Hollow Hill

At Christmas, Look for Working Ghosts

The Christmas holidays may offer increased ghost hunting opportunities.

Some ghosts and residual energy hauntings are more active at certain anniversaries.

The obvious anniversary is the day the person died.
Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and other significant dates (including when battles occurred) can also signal increased paranormal activity.
Halloween marks almost universally greater hauntings, and I’ve mentioned April 30th as its counterpart.

However, many ghost hunters make assumptions about Christmas, expecting the day to be quiet, in ghost terms.

They may be missing some great opportunities for investigations.

Christmas — and other December holidays — have been so widely celebrated since the early 20th century, we assume everyone has celebrated the holiday season… always.

Well, that’s not quite true.

In fact, when Bob Cratchit nervously asked Scrooge for Christmas Day off, Bob was asking for something extraordinary. In the 1840s, people expected to work on Christmas. Working-class families didn’t gather to celebrate Christmas, except at dinner. Even then, the meal was mostly for those who weren’t working 15 – 18 hours every day.

It’s a day that — more than most — may have marked the gap between the wealthy and working classes. As such, you may find opportunities for ghost research on or around Christmas Day, especially at 19th-century factory sites.

Personally, I’d never prioritize ghost hunting over family celebrations. So, I might investigate during the days leading up to Christmas or immediately after, but not on the day itself.

On the other hand, if your family doesn’t celebrate on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, these may be ideal opportunities for experimental research.

The first thing to do is to find a few sites for research. If you live near abandoned or refurbished factory buildings and mills, first check to be sure they can be accessed legally and safely. As recent events have reminded many of us: It can be a grave mistake to ignore “no trespassing” signs.

Then, find out if they were in business during the era before child labor laws were enforced in your area.

Not sure? Here’s part of an article from Wikipedia:

In 1916, the NCLC and the National Consumers League successfully pressured the US Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Act, the first federal child labor law. However, the US Supreme Court struck down the law two years later in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), declaring that the law violated a child’s right to contract his or her own labor.

In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment authorizing a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped.

It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor.

See if the factory had a policy about Christmas Day. Old newspapers will probably help you understand the dynamics of the factory management, and whether they were likely to give workers the day off (paid or unpaid) at Christmas. Remember, Christmas wasn’t a Federal holiday in the US until 1870.

Look for a history of workers’ strikes and articles from the 19th century, when charities complained about working conditions for the poor.

It’s a grim era to revisit historically, but it’s something to consider in terms of when a local site might be especially active.

At many 19th-century factories and mills, working on Christmas Day was routine and another painful reminder of the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

It might be an ideal opportunity for ghost research. I’d focus on EVP and well as real-time communication with spirits at abandoned and refurbished mills and factory sites.

Additional references

English Society in the 1840s.
Christmas in 19th Century America.
Child Labor Overview.
Richard Wilkins shares Mormon themes from Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’. (See the Life in 1843 section.)
A Victorian Christmas.
History.com – Christmas.
The History of Christmas (transcribed from a History Channel TV show).
The History of Christmas: Many of Our Traditions Began in the 19th Century. (About.com)
The Foundation of All Good Breeding. (Wayback Machine copy) (Reference to manners, ca. 1881, useful for establishing rapport with factory girls.)
How Working Girls Live in London (Wayback Machine copy). (References to young women moving to the city for employment, ca. 1889.)

Baseline Yourself for Ghost Hunting

Let’s say you’re ghost hunting.

Suddenly, you feel uncomfortable, ill, or emotional.

Are you sure that it’s something paranormal?

A simple, baseline check can help you decide what’s really going on.

That’s why I created a worksheet of emotions, with some instructions. It’s a free download, linked at the foot of this article.

The worksheet can be carried with you, so – at a glance – you can tell how you feel before the investigation.

Then, during the investigation, it’s easy to check for (and identify) possible paranormal influences on your emotions.

How to Baseline Yourself Before a Ghost Hunt

Here’s what you’ll do.

First, discover what’s normal for you. Check how you feel when you wake up in the morning.

