October 29, 2009

Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot - Halloween Edition

In this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly invites us to post pictures based upon a Halloween theme. For extra credit, she says:

Show me a GHOST. A real one. A Fake one. Any old GHOST will do! Feel free to use your photo editing software if you like. The spookier the better! Scare me please!

Never having been one to be hung up on doing things in the right order, I chose to dive right into the extra credit question - mostly because it gave me a chance to dust off one of my old skeptical articles from the original Aurora Walking Vacation blog. Herewith, I am pleased to present a repost of a piece first published on Thursday, February 10, 2005. Boo!


SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

  The other day on a message board I was accused of ridiculing somebody for my reply to their post offering spirit photography lessons. I wrote a fairly long and detailed reply offering up my expertise on the subject right there on the board, without people having to resort to taking some kind of formal lessons. Apparently, I stepped on somebody's toes, because my post was taken down by the powers that be in short order. A lesson learned. Far be it from me to impinge upon somebody's ability sell themselves and their 'talents' on AOL's message board system.

  Here, however, is an entirely different matter. In my personal journal, I can chose to make my expertise available to all for free if I so choose.

  I so choose. Herewith, find attached evidence of my mad spirit photography skillz. I have 'em. You can have 'em too. This entry shows the evidence. If there is interest, I will do another entry detailing my methods.

  An introductory note: All of the photographs in this entry are (with the exception of one) taken by me, and, other than some cropping and resizing for editorial purposes, unmanipulated. No photoshopping here. These are pictures of actual phenomena.

  First, let me introduce you to Matthew. Many of you, if you have been reading me for a while, have heard me mention his name. You may even have seen a picture or two of him here from time to time. Little known to us, Matthew has a guardian spirit who helps him with his homework. I have taken hundreds of pictures of Matthew before, and never before seen anything like this before. However, I had never before taken a picture of him doing homework before. Yesterday I did, and got this.

mattspirit

  It looks like, in this picture, there is a spirit of some kind hovering over Matt's head as he does his homework. In fact, if you look close enough you can see what looks like fingers reaching out to touch his head; almost as if some kind of otherworldly knowledge were being imparted to him. This may explain many of his teacher's comments regarding Matthew's homework assignments. Obviously, the answers he is providing are simply beyond her ability to comprehend.
  I enhanced the above photo with specialty software to reveal this:

enhancedspirit

  You can clearly see the otherworldly violet aura surrounding the spirit manifestation. It is in stark contrast to the more earthly colours of the rest of the photograph. You can even see that aura impacting on the hanging, potted plant in the background. I always wondered why that plant grew so well.

  A photograph taken a moment later reveals that this spirit falls into the famous spirit photography category of a vortex spirit. This appears to be a rare double vortex. Or a close up of the ghost's elbow, I'm not sure.

2vortex

  One night I was in my basement, trying to take a picture of my cat. She didn't want to sit still for the picture, and was very restless. Later, when I looked at the pictures, I saw this:

catorbs

  Look very carefully at the left hand side of the picture, and you will see the visible manifestation of spirit orbs. There are several to be seen in the picture, but the clearest one is right near the top of the frame. orbcloseupI have enlarged it to bring out more detail. You can clearly see a face, not unlike that of the man in the moon, on the close-up of this orb. These orbs are obviously ghosts. Due to the similarities in appearance, it is also quite clear that the moon is a ghost, too.
  I have hypothesized that these ghosts were attempting to protect my cat, when she did not want to have her picture taken by me. Due to my frequent sneezing at the time, I suspect that these were the ghosts of cats, thereby causing my allergies to flare up. On a related note, we have been erroneous in using the terminology 'the man in the moon' all these years. We should have been saying, 'the cat in the moon.'

  I was outside the other night, and happened, entirely by accident, to take a picture of the tree in my front yard. When I looked at the picture later I was amazed by the amazing colours of the colourful lights I saw.

colours

  Look at the colourful illumination of the snow on both sides of the street. And the colourful lights in the background, behind the tree. None of these colourful lights was colourful like those colours to my eye. Obviously, the spirit world is at work here. There must be many ghosts of painters around the Aurora area.

coloursclose

  Look how the lights in this close up appear to be dancing around the telephone pole. In colours.

