Ghost hunting mythbusters?
Apr 25th, 2006 | By Fiona Broome | Category: Fiona's notesI feel like we’ve become the ghost hunting equivalent of Mythbusters.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m afraid that all these debunking articles will make us look like rabid skeptics instead of believers who choose healthy skepticism, and do research accordingly.
I try to steer our research away from what I call ‘Amazing Randi syndrome’; in other words, just because we can fake a ghost photo, doesn’t mean that all ghost photos like it are fakes. In fact, they may all be real. We’re just trying to eliminate mistakes when we say that something in a ghost picture is an anomaly.
I hate it when we put a photo online and declare that it’s an anomaly, and later realize that it was a bug or a reflection. We look stupid, and I like to think that we’re smarter than that.
But anyway, I look at all of our debunking research this month, and wonder if new visitors to our website will think that we’re a bunch of raving skeptics.
I agree with this. When I look at Samantha and my photos after we’ve been out on a hunt. The only thoughts I have is “orbs” They could be anything, Dust, pollen, bugs, a reflection off a nearby light source. Until I learn more about orbs, I can’t say either way. Every photo with an orb is in one shot of two. Never in both pics. I takes a few seconds for the flash to recharge before the second photo can be shot.
We don’t have anything like “Photoshop” or anything on our PCs to touch up photos. We have a thing called “Paint” that comes on most PCs. A drawing program of somesort. It cannot do anything with photos.
I use a Sonyo digital camera with 7.1 mega pixels. I admit I might need a tripod to keep the camera in the exact place of where the first pic was shot. A brighter flash may help too.
Any photo Samantha or I take and are unsure about, we will sent it to someone who knows more about these until we learn more of what we are seeing. I don’t like to debunk photos or tear them apart. It takes the fun away from what we are trying to accomplish.