[QUOTE=Jayrot]
I’m a skeptic and I don’t believe in ghost or any other “woo-woo” (as Randi calls it).
However, in the interest in steering this thread away from an discussion between Dio and Batsinma, have a look at
The Top Ten Best Ghost Photographs Ever.
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately, if those are the “best” ghost photographs the evidence is pretty damn poor, since most of them have been debunked to, ahem, death. For eample, take a close look at the lady in the backseat of the car: her scarf clearly overlaps the window pillar, which strongly suggests that the image was added later. The guy in the chair is just risible: long exposure time - like several minutes - guy wanders in, sits down, realises there’s a camera, and wanders off. The result is a blurred human figure, but if you’ve looked at any non-studio photos from the period, those blurred images are everywhere.
Occam’s Razor again. We know that photos are eminently tamperable, and that the camera most certainly does lie, either intentionally or by accident. When we see an old and murky black and white photo purporting to be of a ghost, then, do we instantly throw everything we have learned about physics out the window and declare it to be a bona fide spook? We don’t know the spook exists, it would violate a great deal of hard-learned natural laws if it did, and the proof for such an extraordinary claim has to be extraordinary indeed. Alternatively, do we consider a simpler explanation, that it’s an artifact of the photo itself, phenomena which we know exist? Occams’s Razor.
Which is not to say that all photographs of “ghosts” must be discounted out of hand, tempting as that might be: refusing to consider any evidence would be unscientific. Just that the evidence must be able to stand up to the most rigorous scrutiny, that there must be no possible doubt of it being the product of accident or manufacture - and given what we know about both people - and photography, that seems highly unlikely.
If however it does stand up to the most rigorous analysis - and as far as I’m aware no such photo ever has - it still doesn’t constitute proof. It’s still only eveidence. Duplicate the phenomenon. Try it again with another researcher. Try it under different conditions, at different locations. Try it with other ghosts. Consider the physics behind a supposedly incorporeal body producing enough light to cause a chemical reaction on photographic film - how does this ghost work? Do the physics and chemistry - which have themselves been the product of rigorous theorising, experimentation, scrutiny and revision over hundreds of years - need to be reconsidered? If so, how?
Even if we could formulate a useful definition of what a ghost is, that’s what it would mean to even begin to try and prove its existence. Sound tough? It is. But it’s no tougher than the standards science demands of iself.
