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Help Debunk Salem Ghost Nonsense

Loss Leader

I would save the receptionist., Moderator
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Please help with any debunking you can. I know the following information is sketchy.

A friend of mine claimed to have photographic evidence of ghosts. He explained the following: He went on a ghost tour of Salem, Mass. At night, they took him to a graveyard they claimed to be full of ghosts. They pointed out places where ghosts had been spotted before. One was by the wall of a church or chapel at the graveyard. He took a picture of the brick wall.

When he developed the picture, he found a swirl of white cloud in the frame that he claims was not visible to him when he took the picture. He showed me the picture and it is, in fact, a picture of a brick wall with a swirl of white steam/smoke/something appearing to be in the process of rising.

He returned during daylight hours and claimed to have seen nothing to indicate it was a hoax.

Now, I know there are no such thing as ghosts. And I know that if there were ghosts, it doesn't make much sense that they'd be visible to a camera and not the naked idea. And I know that he photographed a "ghost" in the spot he was told to take a picture of a ghost by people leading a ghost tour. Since it seemed to be in a cemetary, I'm a little fuzzy on how people could rig up the illusion without angering the cemetary owners/mourners themselves.

Does anyone have any specific information debunking what I've described. So far, "You're an idiot" is not working great.
 
Breath, and cigarette smoke could be the cause. Also lint passing in front of the camera. You don't see those because the flash illuminates them briefly.

Was it a digital camera? Did he use an on camera or built in flash?
 
Point out to your friend that all he has is evidence of a white swirl. In other words, tell him, "so, big deal, you got a picture of a white swirl. Now prove to me that that white swirl is a ghost."

It's up to him to provide evidence that what he believes is true, not up to you to provide evidence that it isn't true.
 
I go with the breath/cigarette/auto exhaust/steam explanation. Lots of night shots using flash show this effect. Dozens of examples can be seen on photo sites like Flickr, and none of them claim to be ghosts.
 
Does anyone have any specific information debunking what I've described. So far, "You're an idiot" is not working great.

empirical proof is what he has to provide, anything else can be produced by magic tricks and people are susceptible to such illusions.
 
Well of course it's not a ghost. Salem has witches. They'd be all sorts of legal issues if a group of non-existent things tried to set up on another groups turf.
 
Well of course it's not a ghost. Salem has witches. They'd be all sorts of legal issues if a group of non-existent things tried to set up on another groups turf.

Actually, most of the witches were not from Salem, but from Salem Village, a suburb. It's called Danvers today.
 
Smoke from a campfire shows up as "strange mist" in a photo taken using flash.

fire.jpg
 

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