as fact, a complete lack of objectivity, no controlled environments, nothing. It's a massive joke. No wonder people take the mickey out of ghost hunters - they're just like 8-year-olds playing at being Ghost Busters.

reply to post by Interestinggg


No, until someone demonstrates, beyond all reasonable doubt, that they are not simply dust/bugs/moisture, it is completely irrational to think they are supernatural. The burden of proof is on those claiming they are ghostly. Until that happens, there is nothing to debunk.

We can't simply go around accepting everything as true without evidence.

reply to post by mapsurfer_


most of the pic i take have face an why do some pic i take have orbs in it an the other ons done plz write me back my e-mail it [email protected]

right because someone has proof on a digital camera they are dust or water droplets in the air then that closes the book on what orbs are and by size ,shape,colour,to coin a phrase 'i dont think so
unless you have seen for yourself a rugby sized low floating grey mass shape like i have,which i would probabaly label as a large orb there is still and always will be doubt to which one of many sightings people are seeing.

reply to post by moonbeam cat


Well, until you can demonstrate that orbs are not simply dust particles, bugs, or moisture, then they can only be classes as unknown. That's it. Neither ghosts nor definitely not.

A rational mind, though, upon seeing the sheer number of causes for orbs, will have to conclude that until evidence is shown of their supernatural origins, they have to be discounted immediately.

I'd like to see each kind of orb explained by someone as to what causes it. For instance it is claimed there are water and dust orbs so how about pollen? Do they all look the same? I have only recently been seeing orbs in some of my pictures and I am on my 3rd digital camera now (4th if you count the one I returned under warranty). I went back through some pictures I've taken over the last 8 years and it is only just recently that I began, as I said, to see them.

I don't claim what they are except interesting so how about a debunker with some time on their hands explain the various kinds of orbs? I should probably post a few pics.

Some Orbs are moisture, dust, or other particulate matter that is picked up by the camera, but not visible to the naked eye. More commonly, I see orbs that are reflections of the camera flash, off some shiny object in the room, into the inner working of the camera elements (similar to lens flare, but not as strong). You can usually correlate an orb to a light source, or a shiny piece of glass or metal, not to far from the location of the orb.

I am a bit torn on the orb subject. I worked the night desk shift at a boarding school dorm a little while back which had security cameras and the videos were all on this one screen to my left, constantly visible. All different parts of the buildings, and different floors. But only 6 cams, not a whole ton.
Anyway, I noticed in the kitchen, where the light was always turned off, and the room completely black at night, orbs would come out of no where and hang around the camera, circling, almost looking like they were interacting. And glowing. There was no light source inside the cam itself. Less frequently they would show up in the stairwell cams, the upper lobby, and the halls which were all lit. But doing the same thing, right in front of the camera.

I stopped watching the cameras eventually because I thought I was just creeping myself out for nothing. One day I decided to be brave, looked, and after a few seconds, they came out, brighter than ever, and then suddenly all appeared in every single camera view on the screen, all circling right in front of each camera. I got very wigged out and decided to go back to not looking at the damned screen unless I heard people up lol, looked away....and not 3 seconds later, I hear a ton of noise, then a girl came screaming out of the girls' hall freaking out that all the lights in her room where going on and off, her blankets being pulled, and the bathroom and closet door slamming open and shut suddenly waking her up.

I let her sit with me for awhile til she calmed down and still feel bad to this day that I could offer her little comfort as I had just been completely creeped out by something much smaller at that lol...

And then there's the story of my birthday last year, when it rained, and every single raindrop appeared as an orb in every picture that I took. Obviously the way light hit them or whatever. Girl had schizophrenia and orbs where just moisture and dust whipping around in drafts or something maybe?

Yeh. As always, no idea what to believe anymore....

Even if some orbs are supernatural I think they will always be about the weakest sign of anything, though I still kinda keep an eye out for them ever since then....

reply to post by phoebeflakes


Get the videos! Or at least bring your video camera and record them!

We need all the evidence we can get.

You have an incredible opportunity here!

reply to post by Deaf Alien



There are plenty of videos out there of orbs and that isn't proof/evidence of anything. Not even to me lol But weird in certain cases, nonetheless.

But more importantly, I'm on the opposite side of the continent now and even if I went back I doubt they would hand over the recordings to me especially because I don't work there or have any associations with the organization any longer....
Though it may not hurt to see if an old pal is working there now


At my new job they have a similar video security system though I have no clue if it's recorded. I've been avoiding staring at the screens more than a few seconds at a time, just because of my last experiences and don't want to waste my energy being creeped out over what might be nothing lol but I'm going to break down out of curiousity and start staring at them soon, I'm betting. Bleh.
Haven't seen anything at this new place, once yet, and the place is full of dust, and there are cameras outside where bugs can easily hang out near the porch lights and whatnot.....but nothing orby yet...
Probably only because I won't watch for long enough lol