Note your feelings regularly throughout the day, and then at night when you’re tired.

That gives you an idea of what your normal is.

Then, before each investigation, pause. Check your physical, mental, and emotional state. See if it’s normal for you, or if you might be especially vulnerable during this particular ghost hunt.

Let a team member know, if necessary.

In general, by running a “baseline check” of yourself, you can be more confident when something odd happens at a haunted site.

The chart can help you evaluate external emotions – perhaps coming from a ghost – as well.

That’s essential for sensitives, psychics, and mediums.

Knowing what’s you and what’s not you… that helps you establish boundaries.

Free Download

Here’s the free Baseline Yourself PDF.

Print copies to share with your team members. This approach may not suit everyone, but when it’s useful… it’s really useful.

Download the free PDF instructions and worksheet, here.
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0Q4gQP_1SklZHZxelBUeUdVaGc]

Halloween Ghost Hunting Checklist – Free printable PDF

Halloween can be a whirlwind for many ghost hunters. Events, parties, investigations… and then the big night itself. Are you ready?

Ideally, Halloween research plans are prepared far ahead of Halloween night. However, even if you’ve been too busy, it’s not too late to organize your Halloween plans for ghost hunting success.

To help you, I’m sharing my own Halloween checklist. I’ve used some variation of this, every year for the past dozen or so years. I hope it’s useful and helps you make the most of Halloween ghost hunting opportunities.

Click here for the Halloween Ghost Hunting Checklist (PDF)

Photographing Ghostly Ectoplasm

The following is an edited excerpt from the first edition of Ghost Photography 101, by Fiona Broome.

Ghostly figures in Portsmouth, NH cemetery — Smoke is the #1 explanation for crisp ‘ecto’ photos, like this one.

In the field, the word ectoplasm is often shortened to “ecto” and it’s considered rare. Ectoplasm is a complex and controversial topic.

Ectoplasm seems to be something physical. People describe it as something that’s visible to the naked eye. “Sparkles” may be small spots of ectoplasm, or they might be something different, since they don’t usually show up in photos.

Orb photos are popular and almost commonplace. Ectoplasm photos are rare and receive little attention.

In fact, many professional ghost hunters seem to dismiss all “ecto” photos as cigarette smoke. Is that fair? From my experiments, the answer is a firm “no.” It’s remarkably difficult to photograph cigarette smoke.

Like orbs, at least 90% of modern ectoplasm pictures have been taken after dark using flash cameras. To confuse matters even more, there are many natural explanations for ecto-like forms in photos.

False ectoplasm in photos

Ectoplasm in photos could be, in order of likelihood:

Smoke.
Breathing, fog or moisture in the air.
An odd, reflected light.
Hair, insects, dust or pollen.
A camera strap.
A light leak in a film camera.
An error during film processing.

Let’s rule those out, if we can.

Film errors are easy to spot. Examine the film closely, looking for scratches, splashes, fingerprints or other surface evidence of mishandling during processing.

A light leak in the camera will usually extend beyond the frame of the photo, into the edges of the film.

Insects, dust and pollen usually look more like orbs. However, hair can be confusing, as can camera straps.

For reflected light to cause an ecto effect, it would have to be very close to the lens… and obvious.

Fog and drifting moisture are usually evident when the photo is taken. You can usually confirm this with a flashlight; the beam of light will highlight bands of damp air that could appear in photos.

Eerie 'ghost' images in breath, Northfield, NH — Yes, this is what breath looks like in a ‘ghost’ photo, but is that all it is?

Breathing is a problem on chilly nights. It’s easily the #1 reason someone might think “ecto” when they look at a misty photo. To rule it out, either don’t breathe (or stand close to anyone who is breathing) or don’t take ghost photos on chilly nights or when the dew point is high.

From my experiments, smoke is not likely to cause “ecto” effects. It’s possible, but not likely. (Those experiments are illustrated in the book.)

As with fog and moisture, you can usually highlight smoke with a bright flashlight, so you can tell if it’s an issue before you take photos. If its light is reflected, the smoke will reflect your camera’s flash, too.

