Ghostly picture from 2006

Hi people.

I recently found some photos my brother's girlfriend took back in oktober 2006. I tought this might make for an interesting post.

The three of us moved into a new home that month, it's located in a quiet part of town here in Holland. Moving in happened late that night due to the fact that there was a problem with a missing key, we had to break a window to get in. It's rental so we needed permission from the owner as well.

Anyway, my brother and I were packing stuff back at the old home into the car. His girlfriend stayed behind in the new home to do some cleaning.

After a while he gets a phonecall from his lady. She told him she saw something move outside from left to right. She was cleaning with the back door open to let some fresh air in. My brother says to her we will hurry up. Minutes later he gets another phonecall from her. She is terrified. She tells him she keeps seeing something flying left and right outside. So we cut things short and drive back to the new place.

We get there in like 10 minutes, drive around to the back of the house, we get out and walk inside. Obviously we don't see #. Anyway, we calm her down and she tells us again what she saw. Now, what she also did was to try and take pictures. At the time I didn't see anything useful on the LCD screen (minolta camera). The next day I loaded up the pics onto my computer, and there was one pic which did show something unusual.

This image shows the whole room, the door open, you can see there is something luminous to be seen in the door-opening.


The original jpeg has a resolution of 2560x1920 so I zoomed in a bit. Enlarged it looks like this:


Now, if you look carefully, this thing is several meters above the ground, in front of a tree in the backyard.
Here's a picture of what you see when you look outside so you get a good idea.


In all these years I can't think of a rational explanation, it is just freakin' weird. I don't think it's a reflection, it can't be light source behind the tree. Plus I need to take into account what she said she saw.

Did we see or experience other weird things in this house? Yes, among other things, the cage of her guinnea pig turned on its head by itself one night. We all woke up due to the loud bang. A can of coke started rotating and moved towards the edge of the table, my brother and her have seen flashes of light in their room, and heard voices. I've not experienced everything myself, but these experiences seemed to predominantly target the lady in question. Both moved out a year ago, I live alone in this place now and have not experienced one weird thing.

Looks like the camera has captured a very small peice of dust fibre near the lens, probably a small hair. Definitely doesn't look like anything ghostly to me.

A small peice of dust like that would probably not be seen with the eye, but when it catches the light from the flash it can look really bright like that.

Like this one for example.

reply to post by jclmavg


What's the black shadow in the bottom pic from? Was there a light source behind the person with the camera?

Originally posted by GodForbid
Looks like the camera has captured a very small peice of dust fibre near the lens, probably a small hair. Definitely doesn't look like anything ghostly to me.

A small peice of dust like that would probably not be seen with the eye, but when it catches the light from the flash it can look really bright like that.

Like this one for example.

Dust fibre does not cut it for several reasons.

A) It ignores the witness account completely, and I trust her 200% on this. As I mentioned, she saw it move in the backyard to the left and right multiple times.
B) I have several pictures taken seconds before and after, they do not show anything. What a weird dust fibre it must be for it to turn up in just one picture and not the others.
C) It does not have the shape you would expect from a dust fibre, the original hi-res jpeg shows a rather clearly defined sineous object.
D) Looking at the original photo the object is in focus, your dust particle is not. The reason has to do with focal length.

The room is about 9 meters long, where do you think the dust particle was in relation to the camera? Assume that the dust fibre is 0.5 cm.

Originally posted by gemineye
reply to post by jclmavg

 

What's the black shadow in the bottom pic from? Was there a light source behind the person with the camera?

My guess is that it is the white lamp on the ceiling near the door, in the room pic you can see that one lamp is aimed at the door.

Originally posted by jclmavg

Originally posted by GodForbid
Looks like the camera has captured a very small peice of dust fibre near the lens, probably a small hair. Definitely doesn't look like anything ghostly to me.

A small peice of dust like that would probably not be seen with the eye, but when it catches the light from the flash it can look really bright like that.

Like this one for example.

Dust fibre does not cut it for several reasons.

