Comments on: Comments on 16062

Post number 16062

gutenberg — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 02:11:12 -0800

They see dead people. Seattle's own floating monument to a bygone era, the ferryboat Kalakala, is rumored to be haunted. The members of A.G.H.O.S.T. investigated earlier this year and claim they caught spectral images on film. Are those hazy orbs actually visitors from the spirit realm or does someone just need a new camera? Go on, tell us—do you believe in ghosts?

By: gutenberg

gutenberg — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 02:19:54 -0800

BTW: I've never had a firm opinion about ghosts, though I admit that under my somewhat cynical veneer I'm easily spooked. Mostly I'm curious to see if others have insights or experiences to share.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 03:23:19 -0800

A shade looks like a drop of water on glass, a distant light out of focus. People will see horses in the clouds, gods in the stars, and terror in a fragile spider running over dust.

By: skallas

skallas — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 03:27:58 -0800

I like Dale Kaczmarek's side by side look at what he considers likely paranormal/fortean photos and common mistakes that give similiar effects.

By: skallas

skallas — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 03:30:52 -0800

Slight caveat, these photos tend to freak people out for a little bit. Eveytime I send someone this link or especially the infamous infrared Bacherlor's Grove photo they hate me for it.

By: mook

mook — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 03:34:09 -0800

those 'orbs' look just like the watermarks that appear on badly printed photographs - like when I was first mucking about in the darkroom in my student days. If you are not careful about rinsing your prints, and drying them in suitable conditions, pools of developer and/or fixer appear on the images and create dark or light spots. Images can be powerful, but expecially in these circumstances do not tell the truch.

By: crasspastor

crasspastor — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 04:06:30 -0800

My brand new digital camera makes the same 'orbs' every so often, depending on the light (I assume it's dust). Though I do drive right down Northlake everyday, right past the Kalakala. My camera often in tow.

By: RokkitNite

RokkitNite — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 04:19:06 -0800

I wonder, if you just showed those photographs to somebody without 'priming' them with the whole ghost theory beforehand, would they see the orbs and assume they were spirits? I doubt it very much. I mean, I realise one can't conclusively prove that they *aren't* ghosts, but faced with the two hypothesises, which stands the test of Occam's Razor? It's a shame really, because although I think of myself as a skeptic, like many people I've had experiences that I would be hard pressed to write-off.

By: groundhog

groundhog — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 06:28:33 -0800

An old friend of ours was one of the first of the group of workers that went up to Kodiak, Alaska during the "occupation phase" that was the first part of the restoration of the Kalakala. At one point, he was living on the boat, by himself, freezing his ass off in the middle of the Alaska winter. As far as we know, he didn't have any visitations, although he probably scared the shit out of the local populace. The boat was a cannery for 25 years, so it's quite possible that they're capturing the spirits of long-departed tuna.

By: normy

normy — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 06:45:15 -0800

Why do these sites never show us a scan of the original negative or transparency, or give any details about the film type and processing? Anyhow, nothing here to convince me we're not looking at drying marks, finger-grease or the kind of chemical staining you get when a local 1-hour lab isn't keeping their machines as clean as they should (very common source of bluish-white spotting on prints).

By: pracowity

pracowity — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 06:51:50 -0800

Maybe there are ghosts in the one-hour labs. Kids who couldn't take the tedium anymore and guzzled developer.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 07:10:48 -0800

I always wonder about these pictures. Part of me really wants to believe them. I wonder about the "likely" photographs, such as the girl by the gravestone, and if the phenomena is not more of a projection from the taker of the photo. Perhaps a traumatic event in the area can linger", be picked up by a medium, and channeled onto the clean slate of unexposed film? Now I don't believe any of this balderdash, but I really want to. Orbs? Give me a couple of drinks and I can see 'em easy.

By: Perigee

Perigee — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 07:53:16 -0800

Last year I interviewed a few of these spookchasers, and was shown similar photographs. However, in pressing the question, I found that they were unable to capture the same 'orb' in a simultaneus exposure of two cameras set at right angles from the target - east and north focused to the middle, for example. Rather than admit that there may have been dust inside the lens of the spooky camera, they preferred to believe that spirits have a selective visibility and don't neccessarily have to appear in three dimensions. Bleah.

By: biscotti

biscotti — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 07:58:18 -0800

Even though I've had some experiences I have a hard time explaining (I'll elaborate if this turns into a creepy story-sharing exercise), I'm a die-hard skeptic. I enjoy looking at "ghost pictures", I love reading the stories behind them, and some of them even give me the creeps, but ultimately, no matter how much I'd like them to really be pictures of ghosts, I just don't think they are. There are so many different combinations of technical factors which can give you seemingly "unexplainable" photographs. And, as a photographer, I tend to think that it's far more likely that these "ghost pictures" are technical glitches (either ordinary ones or unusual combinations thereof) than that they're photographs of dead people's spirits.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 08:24:49 -0800

No. And a few normal film distortions is not about to change my mind.

