Extraordinary Evidence for Ghosts?

Yeah_Right

Muse
Yeah_Right
Joined
Feb 2, 2002
Messages
638
I was listening to one of my favourite woo webcasts the other night at http://www.ghostlytalk.com, and they were discussing a photo that was taken by a guy named Terry Gimbal from http://www.missourighost.com. Here's the photo and the negative.

http://www.execulink.com/~lightfoot/regghost

http://www.execulink.com/~lightfoot/negghost

Apparently Terry saw this thing coming up the stairs and photographed it with a regular 35mm camera. Not sure what to make of it myself since I am no photographic expert, but thought I'd post it on here for your scrutiny. The webcast I listened too is archived on the ghostlytalk site and is at the very bottom of the archive page. Incidentally they also interview some guy named Uri Geller is it??? Used to bend spoons if you recall, they must have loved him at the dinner table.
 
Well, it appears to be made of mass, and it's glowing, and the light is obviously lighting the room up a bit.

I'm confused though. It seems to be giving off an amazing amount of light by the look of it. I mean, if I gave off that much light, you'd think that the walls would be brighter than the touch-ups this guy gave it.
 
Once a picture has been scanned and transformed into digital media, all bets are off - anyone can make convincing ghost pics with patience and a stolen copy of the latest Photoshop edition.

Even if I could verify that the actual picture looked like this, there'd still be a handful of tricks for faking this, such us tampering with the film during development, using different shutter times, overlapping images on film. Actually trying to fake the ghost to the picture at the moment of shooting the picture is the most taxing route: to fake this particular pic, I would've used a high powered flashlight to shine a silhouette of the "ghost", using a puff of smoke as the canvas.
 
Something about that ghost doesn't look quite right, but I can't put my finger on it, so for now I'll just ask, if he saw it coming up the stairs, why didn't he get it in the centre of the photo? Or was it just like a quick shot from the hip without aiming? Because the rest of the photo is not blurred as if the camera were moving, so he must have been pretty steady.
 
Johnny Pixels said:
Something about that ghost doesn't look quite right, but I can't put my finger on it, so for now I'll just ask, if he saw it coming up the stairs, why didn't he get it in the centre of the photo? Or was it just like a quick shot from the hip without aiming? Because the rest of the photo is not blurred as if the camera were moving, so he must have been pretty steady.
Click to expand...


QFT.
 
Bad, bad boy.

Check the border between the "ghost" and the verticle pole supporting the rail. 1/2 of the way down the "ghostly" vagueness is re[laced by a nice clean border. Other side is fuzzy all the way down.

Busted.
 
untitled.jpg



Compare lower left quadrent to quadrent above and to it's right.
 
The silhouette looks too clean,and the brightness of the "ghost" would have underexposed the rest of the image surely?
Would we need-incidentally-to be 100% certain ghosts dont exist?
 
Does anyone have a theory explaining why ghosts of humans look human?

I'm asking in all seriousness. Why should a ghost, whatever it is, whatever it is made of, look vaguely human?
 
Issues like "why didn't he get it in the centre of the photo?" and other complaints about the quality of the picture don't usually bother me much. I'm a terrible photographer myself. If you presume it's just a regular person taking a snapshot, then whether real or faked, such things as the centering, fuzziness, etc could simply be the amateur abilities of the person taking the photo.

However, in today's world, with photoshop and other easily accessible ways to alter an image, I don't think a photo could be considered convincing evidence of a ghost. So what would be convincing evidence? Eyewitness accounts aren't. Photographs aren't. So what would convincing evidence look like?
 
logical muse said:
Does anyone have a theory explaining why ghosts of humans look human?

I'm asking in all seriousness. Why should a ghost, whatever it is, whatever it is made of, look vaguely human?
Click to expand...

Not all accounts of ghosts have them looking even vaguely human. Many accounts are noises only, no visuals. Other accounts are basically a fuzzy cloud, without any recognizable shape.
 
I've always been dubious of photos of ghosts, as nearly always they were not seen at the time of the photo. Why would ghosts have a quality that means they are only captured on photographic film, which merely reacts to light shining on it, and so can pretty much only take images of something that was visible at the time? I realise this photo is different as the guy claims to have seen it coming up the stairs.
Eyewitness accounts are unreliable, taking the old example of comparing eyewitness accounts for insurance claims, or the amount of beer I've actually drunk compared to how much my friend thinks I have (she estimated about 4 pints more than I'd actually drunk one night).
I think it's going to have to come to plain old repeatability and experimentation, but ghosts don't seem to respond to this, even though hauntings are often claimed to be repeat occurences.
 
One thing to bear in mind with digital cameras is that they are also capable of taking pictures of infra-red light sources.
If you have a camera on your mobile (cell) phone, try pointing an IR remote at it and press a button, you should see a rapid flashing light.
If may be that some modern ghost photos are just IR sources that only resolve once the photo has been taken, as IR is invisible to the naked eye.
 
Well I am one of those odd types that likes nothing more than running about trying to see a spook on the odd weekend. The main way I go about getting any 'extraordinary evidence' is to set up as many video cameras in one place as possible. Now I know video can be messed with, but it's going to be a lot harder to mess with it from, say, three different angles and get it so spot on that it fools film experts. Unless of course something appears as a puff of smoke I suppose, but then I personally wouldn't be trying to claim that as a ghost.
 
Bone_Vulture said:
Er, could you circle the areas of interest? I'm not seeing it.
Click to expand...

4a42b321.jpg



Look at the edge between ghost and verticle wood thing in the top box. Very diffuse, right? Now follow the diffuseness down to the second box. See that suddenly there is a sharp edge and space between ghost and verticle wood thing? Order where there was chaos. Paste job and bad photoshopping to lose the sharp edges.

Or, the laundry only starched the bottom of his sheet. Take your pick.
 
I'm afraid not... A very close analysis of the BMP shows that it's just the object's shape... there's no definite demarcation between upper and lower section there. The shape of the thing moves away from the rail there and at a glance there appears to be an edge, where in fact there really isn't. Unless you're talking about the diffusion around the object from its apparent luminosity - it appears as if the upper half is highly luminous, while the lower half is less so. This suggests to me that the object is reflective, but the light source did not reflect evenly back to the camera - like a piece of thin, reflective material hung up and photographed, perhaps.

The only remarkable demarcation I notice is that the more thickly-massed portion has a clear line of separation near the bottom, which is parallel to a background artifact... the line, in fact, seems to follow something at the base.

Otherwise... whatever this photo is of, I don't think it was Photoshopped. For example, the raw data has no mention of any editting by any program. Of course, that doesn't mean anything, either. But don't even scanners put a tag into the raw data? I'm not sure.
 
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