CONGRATULATIONS BOBBIE JO!

Her baby has been born!  Welcome to Robert William, 8 pounds...19 inches!  FINALLY!

LOL!

We love you, and are thrilled that your baby boy has arrived.  Take it easy, rest up, and know that we are sending you tons of love and prayers!

WE LOVE YOU!

 

Just made this and put it on my myspace, if anyone wants to use it, feel free to copy and paste it on your own site. :)

 

 

WONDERFUL Bunch Of People On Ustream!

I just logged out of an incredible experience on Ustream...

I was fiddling around, getting things set up for my future video feeds there, decided to look around and see if there were any other paranormal shows on, and I see a link to American Ghost Hunter, so I clicked on it to check it out.

Imagine my total shock when Ryan Buell of Paranormal State popped up on my screen! I literally nearly fell out of my chair! lol!

The chat was on fire, scrolling so madly that it was practically impossible to keep up with it. There was so much traffic hitting the server that it was booting Ryan's feed, he had to keep restarting his camera.

He logged off after a while, then after some people had left, he logged back on, but there were still a lot of people in chat. He answered some questions, most of them rather silly ones from young girls, then finally logged off for the night.

I hung around, and got to chatting with some of the people who stayed like I did, and what a wonderful experience it was.  We have been chatting for several hours, and here it is two forty a.m. and I just logged out, only because I have to get some sleep before going to work tomorrow.  I truly hated to have to go, it was such an awesome experience.

Once the groupies left (lol, I don't mean any offense, but, well, anyway!), the rest of us opened up more and more, and I got to see people's hearts laid out, It was incredible, and I am amazed at how much we have in common. 

So if any of you make it here to my brand new little baby blog, welcome, and thank you for a truly inspiring moment in time, when strangers from all over the country connected on such a deep level.  It was priceless.

And thanks to Ryan, who will doubtless never see this, but thanks anyway, because it was through your live feed that I got to meet these very interesting people.

The anniversary of my brother's death was February 3, so being able to talk about him meant a lot to me. I think I will add a memorial page, dedicated to his memory, and I will include some in depth information about me as well.  If nothing else, maybe it will help others who have also lost loved ones, and let them know it is okay to open up and share.

Thanks, guys, it was great!

Is It Real, Or Just In Our Minds?

Yes, I do believe in ghosts, spirits, whatever label you wish to use.  I believe in an afterlife, though my thoughts on what it consists of aren't set in stone.

I have seen a full bodied apparition, and if you ever see one yourself, you will understand that no one can ever convince you that you didn't see what you know you saw.  It was as real as the computer I am typing on now.

However, I have to wonder how much of what we experience may be just our minds struggling to make sense of some anomalous sensory input that we cannot at that moment understand, so we attribute it to a paranormal source.

This isn't to say that all things that go bump in the night are merely figments of our imagination.  But I do believe we need to be very cautious in stating that something is absolutely of a paranormal nature.

And even if a lot of what we experience is 'just in our minds', does that make it any less real?  Just because we cannot AT THIS TIME document something with the equipment we have on hand, that does not mean it wasn't paranormal, it doesn't mean that perhaps our minds are able to perceive things that our various tools cannot document or verify.

We may never be able to document scientifically the things most of us experience that are of a paranormal nature. We CAN strive to eliminate as many potential natural explanations as possible, document what these anomalies are NOT, and therefore narrow down the potential explanations for an event.

And even if most of what we see, hear, feel, or sense cannot be proven to someone's satisfaction using science, it's important to remember that ESP has been documented for decades, shown to be erratic but that it does exist, and that is something that originates in our minds, an ability that we are still working on understanding and fine tuning. We may be tuning in to some mental mind frequency that allows us to connect across time and space with those who have lived before while they are yet alive in their time, or perhaps communication with ghosts and spirits is truly only possible through our minds, and therefore cannot be documented, at least not with the tools we have at present.

Regardless, we will continue to record whatever we find, and hope that someday we may be able to quantify the wealth of anomalous experiences that we humans continue to experience.

A Grain Of Salt, And Orbs

Let's talk about the much debated phenomenon in paranormal photography.....orbs.

My profession is photography, and as I learn more about cameras, especially digital cameras, I am coming more and more to the position of dismissing outright at least ninety nine percent of orb pictures.

What people do not understand about cameras, more importantly digital cameras, is that the setup for the flash with personal cameras has changed from the way flash was set up for film, and it has led to this controversy.

It is all about the positioning of the light. Think about the pictures you have had taken at a professional photographer's studio...how many orbs have you seen in them? none? do you know why?

Because the light is not only diffused through a softbox, it is also offset from the camera at a large angle, to provide a more thorough generalized lighting of the area being photographed. The film cameras we grew up with had this same sort of setup on a smaller scale, with a large flash unit that either sat high above or far to the side of the camera, or was attached via a cord and held in the other hand.
Not so with today's digital cameras.  The flash unit is contained within the camera body, typically right above the camera lens. This projects a hard, undiffused light straight at the target of your picture, and with any dust or pollen or lint or even bugs that may lie between you and the target area being illuminated from only one side, you are left with a nebulous circular form that the camera cannot focus on and resolve into a clear picture. The focus remains on the more distant object, while the dust or whatever nearer the lens is unfocused.
This holds true even for infrared nightshot conditions, and is another reason I am not a fan of conducting an entire investigation in the dark. You are still left with a camera struggling to focus in a poorly lit environment, and it will go to the larger mass object further removed from it, leaving any airborne particles closer to the lens unresolved, unfocused, blurry, and giving a false sense of something ghostly.

In fact, unless you have a specific lens for close up shots, it is nearly impossible for most cameras to clearly focus that close in. It's just the way they are made. And just as your eyes struggle to make sense of things in the dark, it's even worse for your poor camera lens, trying to find something to focus on.
There is still that one percent out there that may well be a real ghostly orb, but with the flood of dustandmore orbs, it is going to be hard to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that it truly is a good piece of evidence. 

The debate will continue for some time, I am sure, but for myself, having learned what I have about cameras and photography, I will hold onto a grain of salt when reviewing orb photos.