With Cameras being the major tool of the paranormal investigators kit, it’s important to recognize common anomalies as well as paranormal anomalies.   In this article, I will go over the most common types of Common anomalies i.e.: false positives you’ll encounter while on an investigation.

Let’s start with orbs.   First, most paranormal groups feel about orbs the same way, and a lot of groups have adopted the TAPS reasoning behind them. (For information about the TAPS belief on orbs, read this article)

Dust:

Photo Credit: Mike Bench

As you can see, this picture has countless orbs.  How do you tell the paranormal, from the normal?  Most often a true paranormal orb will emit a light of its own, be iridescent, perfectly round, and semi transparent.  When using a flash on your camera, you will almost certainly drown out any self radiant orb’s light.  That is, unless you catch its light reflecting off of another surface.

Photo Credit:  John

In the picture above, you should be able to pick out more dust orbs.  You can start to see the difficulty involved in identifying true orbs.   Some tricks include taking a series of photographs in succession of each other.  This will help produce a movement path to the orbs.  But again, you need to pay careful attention.  If the orbs all move in the same direction, chances are they are dust, but if one orb out of a group moves in an opposite, or different direction, then you may just have something.

Moisture:

Compare the following pictures:

Photo Credit:  John

In the above image, you’ll notice how vibrant and bright the orbs are, either I had the gates to purgatory open in my kitchen, or it’s raining.  In the following picture, you’ll notice just a couple orbs, nothing like the above image.  Both pictures were taken near simultaneously, with two different cameras; the above was taken with an Olympus point and shoot, the other a Pentax Isl/dsl camera sporting an 80-75mm lens.

One way to reduce the number of false positive orbs is to use a camera that has an interchangeable lens, or has the ability to use a remote flash.  The reason behind this is that the closer the flash is to the bare end of the lens, the more false positives you get.  The difference between these two photos?  The point and shoot only had 1 and a half inch distance between the lens and the flash, where as the Pentax had a good 6 inches plus between the flash and lens.

Photo Credit: John

By using a remote flash, you increase the distance between it and the lens, that way the flash, when it goes off, isn’t illuminating the dust and other particulates directly in front of the lens itself.

Here is another example of moisture captured on camera:

Photo Credit:  John

While where on the topic of moisture, be aware that many factors can go into a false positive, variations on hue’s and tones of the subject,  fire or smoke damage can change the color of paint and cloth,  so can water as evident in the next image.

Photo Credit:  Jennifer Doane

Moving entities:

Every so often you see a pic of a moving entity, or orb on a paranormal site.   It makes you wonder if any debunking was tried at all. In this picture, you’ll see what looks like a bright moving orb when in reality it’s just hair.

Photo Credit:  John

Often you’ll see this same effect in other pictures, Spider webs for one, when unfocused and a picture taken up close will have a multi-orb movement path effect. Same with hair, here is another example of Hair in the way.  You can see that it really does look like an orb in flight.

Photo Credit:  John

Mirrors:

Mirrors often pose a lot of problems when photographed, they cast light reflections, smudges show up and imperfections in the glass and silver layering on the back of the mirror shows up.

In this Image, you can clearly see the smudges, but also the imperfections in the mirror.  Notice in the lower left the light reflection being cast, and the lens flare.  Too often are these categorized as paranormal when in reality they are anything but.

Photo Credit:  John

In the next image, you can barely see some dark smudges.  These are actually located between the glass and the silver coating.

Photo Credit:  John

Lens flare & Camera glare:

This is another common cause of false positives.  Reflections of the flash can come from anything semi-glossy to mirrored. Look at this example.  The shape of the orb has some pretty straight edges. Same as the red outline around it. And the orb to its left also carries the same shape.  Because of its hex shape we can safely assume that it’s a reflection.