 What AWV entry would be complete without a picture of the redoubtable Shadow? Here he is with a piece of garden edging in his mouth. Somehow, he managed to tear this up out of ground that was frozen solid during our -30 degree cold snap a couple of weeks ago. It was originally about twenty five feet long. This is what is left. As you can see, of any member of our family, Shadow attracts more spirit attention than any other. They are drawn to the young, and cute.
  This picture shows Shadow surrounded by ghostly orbs. There are dozens of them in view, maybe hundreds, and remarkably, every single one of them unique. Not a one exactly like any other. (It's because they used to be people, and people are all different).

shadoworbs

  Finally, here are two astounding pictures of spirit phenomena. I have saved the best for last. I have elected to link to the pictures rather than post them here so I could show them at a larger size, the better to view fine details. The first example is a picture I took in my back yard one January evening. I was standing there, doing nothing, minding my own business, with a digital camera in my hand, when I inexplicably started feeling cold. I suspected there was a spirit, or ghost nearby. Breathing heavily with fear, and fear, I raised the camera and snapped a few frames.  The first picture is here:
http://members.aol.com/plittle/ghostface.jpg . In this picture, one can see the bio-thermal pulmono-exhalatory cloud as it coalesces. If you look very carefully, you can just make out the outlines of a face.
  The second picture was taken a moment later, but still slightly too early. The carbondioxygenic vapourous apparition had not yet fully formed. Yet, the image is unmistakable. It is still quite fuzzy, but you can clearly see that this is the spirit of a young woman wearing a hat.
http://members.aol.com/plittle/ghostface2.jpg .
  I am left to wonder; who was this woman? When did she walk this earth? What is she doing in my back yard?

  I would like to close this topic with a short statement. We at Aurora Walking Vacation are on a quest for the truth, and are interested in an open minded examination of these phenomena. We invite all discussion, as long as it agrees with our views. Be advised that anyone who suggests there are rational, scientific explanations for our results will find their closed-minded comments immediately deleted, and their rude, harassing asses banned from making subsequent comments. Furthermore, we may complain about them on the message board and threaten to report them to AOL, the police, the F.B.I., and our Alien Overlords. Remember, open minded means, "in agreement with my point of view."




A few notes:

1) This post is made in memory of Lahoma Taylor, A.K.A. MzGoochi, who was alive when that last picture was taken, but was subsequently taken from us by cancer.

2) I left the text form of the last two links as they were. However, AOL Hometown, and the members.aol.com domain no longer exist, and the photographs are now hosted on my Flickr account.

3) If you like, you can visit the archived version of this article at http://awvarchive.blogspot.com/2005/02/spirit-photography.html. Some of the comments are interesting.

4) Happy Halloween.


12 comments:

Simon said...

I really thought you had something going there, Paul. Up until the last linked photo. Only then did I realise you were truly mocking us true believers. For shame!

Ken Riches said...

Amazing spirit pictures. I would ever doubt their fauxintisity :o)

Dawn said...

You faux believer! LOL

be well...

Carly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Beth said...

This is great, Paul. Missed it the first time around. Nice orbs.

Carly said...

Hi Paul :)

How fun! Thanks for joining us this week! Great round-up of Spirit Photography! Very spooky indeed! It's great when kids and pets get into the fun! Gosh, I wish I had had a friendly spirit to assist me with my homework! LOL. I might have ended up becoming a parapsychologist or maybe even a hairdresser one day! ;) Have a wonderful Halloween!

-Carly

Cathy said...

I'll always believe there are many other dimensions that interact with ours at the same given moment in space and time. But 10 people looking at a shadow see 10 different things - until you tell them it "could be a ghost". Then that's what they see. Why couldn't it just be an inter-dimensional crossover between objects in the same area? Why must they have the power to interact? This we need proof of, while we revel in imagining what it might really be. IMHO of course.

Call me Paul said...

Why couldn't it just be a shadow?

Simon said...

Oh come on, Paul!

We all know it's not a picture of your dog.

DUH!

Liz said...

Fabulous 'Takes' on the subject.
You certainly captured the spirit of Halloween!

Suzanne R said...

Very interesting pictures. Definitely in the spirit of Halloween!

Cathy said...

Holy crow did I actually spout that arrogant crapola last year?!? Actually I still believe it. Hey why do we never see ghosts of, say, Socrates or DaVinci? It's always someone dead a few hundred yrs. What's up with that?