Crowd of Witnesses
by Catherine King
(text from a photo-collage artwork.)
When we finally got online around the middle of last summer, I was thrilled. Soon I discovered those paranormal sites that post uploaded photographs of supposed ghosts and spirits. Fascinated, I decided to try some DIGITAL SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY.
I began when a super powerful monsoon swept through the valley and knocked out the electricity. For hours that night we sat in the dark and questioned the finality of death. Every so often, I pointed the camera to the blackness around us and clicked the shutter.
Four days later the electricity was restored and we downloaded the pictures from that stormy night. The universe was about to start reeling. Some of the photos showed DISTINCT LUMINOUS ORBS, as large as a yard in diameter, hovering in midair in our living room! They looked just like a lot of the images on the internet sites, only bigger,
As we examined our captured images I felt strangely frightened. I wasn’t really prepared to find ghosts or spirits in our own home. And they were so easy to capture. Six out of seven photos showed the baffling images. What didi that imply?
Did it mean our apartment was haunted? Neither of us sensed anything supernatural at home- no cold spots, no disembodied voices. But the pictures were graphic evidence that something otherworldly was right in our living room!
I believed that some of the photos on the internet were bound to be fakes. Others were certainly flukes. I could also believe that some were genuine. But one thing I knew for sure; there was no question but that our photographs were genuine.
I put down the camera. For the next few weeks I examined my beliefs about what is possible. I needed a broader concept of reality before I could continue with spirit photography. The orbs must have always been existing with humanity, I told myself. We just couldn’t see them before we had digital technology.
Suddenly I was confronting a profound terror inside myself. I felt an alienating fear of my most familiar and intimate surroundings. I scared myself when I was alone at home, picturing spectral spheres all around me. I didn’t want to walk through a spot where an orb had been, even though I’d captured them pretty much all over our apartment. I couldn’t function if I was afraid to move about my own home. I had to come to terms with this new reality.
Truly, the unknown is all around us, all the time. This is reality. For days I struggled with my new realization. I looked back at myself, before I knew about the orbs, almost as if I had been another person. Pragmatically and reverently, I came to accept that we the living are surrounded by those who are not. Again I picked up the camera, empowered by having overcome my fears and accepting the mystery that has always been. Now I was ready to document this cosmic phenomenon.
It is my observation that the orbs have personality-like behavior. I often capture them floating in front of our wall art. They always hover above our projects as they lay spread out on tables. Over and over I find orbs resting on our computer keyboard. Wherever we do creative work, it seems they are lingering. The orbs in our apartment seem to linger in groups. It appears we are living elbow to elbow with spherical spirits. By extension then, could it be that THE ENTIRE PLANET IS COVERED WITH A CLOUD OF SOULS?
Posted by Jerome at June 1, 2003 08:32 PM | TrackBack