Paranormal Picture Study

Flash Used

No Flash Used
Low-light/Night Setting Used

Hey, spooky friends! I thought for today's blog post I'd do something a little different. As part of my commitment to do a few more educational-type posts concerning paranormal investigating and paranormal theory, I wanted to share a set of photographs that I personally took on a recent investigation. 

The subject of the photo is Spectral Research and Investigation's own investigator and co-videographer, Beth. Beth is hooked up to a set of headphones, connected to an SB-10 spirit box and is actively engaged in a modified Estes Method of communication. She cannot see or hear the rest of the team, who was asking various questions of the resident spirit of this particular location. She is simply listening to the frequencies being scanned and responding to what she hears. 

While this was going on, we did have some interesting responses that seemed to answer direct questions, and some information did come through that seemed to mesh with what we knew of the history of the location. As part of the documentation process (we were also videoing the session) I took two photographs of Beth, back to back.

I didn't use anything fancy; just my Google Pixel 6a phone. The two photos were taken approximately 30 seconds or so apart, but as you can see, they look quite different. I just recently got this phone, so I was playing with the different picture settings to see how they looked. The top photo was taken with the flash on.

The bottom photo was taken without the flash, but used my phone's night setting, which I'm really impressed with! But, you'll notice that in this photo, there seems to be a strange light anomaly behind Beth's chair, and a hazy figure, almost standing behind her. If you zoom in, you can even make out a face.

Pictures like this are unfortunately misidentified as paranormal all the time. I would have loved to have caught something anomalous, but the truth is, that spooky haze and light anomaly has a perfectly logical explanation. When the night or low-light setting on a camera (or camera phone) is used, you're going to have a long exposure, or long shutter speed. While the photo was being taken, one of our investigators (Beth's husband, Michael!) walked into the shot and back out. The light anomaly is his flashlight, which you can see is illuminating the ground. 

It only took half a second for him to walk through the shot, leaving a ghostly impression. I've seen this kind of shot fool plenty of people, especially when taking photos with a camera/phone that they may not be super familiar with. It's easy to get confused on what settings are being used, and it's even easier to get confused about one's surroundings. Time and time again, we hear the photographer of these types of photos swear that no one else was around. Most of these people are being sincere; they truly don't remember anyone else being near the shot, but witnesses are not infallible. When we're focusing on photographing a subject, we're usually not paying much attention to what is going on around us. And as fast as this can happen, we might not even realize it. 

Anyway, I thought it'd be fun to compare these two pictures and let you all see just how easy it is to capture something that APPEARS anomalous, but is actually a pretty common misidentification. If you get the chance, take out your own camera/phone and just play around a little with different settings, and what happens when the camera is bumped/moved or when someone walks through the frame during long exposure times. It's a neat little experiment that will help you more quickly and easily identify those ghost photos that might just be a little too good to be true!