Photo Credit:  Suzie Berg

What causes this shape?  It is caused by the shape of the iris in the camera lens.  As the glare passes into the lens, it’s partially blocked by the edges of the iris, producing this shape.  This hex shape can vary in width; it may be elongated, squashed, short, fat, tall, or thin. It may appear as a really bright orb, or in this case, a faded orb.   Most often if you notice more than one of these particularly shaped orbs, you can track them back to its source, in this case there are two orbs of the same shape, so by tracking backwards from the largest orb to the smaller, we can safely say that the plastic wrap on the lamp shade is what caused this lens flare.

Black Vortex:

A lot of images like this come up, with varying degrees of transparency, and contrast.  And in this image it even looks as if it’s casting a shadow on the ceiling.  All it is in reality is the camera strap; most often times you can actually make out the pattern made by the threading in the cords.

Photo Credit: John

There are many other types of false positives out there.  Most importantly, getting to know your camera and adjusting its settings for the conditions is critical.  Often times a long shutter delay will be used to capture the most light in a dark situation.  Though this can produce some high quality photos, often times a tripod is needed to reduce blurring items not in the focus zone of the camera (this can lead to a person in the background appearing as a flesh colored blur while the subject of the photo is in focus) on the other hand, a fast shutter speed, reduces the quality of the shot, but eliminates the need for a tripod.

In short, when photographing during an investigation, it’s important to know your environment, make note of the weather conditions, check the pollen counts for the area, and do a little debunking while at the scene.  Often check your pic’s for anything out of the norm, and if you spot something, try and do a little on scene debunking.   Hopefully this little guide will help reduce the number of false positives that are often seen in the paranormal scene.

Ever wondered how the investigative process works?  Curious as to how NUPS handles an investigation from beginning to end?  Check out our Investigative Process to learn more.

As paranormal researchers, we are often used to strange looks when we talk about our interest in ghosts. However interest in the paranormal is growing, with many studies say one out of three people believe in ghosts. All of us involved in this research have at one time or another gotten questions about why we believe ghosts exist. Many of us have different answers; whether it is from some personal experience, from our upbringing, or just from personal beliefs. Many people out there are very skeptical about the possibilities of ghosts, and rightfully so. It’s hard for people to believe in things they can not see or hear. However there are many reasons to believe in ghosts.

For example, roughly three out of four people believe in God. Many organized religions preach about a soul, or spirit of the human body. And many of those religions talk about an afterlife, where the spirit is supposed to go after death. But what if those spirits are somehow trapped here on Earth? There are many theories about how this can happen. They range from the spirit getting trapped here by attachment to people, places, or objects. Some say the spirit leaves a lasting “impression” on a place or object. Some say that they are trapped because of some business they needed to complete before moving on to a final resting place. Even that they are trapped here because the spirit refuses to believe that is has died, and will not fully pass on.

However these theories are tied into a strong belief in God, a soul, and an afterlife. What of the other 25% of the world that doesn’t believe in God? Is it still possible to believe in ghosts? Absolutely, and here is a possible scientific explanation as to how ‘ghosts’ might exist. The ‘law of conservation of energy’ states that the total amount of energy in a system remains constant. Therefore, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Tie that in with Einstein’s ‘theory of relativity’, which shows that energy is associated with mass (the famous e=mc²), and you get an interesting idea. Our bodies are just a big bunch of energy. Between the our bodies mass, and the energy constantly present within our bodies (everything you do in life is constant energy, from your brain firing of synapses while reading this, to your heart beat, and everything in between), its safe to say we are literally full of energy. And if that energy can not be created, or more importantly in this case, destroyed, then it’s safe to say that some of this energy can possibly carry over after the body dies. What we are experiencing when we have a ghostly encounter, is the remnants of that energy. Whether the energy maintains its form, transforms to leave an imprint, or any number of other possibilities is hard to say for sure.

That’s why it’s so fascinating to research this phenomenon. Maybe, someday we will have all the evidence we need to prove once and for all the existence of ghosts. But until that time, we will keep searching for answers, searching for evidence, all the while remaining skeptical of what we find. Because if we are not skeptical in our research, we will only discredit the real evidence that we find.