New Ghost Picture - Who is haunting St. Martins cave? , page 1

I'm sure he did know if someone else was there. Let's consider a few things.

This picture is anomalous because the photographer says it is. In other words, he says there was no one there and this "apparition" just showed up in his picture. If that's true, then it is an anomaly which probably can not be adequately explained.

However, in the pursuit of paranormal studies, how often do we accept the word of a person without evidence? If a man's "testimony" is believable evidence, we would by now all know of and believe in ghosts, sasquatch, and aliens because of all the eyewitness accounts and anecdotes. But, we don't. How often have you seen on ATS the words "pic or it didn't happen"?

When there is eyewitness testimony and no evidence, we can only choose to believe or disbelieve what the person says. When, however, there is both eyewitness testimony and evidence, we can examine the evidence and compare it to the testimony.

When the witness account and the evidence agree, we have a much stronger case for whatever-it-is being real. On the other hand, when the account and the evidence disagree, what do we do? Do we believe the witness and accept their version of events, or do we analyze the evidence separately?

Most often, we analyze the evidence separately and then decide if it matches or doesn't match the witness' account, and then decide which is more believable.

So, let's set aside the photographer's account and just look at the picture, by itself. Here's an enlarged closeup of just the "anomaly."

What does it LOOK like? To me it looks like a man walking. There is motion blur and flash washout. Similar blur which obscures features and details can be seen on the children in the background. On the man's shoe and hand the distortion of motion can be clearly seen. Normally, the shutter speed associated with a flash stops motion. Obviously in this picture, that did not happen as we see motion blur on the children as well as the man. And, obviously there was a flash, which we can tell from the light foreground to darker background and from the flash reflecting off the children and rocks. So we have two fairly certain facts: There was a flash, and the shutter didn't open/close fast enough to stop motion. Therefore, the photograph is overexposed because the shutter stayed open too long for the lighting provided by the flash. Thus, objects relatively close to the camera are washed out, and, if they were moving, blurred.

Now look at the photo again. What do you see that is NOT consistent with a normal human being that is motion-blurred and washed out by overlong exposure during a camera flash going off? Anything? I don't. I can see clothes, shoes, a receding hairline, and taking the motion blur into account he seems quite solid.

So, the photographic evidence and the witness testimony disagree. If not for the photographer saying there was no one there, this would be a perfectly normal messed-up photograph.

In my opinion it is, therefore, up to each of us as individuals to decide whether this honest photographer snapped something out of this world that happens to look like a washed-out, motion blurred man walking, or whether the photographer is trying to get his 15 minutes out of a photographic mistake that looked pretty cool when he saw it after the fact.

I know what my decision is.