Forgetting About Ghost Photographs by Chad Stambaugh

The 'Ghost Photograph' has a long and distinguished history. From the Brown Lady to the Tulip Staircase, the practice and celebration of Ghost Photography is almost as old as the art of photography itself.

The decades produced a handful of interesting--though explicable--snaps, amongst a plethora of fakes. Whilst the more famous ghost photos are supposedly taken whilst the photographer is going about their daily business, the possibility of ghosts caught on film has inspired hopeful investigators to carry a camera with them at all times.

In the days of 35mm cameras ghost photography was an interesting aside to the investigation experience. Since the proliferation of cheap digital cameras, 'paranormal photography' seems to have become something of an obsession in much of this field of study.

Digital cameras carry obvious benefits: with no developing costs and instant viewing hundreds can be taken with ease at any given investigation. As everyone knows, photographs occasionally produce unintended but impressive flaws in the process. The proliferation in numbers of photographs taken during an investigation has, purely because of the numbers involved, thrown up a greater number of snaps.

Most sensible researchers have wised up to the effects of low lighting, airborne particles and lens flare, but many of us still spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing 'odd photos.' Few of us have the in-depth technical knowledge of cameras to be able to explain every spooky photo, but there are certainly a few knowledgeable researchers who can provide compelling explanations for every photograph sent in their direction.

In years of research--and the good fortune to be associated with people with decades of experience in finding the causes of odd photographs I have come to the conclusion that 'paranormal photography' overall is not worth the time devoted to it. Sure I still look at photos to check for that one in a thousand chance that I might get a really good anomaly, but over the years of research and many thousands of photo's analyzed, I have learned that even the most compelling photos are simply too hard to prove.

Some might argue that you 'might as well' have to go at paranormal photography' as there is little else to occupy ones time during an investigation. My response is that photography is simply one level of a mountain of worthless methods used to investigate the paranormal. It's time to start coming up with some new methods of trying to find out what's going on in the world of the paranormal.

I'm going to be spending most of my time during the 2015 season looking at other ways to prove that ghost exist. But looking at photographs isn't going to be one of them.