"haunted: the search for ghosts"
by elizabeth you

it's no secret that i believe in ghosts. when i was five years old, i moved into a haunted house. myself, my family, and visiting friends all got a chance to see or hear her at one time or another. since that time i have collected ghost stories from trusted friends and have tried to compile some based on my own experiences. but no matter how many times someone tells you they have felt, seen, or even talked with ghosts, people who have never experienced these apparitions themselves can't believe. so i'm offering some of my own pictures so you can see ghosts for yourselves. these pictures have been cropped and overall size has been adjusted. because i had to shrink the pictures to fit here sometimes i magnified a small part, but they have not otherwise been altered.

this picture is of my dog taking a nap on the couch. i took a couple of snapshots, hoping one would turn out ok. in only one picture did this strange glowing light appear. the shot lasted just a fraction of a second yet the light seems to have moved across the frame. it wasn't enough time for a dog to move and yet something is zipping around her head. a ghost? if it was a dirty lens, it would have appeared in other pictures. digital cameras have no film so there isn't a faulty negative or the possibility of double exposure.

these next two pictures were taken at an arcade in massachusetts. this weird globe appeared in two different pictures of the same person taken a few minutes apart. other similar pictures taken at the same time and place showed no such anomaly. in the first shot, the globe is right in front of his face, in the next it is moving away from him. the globe was in no other pictures taken during that trip in june of this year.

 

now the next three sets were taken on three different nights at the same spot. there is a club near my house where everyone who works or worked there swear it is haunted. they say dishes crash in the kitchen when no one is in there and when they go to investigate, nothing has fallen. they say they hear people walking around when the club is closed and empty. i've been up there a few times after closing and have neither felt no heard anything out of the ordinary but many pictures i have taken there tell another story.

this first shot was taken from the dance floor. the obvious explanation to the strange fog would be smoke - had it not been taken in the no-smoking section. it was a warm night, inside, with no artificial fog machine. the part about this picture that creeps me out is in the lower left hand corner. i blew that part of the picture up so you can see more clearly, but it looks to me like a skeleton. the picture was taken friday, april 13th, 2001. that day was not only friday the 13th but also good friday, three days before easter.

 

this picture obviously was taken at a halloween party. i took the picture from behind the bar. smoking is allowed at the bar but not behind it. again, there was no artificial fog maker. and although i do smoke, i never smoke with a camera in my hand, it's too much of a distraction. in addition to the strange fog at the top of the frame, there is what looks like to me someone standing between me and the bar, reaching their arm out across the bar. i've included detail in the original size of the phantom bartender.

 

these last two were taken on the same night, in november. in the first one, the camera focused on the smoke instead of the people i was photographing. the shape at the top left is very distinct. to me, it looks like a tiny woman swimming downwards through the air. i don't know what it is, but it's weird.

the last shot of the club is totally clear except for the swoop of something in the top right quarter of the picture. a ghost? a trick of light? is it just coincidence that i took four eerie photographs on three separate nights in the same location that many believe is haunted?

these pictures were both taken memorial day, 2001. some friends and i rented a lighthouse and cottage for the weekend. in the lighthouse were notebooks filled with stories of ghost sightings in the cottage dating back a hundred years. local lore holds the lighthouse to be haunted, but we didn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary. of course, if you crammed a dozen or so people into a cottage, you don't hear much of anything that can't be explained. however, some of the pictures i took told a different story. weird globes appeared in almost all of the pictures taken inside and out, day and night. here are the most obvious. in the group shot there is a big, bright ball of light between the camera and us as well as smaller globes all around. in the picture with the little girl outside in the daylight, she is surrounded by glowing orbs.

 

i wish i had the bandwidth to show you the full size version of each of these pictures, but i think the result is good enough that you can see the unexplained oddities. i could try to convince you that i have photographed the supernatural and have proof positive that ghosts exist, but you can't convince someone that the sky is blue if they wish to believe otherwise. after seeing these pictures reoccur night after night i'm inclined to believe that it wasn't just a fluke. that there is more to this story than can be explored today. one thing i don't believe in is coincidence.