Life and Death...

With Halloween coming, there are several things that I will love to see and talk about. The most important is that, I hate the show Mythbusters. The whole purpose of the show is to "debunk" several popular with their "experiments". Why do I hate it you ask? The whole purpose of the show is to prove something usually unprovable. They'll take a myth about, let's say spontaneous combustion, and try and change the scale (most of the time) and see if they can produce the same result. Can you imagine what happens? They usually come up and say the mysteries of life are all false. The do come up with credence to some, but most they say cannot happen. Enter one of things that I love talking about. Spirit Photography.
Spirit Photography has it's roots in the late 1800's and came about because of the ever popular spiritualist movement. The very same spiritualist movement that brought rise to the LDS faith. Joseph Smith's family was spiritualists before he founded the faith. Spirit Photography's origins are simultaneous with the advent of photography and goes way back to when they started developing the first film. What I love about it is the mysterious nature of it. It still kind of makes my skin tingle looking at talking about it. Capturing a spirit on film excites in a way. Now, I hate the cheesy "Ghost chaser" shows that they have on TV. If it was as simple as making devices widely accepted to detect ghosts, it would be a more widely accepted opinion. However, here are some of the most popular spirit photographs of our time.

This photo was taken in 1966 at a place called Queen's House in Greenwich, London. Most experts, at the time, cannot explain why this photograph occurred. The photograph has been examined by people at Kodak and state that it wasn't a double exposure or that there wasn't any trickery that they know of to get this image. Clearly you can see the image of a person ascending the stairs.
Next we have the famous Brown Lady photograph. This occurred in Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. The man who took the photograph saw nothing at the time, but his assistant stated that they saw an apparition walking down the stairs and got him to take a picture. The man who took the photo was a respected photographer who's work appeared in several magazines and doesn't fit the profile of your typical hoaxster.

This is the Lord Combermere photograph. This picture was taken by a woman who was staying with her sister at Combermere Abby. She was taking a photograph of a library and wanted one that was super clear. She put the exposure on about an hour. While the specifics are hard to see, you can clearly see an image of a man sitting in the chair.

This is the Mable Chimney photograph. The story goes that Mable Chimney was photographing her mother's grave site when after the photograph was developed, the image of her mother can be seen in the back seat of the car.

This is the Reverend KF Lord photograph. It was taken at England's Newby Church in the 1960's. At the time of the photograph Lord, did not see anything.

This only seems to happen with film cameras. It even goes back to how many cultures believed that cameras steal your soul. With the advent of many digital cameras, many of these photo's are not seen any longer. There are a few cases of pictures with digital cameras, but almost all were revealed as a trick with light or a photoshopped picture.

However, cases like these still cause the imagination to wander. It shows us that what we perceive just might not be the truth. How many things occur without our understanding? I personally believe that there are spirits that most of us are rarely attuned to. There have been others throughout history that seem to be more keyed into the spirit world. There are several things that occur that I believe we just can't explain without sounding entirely crazy. This is just one of a couple. Throughout the month, I'll by highlighting a few that I believe in. So, have fun with it people. Also, let me know what you believe, it's a great conversation topic!