The elusive photo of a ghost!

There are many ghost photos around. A large proportion show something that was not seen by the photographer at the time of exposure. This immediately suggests such ghosts are, in fact, mostly photographic artefacts. Close examination of these photos confirms that to be correct in many cases. A small number may be misperceptions.

The witness evidence for ghosts is strong. Indeed, if you take the definition of ghosts, based on actual reports, to be “a human figure, witnessed by someone, which cannot be physically present”  then it is unanswerable. There are innumerable reports of people seeing figures that then vanish or seen in places where it is known no one else was present. Sometimes they are seen by multiple witnesses at the same time. Some of these figures could be hallucinations where seen buy solitary witnesses. And some of the multiple witness sightings could be misperceptions.

What we really need to make sense of this evidence is a photo taken of the ghost by the witness at the time. I can understand why such photos are vanishingly rare. Until recently few people habitually carried cameras around with them. Now a large proportion of the population do, in their mobile phones.  But even now we see incredibly few photos of witnessed ghosts. Why?  Most people might only see one ghost, or indeed none, in their whole life. So they are not prepared to react. They will probably be so surprised at seeing a ghost that they don’t want to take their eyes off it. In many cases the ghost may only show its true nature at the last second, by vanishing. And some times the witness may only realise they watching a ghost after the event.

But what about on ghost vigils? Oddly, it’s unlikely a suitable photo will emerge from them. Firstly, it would b e unusual for a ghost to be seen at any particular venue even a handful of times in a year. At most locations it is far less frequent than that. So the odds of a vigil being held at just the right time is remote. Even more seriously, most vigils take place in the dark whereas ghosts are almost never seen in such conditions. While a possible ghost might be recorded in infrared it will not be seen by witnesses and, once again, may be a photographic artefact.

Perhaps the most likely scenario for getting a photo of a witnessed ghost is if an apparition is seen by a witness in an area that happens to be covered by CCTV. Ideally it would show both the witness and the ghost. Photos of ghosts remain elusive!