Last week I blathered on about photographic methods for faking images of ghosts. This time we will be taking a look at how ghosts appear in photographs by chance.
Accidental spirit photography usually falls into two categories: orbs and faint figures (often consisting of faces or head-and-upper body forms, though there are exceptions.)
Orbs:
These are often created by the camera flash reflecting off of dust or pollen particles floating in the air or insects, or droplets of moisture (e.g. if it’s raining), or lens flare, (which is when light is scattered in a lens system in response to a bright light source). They can also be caused by the flash bouncing off the camera strap if it dangles in the way, from jewellery, or off a strand or two of the photographer’s hair if it makes its way into the frame. Orbs can also be caused by foreign matter inside / on the camera lens.
In the past, unexplained light sources were seen as “ghost lights” but with the beginning of digital photography, those lights became orbs.
A flash bouncing off a camera strap can create a strand of bright white light or even a “spiralling vortex of spirit energy” depending on what material the strap is made of, according to Kenny Biddle and Joe Nickell‘s article So You Have a Ghost in Your Photo.
A camera flash highlighting human or animal exhalations in cold weather, or cigarette smoke, or fog can create some interesting paranormal-looking phenomena.
As we covered last week, long exposure times can cause transparent shapes or streaks / lines, caused by either camera movement or movement of an object in the shot.
The panorama mode on most smartphone cameras has the same effect as long exposure, because phones tend to take a photo in stages known as “image aliasing.” The time taken for a phone to gather enough image stages for a shot is also longer in less well-lit surroundings.
But what caused the moving orb in this CCTV footage?
Perhaps it’s the same mechanism behind the Hornet Spooklight and the Paulding Light, which I will be sharing my research on next week.
The Ghost of Lord Combermere
In 1891, a lady named Sybell Corbet was photographing the library at Combermere Abbey, Cheshire, England. In the resulting photo, the head, collar, and right arm of a man appeared seemingly sitting on a chair.
It was said to be the apparition of Lord Combermere, who had died in a riding accident and was being buried during the time the photo was taken. However, the shot had an hour-long exposure time, which could mean that a servant had wandered into the library and briefly sat down for a rest, then left before the exposure was finished.
Most of the household staff claimed they were at Combermere’s funeral ceremony 4 miles away at the time.
The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
In 1936, two men from Country Life magazine were photographing the grand staircase in Raynham Hall, Norfolk, England. Captain Hubert Provand and his assistant Indre Shira were surprised when Indre saw a “vapoury form” slowly taking on the shape of a woman, moving down the staircase towards them.
The photo was published in Country Life and nicknamed The Brown Lady. Some people claimed it was the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townshend or Walpole, who was supposed to have haunted the building since her inexplicable death in 1726.
At first nobody could work out how the phenomenon occurred, but in 1937, the Society for Psychical Research concluded that the form was caused by shaking of the camera during a 6-second exposure. Others have said it was likely a double exposure and even an image of the Virgin Mary superimposed onto a plain photo of the staircase.
This article shows 28 of the most famous ghost photos.
Figures
Most ghostly faces or figures in photographs can be explained by the psychological effect known as paredolia, the tendency the human brain has to find faces or animals in its surroundings e.g. in clouds, foliage, tree trunks, food, shadows, uneven surfaces, and reflections of light from water or glass.
For example, take a look at this photo of a supposedly demonic figure capering on a patient’s bed in hospital, viewed through a nurse’s monitor screen (this photo was circulating on Reddit sometime in 2014, but I don’t know details as to who originally took the photo):
Looks disturbing, but it has been debunked. The shape of the “entity” is an arrangement of different objects that happened to line up at just the right moment: the seated patient’s bent leg, the frame of the bed, and a coat hanging up in the background:
Next week: What causes ghostlights?
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