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Up in the Air on Orbs Since the camera was first invented and people have been able to take pictures and capture images of everything from landscapes to loved ones there have been claims of cameras capturing spirits and deceased loved ones. For just as long as people have been claiming to captures spirits in photos, others have been claiming them to be hoaxes and fakes and the line was pretty much drawn between the believers and non believers. But now in the newer modern era of photography and the advent of digital technology that line that use to run between just the believers and non believers has branched and there are lines that now go between the two sides themselves. This is most visible in the area of orbs in photography and the debate amongst believers in the paranormal as to weather orbs are proof can get as hotly contested as a group of teenage girls arguing over who is better Edward or Jacob in the Twilight Saga. I have been involved in many of these debates, usually on the side of orbs not being proof of the afterlife and being nothing more than small objects such as dust or bugs floating around in front of the camera’s lens at the moment you snap the picture. I still stand by this belief on most occasions but I do feel there are some exceptions to the orbs being dust, though be it few. I could, at this point go on about all the technical reasons as to how an orb can be formed by natural causes. I believe that a lot of it has to do with the size and shape of most new modern day cameras. Especially now there are cameras that are so small the flash is literally right on top of the lens. Being a believer in either side of the debate is not an easy thing, especially in the presence of a group from the other side of the line. In this debate I have been thrown to the wolves on that other side of the line on more then one occasion during different lectures and presentations were I spoke of orbs not being a ghost. Through those experiences I have learned not to be that hard-nosed and everything has to fit into one box or the other believer. Although some thought that I was coming off as being that way. I have come to realize that no matter how much I try to educate people on the science of photography and how orbs are naturally formed, the true believers will never completely change there minds. They might look at a few orbs differently, but not all of them. The same goes for the die hard skeptics of orbs, myself included. They will never believe that orbs are proof of a haunting. Now the question is what do we do to help get the sides to try and agree on something in the middle so that we can at least get along. For the non believers, like myself this is what had me thinking more about how I spoke with the die-hard orb believers, especially when they approached me with a picture that they wanted to share. I, like most of you when someone hands me a picture containing a orb want to tell the person right away that it’s not a ghost you have been carrying around and cherishing is just a picture of dust. One day after a presentation about hauntings themselves and not just photography, a elderly woman approached me with her grandchild holding a picture. She wanted to tell me her story about the picture and her deceased husband. In the picture was her grandchild riding a horse on a dirt trail and a nice orb sitting right on the child’s shoulder. The elderly woman went on to tell me about how her husband recently passed and he loved helping his grandchildren ride the horses. She felt that it was him in the form of an orb holding onto his grandchild’s shoulder while they rode. I wasn’t sure about what she wanted me to tell her after the story. Did she want me to confirm her beliefs that it was in fact her deceased husband on the child’s shoulder? Did she just want someone to listen to her story? I could of very well at that point went into a long dissertation about orbs are nothing more then dust and the dirt path they were riding on was perfect for creating dust orbs in the picture. But I noticed in her, while she was telling me the story, how much comfort and happiness that one picture brought this woman. In her mind she knew that her husband was still with her and his grandchildren. How could I, at that point tell her it wasn’t him and it was a piece of dust? With that in mind it brings up the debate that is given to me most often when I give my orbs aren’t ghost speeches. “What if that piece of dust (orb) was placed there by a higher power or the spirit?” It’s an interesting thought becuase we are looking for ghosts and proof of the afterlife. Is it totally outside the realm of possibilities that if we believe in ghosts that maybe something as simple as making that orb appear via dust or dirt or moisture couldn’t happen? Yes, I still stick by my guns and say that orbs are not proof of a haunting. I have also learned that it does not always pay to be that die-hard skeptic of them either. Sometimes it helps to be a bit more open minded or at least pretend to be for the sake of who you are talking to. If the complete die-hard non believers are going to give a little then the die-hard believers have to give some also, you have to meet us in the middle as well. Probably the hardest part in believing that orbs are dust or bugs is that you can’t see these tiny things at the time you take the picture. I have never heard a debate saying that smoke in a picture is ghost because you can see the smoke when you take the picture and you know it’s not a ghost forming. Orbs can be and have been recreated multiple times by multiple people simply by kicking up some dust off of a dirty floor or by banging out an old couch cushion. I myself have done this to a large group of orb fanatics thinking they hit a gold mine of spirit activity. While giving a tour of a haunted location the group that was touring / investigating was taking tons of pictures like any other group would. This group throughout the tour was capturing orbs in just about every picture and would become excited every time they saw one, thinking they captured a ghost in the old dusty building they were touring. Getting sick of hearing them get so excited over all these blurry little balls of light in their pictures I pulled out my camera while in the basement of the building and took a picture. There were a couple of orbs lingering around, but then I kicked a big pile of dirt on the ground and stirred it all up into the air and then took a picture and would you believe it there were orbs everywhere. I then took the second picture and showed it to the group who instantly loved the picture and pronounced that the basement must be the most active place in the building. I’m not going to go into the finer more technical parts of my usual rants about orbs and dust which usually includes things like the lack of depth perception in a picture so that the eye can’t accurately place the orbs location in the shot. Or how the focal point of the lens and camera is generally across a room and not in front of the lens, making anything in front of the lens appear to be blurry and out of focus including dust or bugs. That is for another time and another column. This is more to let the two sides meet half way in a sense so that we can at least work together to help move the field forward and assist the clients who are looking for answers about there haunted house. We cannot do these things while arguing over small blurry white balls in pictures. You can still have your opinions on the subject and a healthy debate never hurts, but lets not forget we are dealing with the unknown. Even though I do not believe in orbs, I do not turn a complete blind eye to them all the time for the simple reason, we really don’t know what we are dealing with. We don’t know what the spirits or whatever it is causing the paranormal activity is capable including putting a piece of dust in front of the camera to get your attention. But you die hard believers lets not get people all worked up and thinking that there house is haunted just because we caught a picture in a orb in it either and try and capture some evidence that is a little more solid before we make that decision. |
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