October 09, 2003
Ghost Orbs In Iraq and Arizona
by Catherine King
Please take a few moments to compare the two digital photographs below, before skipping to the main text.
Chief Wiggles and two of his Toy Crew, Iraq, October 2003. Photographer unknown. (Courtesy of Dean's World, link at "click here to see more." Also the photo captioned "Wiggles and the Toy Crew." )
(Orbs captured in our backyard, Phoenix, Arizona, August 2003. See These Are The Tears of Things in the sidebar.)
[Update 10/31/04]: Souls It Takes is up in Art For Our Tmes gallery, The Last Time tableau is in the front street window at 623 E. Indian School Road, and after weeks of focusing almost exclusively on our installation, I can take in more of the world these days. It’s time for relating and blogging again. It’s also time to turn to the spirit world once more as I pick up my explorations where I set them down a couple of months ago.
The dying time of year has returned and in Phoenix, if the sun isn’t really much cooler yet, at least it’s lower in the sky, so that the quality of light is more gentle. It feels like everyone's about to exhale, grateful that the relentless heat will soon be releasing them until next year. After six months of blinding blastedness, the air has at last toned down enough to be observed. Now it can be seen that it is nuanced with color and texture.
But the autumn atmosphere carries other qualities as well, that are more challenging to grasp.
I have been digitally capturing paranormal anomalies for close to a year and a half now. Periodically I delve into, then back away from, my studies of the spirit world as it reveals itself to me through my photographs. I have allowed myself to consider some of the profound metaphysical implications of this evidence. My early impressions, which you can read about in Crowd of Witnesses, have been borne out: “It seems the entire planet is covered with a cloud of souls”.
So yesterday, when Jerome said, “Come here, you gotta see this,” and showed me a couple of Chief Wiggles’s photos posted on Dean’s World, I felt a rush of recognition followed by a wave of intuition. Yes, I know those bubbly things pretty well by now -- they’re “orbs,” and amazing as it may seem, they probably are the spirits of the dead.
The photos on Dean’s World were taken earlier this week in Iraq. But they exhibit the same phenomenon that Jerome and I have captured here in Phoenix, Arizona, over and over. Look at the way some of the orbs overlap others. See how some are more distinct than others. Note the defined coronas around and distinct highlights on them. There are differences in size, yet all of the orbs in the vehicle in Iraq are fairly small compared to the range of sizes we have documented around us in Phoenix.
These pictures were sent from Chief Wiggles's Operation Give (now, at this moment, in abeyance, but check Dean's World or here for updates), in which people worldwide, through the blogosphere, bought and sent toys to Iraqi children -- hundreds of boxes, so far, some of which crowd the vehicle along with the orbs. After learning on Dean’s blog about the context of the photos, I have some speculations to offer about what we see in them, particularly the one taken in the vehicle.
Believe with me, for a moment, that these digitally captured phenomena are actually the spirits of the dead. Why would this SUV in Iraq be so jam-packed with ghosts? Well, they were gathered together by longing and intent, by so many well-meaning, broken-hearted people from around the world. People who were worn down with the age-old tragedy of war and the intolerable reality of kids with no childhoods. These are the kind souls who collectively gathered a Santa’s Sleighfull of Joyous Wonders for the kids of Iraq.
And then couldn’t you believe also that the woefull shadows of many, many little (look again at the diminutive spheres) joy-deprived children could attach themselves to the warm feelings, loving intentions and wondrous, playfull marvels held within Chief Wiggles's SUV of Gifts and Love?
Posted by Jerome at October 9, 2003 11:18 PM | TrackBack