A Ghost Tale for Tuesday

Have you ever taken a photograph, and found it had translucent Orbs scattered through it? I used to think that the guys at Kodak or CVS were just screwing up my prints. But now we all have digital cameras... and those Orbs still show up. What causes them?

There is lots of speculation that what we see in the photos are manifestations of ghosts or spirits. Ghost hunters spend time trying to capture these images on film on purpose, but many of us just "happen" to catch the Orbs dancing, without even meaning to.

I took the above photograph in the woods while I was on a Cub Scout camping trip at Camp Split Rock in Ashburnham, MA. (Yes, the weather is always bad when I go camping. Blizzard, Hurricane, Thunderstorm...you name it, I've camped in it.)

The woods were absolutely still and silent (all the cub scouts were in the Dining Hall at the time.) I was walking down to the cabin on my own to get something that one of my sons had forgotten and took this photo of the path through the woods.

I found several web sites that talk about and show orb photographs, including:

www.spiritlite.com
www.greatdreams.com
www.starwebworks.com

On the one website - greatdreams.com - the photographer was told that Orbs are just particles of dust caught in the camera flash. She and her husband experimented with throwing dust in the air to try to recreate the Orb phenomenon. She shows the results - the dust looks like dust.

The way I found it explained on another website was that the Orbs are Life forms that travel in groups and are believed to be the human soul or life force of those that once inhabited a physical body here on earth. Psychic claim to talk to them on a regular basis, and ghost hunters encounter them quite frequently."

So what do you think? Are Orbs a spirit manifestation or dust motes in the air? Have you captured some on film yourself? What's your theory on Orbs?