A) It ignores the witness account completely, and I trust her 200% on this. As I mentioned, she saw it move in the backyard to the left and right multiple times.
B) I have several pictures taken seconds before and after, they do not show anything. What a weird dust fibre it must be for it to turn up in just one picture and not the others.
C) It does not have the shape you would expect from a dust fibre, the original hi-res jpeg shows a rather clearly defined sineous object.
D) Looking at the original photo the object is in focus, your dust particle is not. The reason has to do with focal length.

The room is about 9 meters long, where do you think the dust particle was in relation to the camera? Assume that the dust fibre is 0.5 cm.

edit on 21-2-2011 by jclmavg because: (no reason given)

I cannot comment on the witness account as you may trust her 200%, but I don't know her, and I can't use that as evidence (I just try to avoid that all together) however, It does have the shape of a dust fibre as far as I'm concearned, looks like a cat hair. There are thousands of photo's like these ones on the net and usually they're debunked in this way. There are many examples of this same effect being recreated on purpose, an episode from "fact or faked" documentary series comes to mind.

This pic shows a human hair on the lens, and although this is more obvious (because human hair is thick) you can see similarities. A small thin cat hair floating around (as they do) caught in the lens is imo a more rational explanation than a ghost.




I'm not saying I'm definitely 100% right, however it's a likely explanation, one I have seen used many times before.

My guess is that it is the white lamp on the ceiling near the door, in the room pic you can see that one lamp is aimed at the door.

reply to post by jclmavg


Yeah, I see what you mean and I think you're right.

It's hard to say exactly what the first pic is. Being that she was seeing something moving out there and this seems to be moving in the same way, it likely could be paranormal. It's just impossible to say for sure. It does appear to be in motion.

When it comes right down to it, you KNOW what happened while you were in the house and even if this pic doesn't convince people, you know what was there. Spirits are sometimes upset by new people moving in and especially by things in the house being disturbed. If it was haunted, whatever was there could have been upset by the window being broken and wanted to make its presence known.

It is a cool pic. Definitely hold onto it!

I believe her story. I have had experiences in both of the houses we have lived in. My husband has not. We have gotten photos of it too. One of the photos looks like cigarette smoke, except for the fact that nobody smokes in our family. All of our activity stopped this last time after we found a wallet inside a wall when remodeling and gave it to the son of the deceased. The wallet was lost 44 years ago.

Originally posted by GodForbid
I cannot comment on the witness account as you may trust her 200%, but I don't know her, and I can't use that as evidence (I just try to avoid that all together)

Regardless of the troubles associated with witness tesimony, that can never be a reason to bluntly ignore it. I might just draw the conclusion that you ignore that which does not fit the predetermined conclusion.

however, It does have the shape of a dust fibre as far as I'm concearned, looks like a cat hair.

If it has the shape of a dust fibre where are the reference photos? I'm sure you'd be shooting pics like this all the time. Even you admit that the hair photo is more obvious. In fact I would say it is quite obvious. The only "obvious" similarity is that there is an elongated object in both pictures. From this similarity - which is superficial - you conclude that it has to be a hair. I think that is rather poor reasoning.

Some other things. Notice also how in your first example the orb is overexposed due to the camera flash. The object in my photo is not overexposed. In fact, there's even detail to be seen in it ( several wavy lines when viewing the original highres picture at 1:1). There are no parts which are bright, overexposed white as in the orb and your hair photo. The object in my photo has tints of green, darkbrown and goldish colors. Based on the RGB pixel values I would say the "ghost" is less luminescent than the doorpost. How can this be if it is supposed to be a reflection of something closeby?

In short it does not look like it is reflecting much of the flash which one would expect from a hair close by the lens.

Also your orb appears rather large due to it being close to the camera. Same for the second pic with the hair, it is huge. Now look at the picture showing the whole room again.

My brother still has the camera, I can easily throw some hairs in the air and take some reference shots with the flash and see what comes up. I think you will be disappointed.

There are thousands of photo's like these ones on the net and usually they're debunked in this way. There are many examples of this same effect being recreated on purpose, an episode from "fact or faked" documentary series comes to mind.

Most of these are dust particles which look like round amorphous bright orbs, the analogy fails already at this point.

