I see what looks like some really sloppy darkroom technique. That thing in the upper right looks like a thumbprint. The blob on the right could be a palm print. The general horizontal flow of the artifact makes it look like someone with wet hands (possibly acetic acid or hypo) handled the print before it got into the developer. Anyone who’s ever done a lot of photo finishing has seen weirder stuff than that.
To be fair, I’d have to look at the negative to make an evaluation that means anything.
I’m glad you pointed that out. The people who are always producing photos of Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, fairies, and the like should realize that the finished print is never as informative as the negative.
When one of them produces a photo and then makes excuses for not having the negative, just pat the person on the head and say, “Sorry, buddy, better luck next time.” That, or be suspicious and keep a tight grip on your wallet.
Videos are even more suspect than they used to be, owing to the wide availability of computer programs that allow you to alter videos as if you were working for Industrial Light and Magic. You’d have to prove that you do not have a computer, and that you have no access to one. (That disqualifies everyone on the SDMB, I think!)
Jimmy said:
Could you explain exactly how you convince yourself to believe something just because it makes you feel better?
Personally, I have never been able to force myself to believe something that I, well, didn’t believe in.
Finagle wrote:
Do not taunt the spectral thumbprint!!
From Cath-22
I’m with David B.! Whenever people ask me, “well, why don’t you just believe in God and an afterlife, just in case?” I always wonder HOW you can convince yourself to believe in something that . . . well, is unbelievable?
For you and Eve, the answer to this question may be found in the book Pascal’s Wager for Dummies.
picmr-Sorry, that doesn’t wash. I might AGREE that it would make sense to “believe in God,” but how do I actually wrap my mind around the believing part?
It’s like saying, “broccoli is good for me—I should like it.” But it still tastes awful, no matter how good for me it may be!
Eve:
I for one have always been able to succesfully lie to myself, or convince myself of something when I needed to. It’s a surprisingly easy skill, and useful as well.
Eve: I believe the traditional “solution” to the problem is to carefully observe the rituals and become gradually acclimatised by habit to belief. Myself, I couldn’t begin a process I knew was designed to fool myself.
First, dig yourself a foxhole…
Hey! You’d better believe in Ogres!
i try not to BELIEVE in anything.
i SUSPECT there is a God and there are ghosts.
so far i have met 5 people who have claimed personal experiences with ghosts, so i guess the evidence for ghosts is greater than the evidence for God.
Dal Timgar
[hijack]
Well I’m disappointed. I was sure dal_tigmar’s post was going to link the belief in ghosts to economic wargames. 
Oh well! Carry on!
[/hijack]
Scylla said:
Then you ought to become a politician (or a defense attorney). I mean, if you can successfully lie to yourself, imagine how well you’d convince others.
BTW: If you are lying to yourself, how do you know you’re lying?
Do you believe what you are saying to yourself? Then you are probably lying. Which means, of course, you should ignore yourself whenever you talk to yourself.
Ah Nerts…the onus is on me to explain faith. That’s a tough row to hoe. I can’t do it. I’ve already explained why I believe what I do, but I don’t think I could explain the process of how I got to that belief.
Well maybe I can. My roommate’s mother died. I was just talking to her that afternoon. It came as such a shock. It didn’t seem possible. That was the closest death had been to me in my short 20 years. I wanted to know why, you’re alive one second, and then dead the next. Again, it didn’t seem possible. I asked people what they thought happened to the essence of a person who died. Of course, I got different answers from all the people I asked.
I read the bible. That didn’t do it for me. So much judging, too many rules that didn’t make sense.
Several yrs later, still curious, I became aware of that Dr. Moody fella. He wrote “Life after life”. The title sounded promising atleast. Remember, I’ve always thought that it didn’t seem right to be alive one second and dead and gone the next. I don’t want to say it was an instinctual thought, but it seemed right to me to think this way. Maybe it is instinct?
What Moody, and since then, others have said, made and makes sense to me.
Ok then, why should I believe this and the next person thinks it’s garbage? I was honest with myself and realized that it made me feel better about my eventual death. I would hope that Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and the like are comfortable with their beliefs. I would also hope that agnostics, atheists, and dirt rotten pagans:D are happy with what they believe too.
I’m, not sure if this helps you understand my beliefs or not.
In short, it feels good to me, to think this.
I grew up in a house where we would hear footsteps pacing the hall at night when there was no one there. Footsteps on the roof, on the walls, and creaking beside the bed. A sudden shock of icy hands on the back when there was no one there. The dogs would go nuts and corner, well, nothing, in the corner. My sister has had things flung at her from across the room, with no one doing the flinging. Drawers opening and closing by themselves. I have also had several other experiences that I mentioned in the Vaguely Creepy thread (link I’m too lazy to provide).
Do I believe in ghosts? Actually, I don’t. Since I experienced most of these things first hand, I do believe that unexplained things were happening. I’m still too much of a scientist to form a theory on the cause. Were these things weird? Hell yes! I do not believe that these events were the result of mass hysteria (as there have been many witnesses to the said events). At the very least, I did not feel undue influence, and the events certainly seemed real for all of us, but who knows what caused them? Who am I to cry ghosts? I do believe that when people die, they just die. Period. It would be interesting to see if science ever finds an explanation for some of the odd things I have experienced. I don’t believe that these things are caused by ghosts, so I would like to know the true explanation. Besides, why would the dead feel a need to pace my hallways at night? Aren’t there better things to do if there is an afterlife???
Jimmy said:
Remember, I’ve always thought that it didn’t seem right to be alive one second and dead and gone the next. I don’t want to say it was an instinctual thought, but it seemed right to me to think this way. Maybe it is instinct?
What Moody, and since then, others have said, made and makes sense to me.
[/quote]
This is somewhat different from what you said. You already had some faith that people don’t just cease to exist when they die. Then you built on that faith by reading something that supported it.
The way you had previously described it was as if you had no such faith and, in fact, didn’t really believe in life after death. But, since you didn’t like that belief, just convinced yourself to think differently.
lolagranola said:
Of course, every house has its noises. I recall hearing sounds that seemed to come from the roof, too. I recall thinking they might be footsteps. But when I was hearing it, we had been recently robbed, so I wasn’t thinking “ghosts,” I was thinking “burglars.” I’m sure I’d heard the exact same sounds prior and long after, but didn’t think about them then. I’m just as sure that if somebody had said the house was haunted, I’d have been thinking they were ghosts. (Indeed, when I was younger and read a book about UFOs, a bright flash of light passed over my window that night and I was SURE it was a UFO. Needless to say, it wasn’t.)
Well, if there were “many” that kind of makes up the “mass” part. 
But seriously, it depends on what you mean by “mass hysteria.” Studies have been done (even by a couple of guys I know) that show how people who think a place is haunted will see things that make them further believe it is haunted. So if you and several other people started to believe that “weird things” were going on in your house, odds are good that you would find more “weird things” the more you looked.
Well, it’s kind of hard at this point without specifics and details. But some, like the footsteps, are probably simple house creaking like I described. And if you count psychology as a science, then they have indeed found explanations for some of it. 
The same people I mentioned above looked into why some people believe that strange events are caused by ghosts (angels, aliens, whatever) and others take your attitude of saying, “Well, that was weird. I wonder what caused it?” They concluded that some people need to have an answer. They cannot merely take the attitude you’ve taken and say, “Well, I hope somebody figures it out someday.” They must explain things. So they invoke ghosts or angels or what have you to “explain” the events. It’s basically two different personality types.
Jeez, you would hope so!