With those factors ruled out, we’re left with another mystery: What are those eerie, misty areas and swirling entities in our photos?

Many professional ghost hunters agree that smoke is the best explanation when we see ethereal, ectoplasmic images in photographs.

Most ghost hunters insist that, even if someone had been smoking 20 minutes earlier, smoke particulate can remain in the air and reflect light, especially light from a flash camera.

If you’re serious about ghost photography and you’ve seen images that look like ectoplasm in your photos, run tests with your own cameras. Rule out normal effects, first.

I recommend testing in a variety of weather conditions, especially varying levels of humidity.

Take test photos of different kinds of smoke, including smoke from:

Cigarettes
Pipes
Incense
Burning wood (like a campfire)
Burning paper
Matches

If you live near a factory that spews minute particles into the air, take after-dark photos near the factory. Airports (and traffic paths of low-flying planes) can also contribute particulate matter in the environment.

It may sound like a mantra at this point, but it’s important: Always know what different normal effects look like, before deciding that you’ve photographed anything paranormal.

For locations with particulate matter in the air, check regional environmental websites. In the United States, you may find helpful information at AirNow.gov and at the EPA website, http://www.epa.gov/air/emissions/where.htm

Eight Ways to Spot Fake Ghost Photos

After spending years trying to create convincing, fake, ghost photos, I learned that it’s not as easy as I thought… or as simple as skeptical critics claim.

Spider webs with moisture in them

Some people might confuse the lines for ectoplasm, but most won’t.

Damp, foggy morning, using the flash in all photos

As you can see, there were no orbs, even in thick fog. The third photo (lower left) has something odd in it, but it’s not an orb, as I’d been expecting from so much dampness.

Hair

In some cases, hair could be confused with light streaks or vortex images. The color of the hair is the clue. (My hair is auburn.)

However, notice the last of these four photos, at the lower right. It looks like it has large, overlapping orbs. That’s also a photo of hair; when the light catches it in a certain way, it appears as a series of large, faint orbs.

Smoke

Frankly, the only way we could get smoke to show up in pictures, consistently, was to use actual stick incense.

The results open some interesting questions. Some of these photos could be mistaken for anomalies. But if someone nearby were using incense, wouldn’t a photographer notice the fragrance?

Pollen

Pollen was very difficult to capture in photos. Even shaking ragweed directly over the camera lens, the pollen rarely showed up at all. (See the third photo, in the lower left, where I was shaking the ragweed in front of the lens.) The final photo in this series shows what it looks like to crush the ragweed with your hand, and then sprinkle the pollen in front of the camera lens. These extremes suggest that pollen is rarely a problem for an experienced ghost photographer.

However, in the few photos where it did show up, it could look similar to orbs with “faces” in them.

Unless you’re standing directly underneath a tree that’s sprinkling pollen, or it’s a very bad night for hay fever, I don’t think pollen is a major concern. Among the few photos that showed pollen orbs, even fewer were orbs that we’d confuse with actual anomalies.

Is it possible to confuse pollen for an anomalous ghost orb? Yes. Is it likely? No.

Dust and dirt

Dust particles – from household dust and dust (or dirt) kicked up while walking – were equally difficult to confuse with anomalous orbs.

In the first photo (immediately below this text), that’s a Swiffer duster, caked with dust, that my husband was shaking in front of the lens. Nothing showed up, except the actual duster.

In the next two photos, you can see orbs and other shapes created by reflected dust. They’re more likely to be confused with ghost orbs, but I think I took 50 photos to get these results.

The final photo in the dust & dirt series shows what very dry, fine dirt looks like, sprinkled in front of the lens. This is the same powdery, dusty dirt that could be kicked up by people walking or a car driving past you during an investigation. It looked almost identical to pollen, but a finer texture.

