Ghost Hunting

Awhile back ago, Floss, Neil's second cousin from Salem, shared with me her excitement over a new hobby that she discovered. The hobby is ghost-hunting.

One of the tools that Floss and other ghost-hunters use is a digital camera. Ghosts can often show up as orbs or unusual light streaks which are indicative of ectoplasm. Of course, dust, light leaks and flashes, and smoke can also render the same effects.

Experienced ghost-hunters, like Floss, can usually tell the difference between the real McCoy and schmutz on the camera lens.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to try my hand at ghosting hunting yesterday.

In the morning, I took 22 pictures inside the house. Most of them were in the basement. Out of those 22 pictures, I got just one with an orb.

This shot was taken of the original well to the house that's now in the crawl space under our living room. There is a small orb in the upper right-hand part of the well that is just above the cable doing into the well.

I showed the picture to Floss. Having taken and seen many ghost pictures before, she is convinced that the orb in my ghost is merely dust. Oh well.

Later on in the evening, I decided to do more ghost hunting when it started getting dark. All in all, I took 122 pictures, most of them outside.

None of the indoor images yielded anything except for this picture of the living room (which is still crowded with all the stuff from my studio in wait for the contractors to come and finish their job). There is a little white orb on the green curtain in the doorway. It kind of looks like a door knob. But there is nothing there to give it that appearance.

Floss says that it's a bit hard to tell if this is the real deal.

Outside, it was orbs galore!

The one in this picture looks like a full moon behind the tree branches. And the full moon is only 4 days away and does rise in that direction. The only thing is that there are other trees behind this tree and the orb is about 6 feet off the ground.

Oh lookie! More orbs around that same tree!

But wait a minute! Look at this next picture.

Those orbs are actually the hoards of insects that have been flying around. Most of the insects were no-see-ums. However, a couple of fire flies did decide to join in on the action.

So all my outside orbs were bugs. Definitely not a "booyah!" moment.

Just so I would know what a true orb ~ a real ghost ~ looked like, Floss was kind enough to send me this picture of her first orb. Cool huh?

I've seen Floss's other ghost pictures, and I must say they are interesting ~ in fact, VERY interesting.

In order for me to get more information on the ins and outs of ghost-hunting, Floss suggested that I check out Ghost Study. She said that while they try to sell you all sorts of ghost-hunting swag, it does offer some useful tips and information.

My own research came up with Ghost Hunting 101, also a useful site.

While I don't think that I will rush off and buy myself an Electromagnetic Field Detector and throw myself as enthusiastically into ghost hunting as Floss does, I think that from now on, I will examine my photos a lot more closely.

Who knows? Maybe I'll bag myself a true ghost!