Ultimate proof that ghosts exist, or maybe it's just dust on

[Loredoctor]

Ultimate proof that ghosts exist, or maybe it's just dust on the camera

Mike Wade (The Times)

A courtly figure dressed in a ruff and staring from a castle window would not be particularly unusual if he appeared in a period painting. But this image was captured on a digital camera some 500 years after the Elizabethan era and has for thousands of people around the world become the ultimate proof that ghosts exist.

The photograph, taken at Tantallon Castle near Edinburgh last May, was released yesterday by Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, who “just for fun” embarked three weeks ago on an online research project, inviting websurfers to send him their photos of ghosts.

The response, he said, was “beyond all expectation”. Hundreds of images were sent his way, from as far afield as Mexico and Japan. Then, after 50 of the best images were placed online, some 250,000 people voted for the most convincing.


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The array of smudged photographs and crazy fakes that caught the interest of this huge audience may do little to prove the existence of ghosts, but it indisputably proves a human need to believe in them, said Professor Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire. “That belief is everywhere, across countries and cultures. It plays on much bigger ideas about life and death, and there's no doubt that, for many of the people who contacted me, there is comfort in the notion that people who have been harmed in life might be able to come back and wreak their revenge.”

In Britain around a third of people say that they believe in ghosts and one in ten claims to have seen one. Proof, however, remains elusive.

One explanation put forward by ghost hunters and some physicists is that in some environments low frequency sound waves - infrasound — vibrate the body, and lead to strange sensations. While Professor Wiseman does not rule that out, he believes that psychology may have a better answer, particularly in oppressive and frightening surroundings such as a ruined castle.

“In the hypervigilance model, as you become scared, you become more on edge. You begin to monitor you own environment and your own physiology,” he said. “In those circumstances, if you hear a sound like a creaking door, it only heightens your own sense of vigilance. The spiral goes on and you might easily have a panic attack.

“From an evolutionary perspective, all this is sensible, because it is comparable to a situation in the "normal world" where you might come under attack. But in these oppressive surroundings, the seemingly inexplicable becomes very worrying and you begin to look for other explanations.”

Many of the images submitted to his survey were sent in by people who had found themselves in similarly unnerving environments; dark, dusty, unfamiliar and scary. They had taken photographs, and interpreted “orbs”, the reflection of dust in a camera flash light, as evidence of ghosts. Most of these pictures, said Professor Wiseman, were “rubbish”.

He could not say the same for the photograph taken at Tantallon Castle, which, though undeniably spooky, had been photographed by a day-tripper, Christopher Aitchison, who apparently had no thought of finding a ghost. If was only back home, when he was examining his snaps of the day out, that he noticed the ghostly visage. Three experts on Photoshop, the photography software, have analysed the image and concluded that it has not been tampered with, and Professor Wiseman has been unable so far to find any convincing explanation for the ghostly apparition.

“I do find the Tantallon image curious. People are often keen to find ghostly explanations, and to kid themselves about the paranormal. But equally, science must be open to possibility - you have to hold fire when you can't explain something, or you haven't all the information,” he said.

Believers in the spirit world have suggested that the spectre in Mr Aitchison's photograph is James V, the Scottish King who was imprisoned in the castle in the 1520s when he was a teenager. None has yet been able to suggest why his spirit should have returned to haunt the place as, apparently, a full-grown man.

If that seems inexplicable, there may be another solution, said Professor Wiseman. “It could just be a trick of the light.”

Ghosts in their machine

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is probably the most famous image of an alleged ghost captured on film. It was taken in 1936 and is said to show Dorothy Walpole, second wife of Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend, who died in 1729.

The image was taken by Captain Provand and Indre Shira, photographers on assignment for Country Life magazine at Raynham Hall in Norfolk. While they were shooting pictures of its interior, Shira said that he could see a figure on the staircase. Provand could not, but took the photograph anyway. It later revealed a transparent hooded figure descending the stairs. When it was published in Britain and America, the image caused a sensation.

A contemporary investigation, conducted by the Society for Psychical Research, concluded that an equipment failure had been responsible. Professor Richard Wiseman suggests that the image is the result of a double exposure — a failing that has resulted in many similar ghostly apparitions on older cameras.

Double exposure has disappeared with the advent of the digital camera but even modern photographers see spectres. “Orbs” — the reflections of dust in a camera flash — can create an eerie effect while a finger placed carelessly over the lens can convince some people that they have seen a ghost.

[wayfriend]

Are these the pictures in question?

[I'm Murrin]

First look, you see a face (somewhat more puppet-like than human), but on closer inspection, it's the same colours as the stone, and most of the features are made from the way the bars of the fence cross it (the "eyes" are right where one of the smaller horizontal bars crosses). Light hitting a patch of stone just inside that window.

Interesting, though. We are preprogrammed to look for and recognise facial features, which makes faces the easiest thing for us to mistakenly see.

[Avatar]

Cool picture. I'm not one for ghosts (perhaps not surprisingly ) I do though always try and remember the great quote from Dune: "What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?"

--A

[matrixman]

Murrin's trick-of-light explanation works for me. But I like looking at "ghost" photos all the same.

[iQuestor]

it looks like a pissed off old woman to me. I am used to seeing old women pissed off. Usually at me.

[Blackhawk]

we telling ghost stories?

OK ... I got a few of them from personal exprerience.... and these all happened in the same house, but outside this house nothing has happened to me since. well..besides the dream I had that a screaming man was at my window and the man was the same as the face that was pressing out of my wall.., but that was a dream i had when i moved out to CA. Nothing since.

I was 5, Lived in a scary house in the country... first incident, My mom put me to bed and I know i was alone, but something started pulling my blanket off me towards the end of the bed (I was not asleep)...I Screamed, mom came up and nothing was there.

I was a little older and I moved out of that room to the room across the hall... While trying to go to sleep I kept seeing something in the upper corner where the walls and ceiling connect, something was pressing itself out of the wall just like it would look if someone had... hard to explain... i guess it looked like someone holding up pizza dough and pressing their face into it, something that now I have seen done with many special effects in movies. Screamed....turned the lights on ..no face.

third one was my mother who saw it.... she was Vacuuming and she saw a lady standing on the stairs, I dont remember what she did or said but she said this was not someone she knew or anyone that lived around us and she cuold tell it was not a Person..not anymore anyway.

fourth that i can recall (so many odd things happened at this house) I was in my new bedroom upstairs... I was cleaning up my toys and I saw what looked like my cat (white siamese) run under my bed...so i got down and said what are you doing??..there was no cat under there or anything else,... I went downstairs thinking the cat got past me and ran downstairs and my mom said the cat had been sleeping on her lap for the last half hour... OK....

5th and final to my recollections... I was in my bathroom downstairs brushing my teeth and I filled up a glass of water to rinse my mouth...I drank a little of the water and ... Tried to dump out the water...... It stayed in the glass completely upside down for a good 5 seconds...I yelled for my mom and the water fell... Nothing I did could replicate it because i tried for the better part of that day, today i think ....could it have been suction like when you put a piece of paper over the top of a glass and turn it upside down...but there was no paper.