This pic shows a human hair on the lens, and although this is more obvious (because human hair is thick) you can see similarities. A small thin cat hair floating around (as they do) caught in the lens is imo a more rational explanation than a ghost.

An explanation is more rational if it can explain the facts equally well. I see a hush hush dismissal instead. You did not even bother to ask for the original unedited jpeg, I find that rather incredulous.

Here's a new crop of the door area, which is 1:1, not resized/blown up.

Originally posted by gemineye
When it comes right down to it, you KNOW what happened while you were in the house and even if this pic doesn't convince people, you know what was there.

Obviously true. It is too bad she did not run to the door and make a picture close-up. Heck, she was scared and seeing white when we got there.

But I think the "this has to be a dust particle, no wait a hair, oh no wait perhaps a cat hair illuminated by the camera flash" suggestion makes no sense and shows bias to some degree.

Unfortunately I don't have the old Minolta cam here right now, so I can't reproduce the exact setup right now. But I did do some quick tests with fine cat hair (I have cats here to test) and my Iphone 4 with the built-in flash. I can draw two conclusions.

If the hair is to be reflective enough to show up in your photo you need to have it very close to the lens and flash. The reflection will be a very bright white color. I took a reference pic here, so you can tell how this would look:



If you drop the same cat hair like say a metre away and take another pic from the same position the reflective properties of the hair are gone, due to the limited surface. Perhaps if it were fully dark this would be different. Result:



Also, I think you can pretty much tell that the hairs in the first pic were close to the camera lens. Notice also how the hairs turn semi-transparent (that is, the reflected light) when held close to the lens, you can see this effect also in the hair example photo posted by GodForbid.

Now compare this to what my brother's GF photographed, I think that's quite different. Cat hair? I don't think so, I've seen enough cat hair in my life.

Originally posted by jclmavg
Unfortunately I don't have the old Minolta cam here right now, so I can't reproduce the exact setup right now. But I did do some quick tests with fine cat hair

(I have cats here to test) and my Iphone 4 with the built-in flash. I can draw two conclusions.

If the hair is to be reflective enough to show up in your photo you need to have it very close to the lens and flash. The reflection will be a very bright white color. I took a reference pic here, so you can tell how this would look:



If you drop the same cat hair like say a metre away and take another pic from the same position the reflective properties of the hair are gone, due to the limited surface. Perhaps if it were fully dark this would be different. Result:



Also, I think you can pretty much tell that the hairs in the first pic were close to the camera lens. Notice also how the hairs turn semi-transparent (that is, the reflected light) when held close to the lens, you can see this effect also in the hair example photo posted by GodForbid.

Now compare this to what my brother's GF photographed, I think that's quite different. Cat hair? I don't think so, I've seen enough cat hair in my life.

edit on 21-2-2011 by jclmavg because: (no reason given)

edit on 21-2-2011 by jclmavg because: (no reason given)

Kudos to you for doing this experiment, and it indeed yielded some interesting results. Though I'd like to do this myself with the original camera, and some very fine cat hair.

After looking at your cat hair photo, I can see some very strong similarities in a couple of the cat hairs pictured. Some of them are translucent and look very similar to the pic in the OP however I'll agree that after your experiment that your results did not replicate the image in question perfectly and therefore I cannot write it off that there's something paranormal about it. However I feel there are many variables and until all are tested the "cat hair / dust fibre" theory cannot be written off either.

I'm more inclined the believe that there's a more 'this worldly' explanation rather than a ghost however.

Applause where deserved for actually trying an experiment.

GodForbid.

Thanks. For anyone interested here's the full-sized version of the photo. It's a resave, it does not have the camera info. For those who want that version I'll email a copy on request. The file is almost 3 megs.



Personally, even without going into technicalities and ignoring the witness, I don't get the impression the "ghost" is close-up near the lens. You can tell, IMO.

I'll ask my brother for the camera this weekend and do some shots, if the thing still works. It's a Minolta Dimage 7i.

I think its the black thing from lost

Don't mean to sound sceptic but the picture with the black thing on the bottom is something to do with the camera. I've seen sort of smudge on many pictures in the past.