Keep in mind, all of these particles were sprinkled within three inches of the camera lens. Few produced images large enough to look like ghost orbs, and other characteristics — such as a solid, dark dot in the middle, or an irregular, notched circumference — usually don’t match anomalous orbs. However, a few dust orbs did look like anomalous “ghost orbs.” (Some researchers might argue that those few were actual ghost orbs. After all, most of these photos were taken in haunted cemeteries.)

Rain

Rain produced such obviously fake results, I don’t think rain is an issue for professional or experienced investigators. First of all, you’re likely to feel the rain even if you don’t see it right away. Then, some of the drops reflect such as solid reflection, I doubt that you’d confuse a photo of rain with an actual, anomalous orb.

Breath

In my opinion, the number one issue for ghost photographers is breath. Though these photos were all taken on a winter night, I was able to achieve similar results on a warm summer night when the dew point was high. These are a few of many photos that show strange forms and mists, the result of exhaling sharply at the exact moment I took each photo. So, these are extremes.

The third photo (lower left) intrigues me the most. It’s a fairly benign-looking misty shape. It could be confused with an actual, ghostly anomaly.

Before I completed the first edition of Ghost Photography 101, I showed these photos to someone else who’s been studying ghost photos for years. He insisted that some of the photos did represent ghosts (particularly pictures like the third in the breath series.)

I could see his point, but in my research, if something could be explained by something normal, I have to discount it.

I’d rather err on the side of caution.

On the other hand, I think we need to explore another possibility: If we give the spirits something to work with – like breath or incense – should we look to see what the spirits do with it?

After all, that’s not too different than using white noise to give the ghosts sounds to work with, to form EVP. And, it’s also similar to using a device like a Frank’s Box, ghost box, or “shack hack” to give entities sounds and words to use.

Ghost Photos – Sparkles and Other Surprising Anomalies

The following is an excerpt from the first edition of Ghost Photography 101, by Fiona Broome.

Your camera can suggest “hot spots” for good ghost pictures. One of the best indications is a phenomenon called sparkles.

In the late 1990s, my research team noticed bright, sparkling lights that slowly drifted towards the ground after I took photos in haunted areas. They appear to flare when the flash goes off, but the lights linger for about half a second afterwards. On rare occasions, they fade over a period of nearly two seconds.

I called them “sparkles” in my earliest ghost hunting website articles in the 1990s, and the term is now used throughout the ghost hunting field.

If we could capture those sparkles in photos, they might look like the following photo. (It think it’s actually a spiderweb or some hair.)

Sparkle-type image — What sparkles can look like. (That’s actually a spider web or hair, in daylight.)

Sparkles usually appear about 20 – 30 feet away from the camera. They look about the size of ping-pong balls or walnuts. We see dozens of them, sometimes all at once and sometimes in a subtle sequence.

Usually, the sparkles are white or pale pastel colors. Some researchers report more vivid colors.

Sparkles seem to have mass, or they wouldn’t drift towards the ground as if pulled down by gravity. However, people standing immediately underneath them don’t see or feel them as they fall. So far, we have no idea what causes sparkles.

We know what they aren’t. They aren’t bugs (including fireflies), dust or pollen. They aren’t rain or moisture.

Note: Insects immediately in front of your camera can also seem like bright lights, but only when the flash highlights them. In addition, if you’re in an area with fireflies, we’ve noticed that some fireflies “answer” the flash on the camera by flaring their lights as well.

Remember, the anomalous sparkles never show up in photos. (I wish they did.)

They’re best seen through the camera’s viewfinder (or lens), but most spectators (about 80%) see the sparkles whether or not they’re looking through a camera. Both film and digital cameras seem to highlight sparkles. Some cameras are better than others.

My oldest camera is among the best to reveal sparkles. It’s an Olympus AF-1 Twin that my mother bought me, many years ago. It uses 35 mm film. Today, you may find cameras like it at thrift shops for just a few dollars. (I recently found one at Goodwill for $1.50. It works well, too. You might find something similar at Amazon.com.)

Once you see sparkles, you’ll know exactly what I’m describing.

Take as many photos as you can when sparkles appear. There’s an increased likelihood that your photos will include anomalies… just not the actual sparkles you saw.