By: ttrendel

ttrendel — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 09:10:52 -0800

You cant't tease us like this, biscotti. C'mon, out with it.

By: ttrendel

ttrendel — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 09:11:49 -0800

Or can't, take your pick.

By: elgoose

elgoose — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 09:36:32 -0800

Random orb detected over sleeve on right . Something Awful is haunted.

By: mdn

mdn — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 09:39:18 -0800

those are some seriously lame "ghost" pictures. The ones skallas linked to are better, but still not convincing. The first one on the left column is so bad I almost didn't even bother looking at others, but some of the others at least I could see how someone could take it seriously. Though I really have no doubt they're simple camera accidents - double exposures or unusual manifestations of light or dust. If cameras could catch "spirits" on film, they would have to be material in some way, in order to reflect the light that is exposed to the film. If it were due to cameras seeing further in the infra red range of light than the human eye, there would be consistent reports using infra red technology. I don't understand the pic of the woman sitting on a gravestone. It just looks like a pic of a woman on a gravestone. Just because she's supposedly wearing an old fashioned dress (which I wouldn't have known) she's a ghost?

By: biscotti

biscotti — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 10:02:19 -0800

Oh all right: I file this under "mass hallucination", rather than "haunting", myself. Three of my family members and I were at Warwick Castle in England a number of years ago. We walked into the great hall and all of us noticed that it had been set up as it might have been at the time the castle was in use: wall sconces with burning torches, reeds on the floor, etc. We all commented on this to each other, and I said that I was amazed that there were no fire code regulations against having burning torches in such an historic building, especially in a room filled with old wooden furniture with reeds on the floor (there was smoke in the air, you could smell it). When we turned back to look again, the room was completely different. There was some of the same furniture, but no torches, no reeds, no nothing. It was creepy, but that whole place was creepy (I thought I saw Someone Who Wasn't There in another room there as well). The Tower of London is much creepier, though.

By: bingo

bingo — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 10:28:07 -0800

Do any of the Los Angeles people remember a story from one of the local news channels from about six months ago, about a mysterious phenomenon called "rods"? They showed a bunch of film clips exposed in a certain way, and you could see these sperm-like things here and there, and they were trying to advance a theory that these "rods" were angels or leprehcauns or something. I know very little about photography, but even I could tell that it was nonsense. But I could never find an article about it online. Anyone know? On an equally light note, has anyone else seen the frequently-aired late-night Cinemax soft-core movie, Erotic Posessions? It's about the ghost of a dead B-movie actress who died before she could finish her final film. She she comes back from the dead, and posesses not just a living actress, but also the incomplete film itself, the actual celluloid. There's a bizarre scene where the living actress is taking a bath, and the posessed film unwinds itself from the roll and gets in the tub with her, and the two of them more or less make love. It's so weird and so marginally erotic, and so sincere and consistent in its wacky premise, that I kept watching it even after I um, needed to.

By: Skot

Skot — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 10:49:12 -0800

By: biscotti

biscotti — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:01:55 -0800

bingo: here you go. The "Roswell Rods" are just fast-moving bugs made to look elongated by virtue of the way a video camera works.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:03:06 -0800

I believe in the possibility of ghosts, but I'm skeptical of photographs and video. Photos are probably the result of problems with the camera or lighting, or Photoshop. I looked at all of the photos that skallas linked to without reading the captions, and most of them looked pretty innocuous without the power of suggestion. The infamous Bachelor's Grove photo just looks like a woman sitting on a tombstone. And the "skeleton" in this photo is probably a reflection, but I do see, umm, a ghostly penis on the pillow.

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:05:49 -0800

O ^--- look, an orb in this thread. Run, it's haunted!

By: RokkitNite

RokkitNite — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:49:36 -0800

I think someone ought to give these self-proclaimed ghost hunters a kick in the 'orbs'.

By: gutenberg

gutenberg — Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:58:41 -0800

I see that most people seem to be going with the faulty camera/developing theory. I agree that the photos look like nothing remarkable to me. Hell, look at what this guy's camera can do. What strikes me though, especially when I look at the rest of the website, is how earnest and sincere these people are. I guess it's like a lot of things—they really want to believe. Seattle MeFiers: after the Deluxe on Sunday we could go look for the ghost at the Harvard Exit Theater(bring poorly-functioning cameras).