Paranormal Life July 2014 | Page 3

Photography

Over the years, I’ve had help from several “experts” on analyzing photographs, including people with special software to check for photoshopped photos and those who know facial reconstruction. We’ve been able to narrow down the possible age of the apparition in the photograph and we’ve been able to identify several fakes presented by well-known people in the paranormal community.

What happens when you’re trying to catch a ghost in a photo but capture something unknown? On many occasions, I receive emails asking to look at a photo. The person’s grandma or grandpa had just died and there is a light streak in a photo just taken. Or in a cemetery at night and there are light streaks or “ghostly figures” in a photo. This is most likely caused by an open camera shutter. The camera knows that it needs more light, so it keeps the shutter open longer. Move that camera and you’ll experience “camera shake”—blurry photos, many of the mages in your photo will be doubled or blurred, especially lights. Capturing photos with dust, water, snow or bugs will also create a different effect. The average person doesn’t take photos in the dark so the settings are unfamiliar, as are the effects.

Taking photos in front of glass is not advisable, either. Glass has many imperfections, many of which you cannot see. If it’s a very old building, glass tends to have ripples and taking a photo of it might produce a face, as can a flash reflecting off the glass. I’ve seen the same pattern over several photos over the years, meaning it’s reproducible and not paranormal.

Photography has been a passion of mine for decades. Taking a photo of an event used to be the way to prove you were there, or that the event even happened. These days, with high definition cameras available for a good price and some editing software, or even phone apps, you can create your own version of what happened.

Photos have been faked since they were invented. I won’t go over the history of how photos are made or the technicalities of how to fake a photo, but I will explain why when your friend says he captured something on his phone the other night when he heard noises in his house, you should do a little research before believing what you see.

Ghost photos are easily faked these days. I received a photo of a little girl. Being the skeptic that I try to be, I looked at the photo in amazement. I thought, “How is it that I’ve been trying to photograph a spirit for YEARS, and this person was able to do it so easily?” I started asking questions about the photo—where it was taken, the circumstances around it, at what time it was taken and what was used, phone or camera, what kind, etc. The more answers I get, the more questions I seem to have. The tip off that it may not be an authentic photo? The person isn’t able to answer all of the questions fully.

The “little ghost girl” found in the photo my friend sent me happened to be in another photo sent to CPPI to evaluate. Then another and another. When I tried to figure out why the same little girl appeared in several people’s photos, all over the country, I turned to phone apps. Lo and behold, I found the little girl in one of the apps.

Later on, another photo we received I had mulled over because I couldn’t’t quite figure it out. I was almost certain it was fake but couldn’t figure out exactly how it was done. Then, a few months

later, I received an email from a concerned friend who had received an email containing the photo from a family member. I asked a few questions and the answers were vague. I asked certain questions about the photo because it was the same “apparition” I received a few months prior. When grilled, my friend said the family member finally confessed that she had received it from a friend and that she didn’t know the circumstances behind the photo (when before she had said she took the photo).

Peaches Veatch currently heads California Paranormal Private Investigators (Calpara or CPPI--), a group dedicated to educating the public regarding hauntings. She began investigating the paranormal at age 9 by trying to capture electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). You can find CPPI on Facebook, Twitter (@Calpara) and the web at www.calparainvestigations.org