No Spirits Caught on Camera!

by Brian P James

Readers of these pages will know of various photographs that appear to depict anomalies, and possibly even spirits or other entities. 

In December we published three images that appeared to show anomalies, and even 'spirits' and entities.

Well, did these photos depict winged entities or the faces of aliens?  In a sense yes, since that is what the eye may be encouraged to see, but as usual with the vast majority of this type of image, the real cause of the anomaly is very mundane.

Fig 1 and Fig 2 did not depict winged entities or spirits; both were from one photo taken on Saturday November 20th, in my back garden.   

The anomalies are nothing more than falling snow; the shapes differ when compared to rain and other 'particulate orbs' due to the relatively flat hexagonal structure of a snowflake, so depending on their angle to the camera, different shapes will be captured.  The 'sprites' in Fig 1 exhibit an apparent trial/tail due to the asynchronous shutter and flash speeds (See the September 2004 issue of SPI's Enigmas for a full explanation).  Fig 4  shows the full frame, and as you can see it contains all manner of 'mundane anomalies', including the  more common ‘particulate orb’.

Fig 3 did not depict the faces of greys encompassed with a mysterious mist. 

This is but one of a number of photos I took on the bank holiday Monday of the festive week, when we were blessed with fine days of wintry sunshine.  The photo was taken looking south, so the low midday sun is right in the frame, causing the lens flare artefact common to that particular Fuji S602 digital camera.  Fig 5 shows the full frame. 

In this image, the flare artefact is over a pattern within the crop of winter wheat in the field behind (although the Michael Line does run through this field, and is roughly running mid-ground right to left!), so the patterns show through the flare. 

In this instance the patterns  coincidentally form shapes and patterns that the human eye and mind try to interpret into familiar shapes.

These images again demonstrate that evidence of ‘spirit’ or other ‘anomalies' need careful and logical analysis before claims of authenticity can be made.