This is my first blog in a series about infrared (IR) light and paranormal evidence!
My husband and I just went on a ghost tour in Bar Harbor, ME and I captured a video of a light anomaly and the light is seen on a photo too (see below). I captured it with an iPhone8 camera on Live Photo setting. In this video, it does seem that there is an odd moving small blue light in the lower left hand corner. Out of the 50+ pictures I took that night, this was the only one that had an anomaly.
This is the first time I had ever captured something like this and it got me thinking . . . are these really evidence of spirits? And if so, how are they being seen?
For believers, light anomalies are the unexplained orbs, streaks, or fog, captured in a photo, video, or with our own eyes. They are believed to be evidence of a spirit entity’s presence, movement, or them “showing” themselves and the light that is captured is the energy of the spirit.
For skeptics, light anomalies are insects, dust, moisture, light refraction in the lens, abnormal misreadings of the digital camera chip, or natural occurrences (ball lightning, methane, chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, etc.). Skeptics also say there have been a dramatic increase in “sightings” of these light anomalies since the use of digital cameras compared to previous recorded sightings when traditional film cameras were in use. Skeptics use this reasoning to refute the idea of these lights as not being spirits because, “Why would we be seeing more of these now? We have been taking pictures for over a century?”.
As a Medium, when I communicate and visualize spirits, I do not see them as small light balls. They usually look in my mind’s eye very similar to how they looked in life. Sometimes spirits, spirit guides, and angels do appear to me as a large oval light body with a more diffuse edge, but not as a tiny light point.
So what is that light on my photo and video!? My intuition tells me that cameras are machines and they ARE taking in other energy sources along the electromagnetic spectrum than what our eyes have evolved to see. I do think these tools are picking up on something, so I went searching for more information.
This is the electromagnetic spectrum of energy waves. We can “see” visible light in the energy wavelengths of just under 400nm to about 750nm. Above the rainbow color red is what we call infrared (IR) and below the rainbow color violet is what we all ultraviolet (UV). Humans cannot see UV or IR wavelengths, but we can feel and experience them. UV light burns our skin and gives us a sunburn, and IR light we experience as a heat or warmth sensation.
I found this diagram and description of how digital cameras work at Digital Earth Watch. Light energy made up of IR, visible spectrum light (R,G,B), and UV pass through the glass lens and filters to get read by a sensor chip. In traditional film cameras, the light sensor is the silver halide crystals on the film. These silver halide crystals are only sensitive to UV and visible light (Williams and Williams). While in digital cameras, the light sensor is a chip, which are either a silicone CMOS sensor or a charged coupled device (CCD) (Williams and Williams). These CMOS and CCD sensors pick up UV, Visible AND IR light (Williams and Williams)!
This means while both film and digital cameras can see UV light, ONLY digital cameras can see IR light!
Because UV and IR light waves can make our pictures look weird, filters are added to the camera system to block them. Digital cameras have UV and IR filters. It appears that most cell phones do not have an IR filter for the front facing camera (Rieffel 2016). If their is an IR filter, the quality varies with each brand, model, and year made. On my Android J phone, IR light IS picked up from the TV remote control IR emitter as a faint purplish reddish color, similar to how the Sony phone picks it up in this video, while on my iPhone8 it does NOT pick up the TV remote control IR emitter. The iPhone Hybrid IR filter started being used in the iPhone4 and later models, and likely blocks the problematic parts of the near infrared spectrum, between the wavelengths of 700 – 1050 nm (Rieffel 2016). Cell phone camera chip sensors are made of the cheaper silicone CMOS chips which can detect IR wavelengths up to 1127nm (1.1eV) (York 2011).
This means there is the potential of an Iphone8 cell phone camera chip reader to pick up IR wavelengths between 1050 and 1127nm!
It is possible that these light anomalies are some form of concentrated reflection or emission of IR light waves. This can also explain why these anomalies are also commonly picked up on night vision cameras, which use enhanced infrared light for us to see better in the dark.
If Infrared light is a source of light anomalies, this could explain away the skeptic’s doubt as to why reports and signings of light anomalies have increased since digital video and photography was discovered . . . BECAUSE TRADITIONAL FILM CAN’T SEE IR LIGHT! AND this would also explain why we can’t typically see these light anomalies with our own eyes, because we can’t see IR light!
Is there a connection between spirit entities and infrared electromagnetic energy that we see as light anomalies on digital cameras!?
Check out the next two posts, infrared light + shadow figures + digital cameras and infrared light as heat + anomalous spirit temperature fluctuations + thermal cameras.
Refrences:
Digital Earth Watch. Light inside a camera. Global Systems Science. The Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley. http://dew.globalsystemsscience.org/tools/digital-cameras-overview/light-inside-a-digital-camera
Rieffel KA. 2016. IP WATCHDOG, Can Apple’s New Infrared Patent Really Disable Your iPhone?. https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016/07/06/apple-infrared-patent-disable-iphone/id=70605/
Williams R and Williams G. Ultraviolet, Infrared & Fluorescence Photography. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.698.1775&rep=rep1&type=pdf
York T. 2011. Fundamentals of Image sensor Performance. https://www.https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse567-11/ftp/imgsens.pdf
Ghost History Medium 