Orbs

Today I got an email from one of our readers that got my thoughts going. Our reader asked a good question that I've been asked several times, but that I've never addressed:

These are the pictures attached in the email. All are from our blog, and the orbs in question have been circled:

To answer Ryleigh's question, I asked the members of the club to give their own personal opinions. I didn't want to answer for us as a whole because we all think different things, so these are our own personal thoughts on orbs:

Rachel

I honestly put no belief into orbs. I started out as a non-believer before the club came about, and one of the things I always disliked about paranormal evidence was people putting stock into orbs. While I suppose there is the possibility an orb could be paranormal, or whatever, I really don't hold faith with them. The only significant orbs I'll take a second look at are singular orbs in an entire picture. If there is not another single orb in the frame besides the one, I'll take a second look. And even then, it could easily be nothing.

Most of the time, orbs are reflections off of dust particles in the air. There are more explanations to what causes orbs besides dust, like human hair, or reflections off of surfaces, but for the most part, and especially with our investigations, orbs are just dust. In the first and second picture, I can see why it's assumed those are paranormal entities. Both look to have shapes inside the orbs, and many assume that means that it's paranormal right away. Even now as I look at them again, I see why they were significant in the pictures. All three are the same shade of a bluish green with gold on the outside, and they all have shapes in them.

This is very typical of dust and mold spore particles. They have a certain hue to them, and many times in dust orbs, people can make out images inside of them. You have to stop and think about where you got the dust orb from, however. Two of the three were taken in Richardson Auditorium, one of the dustiest places I have ever ventured into. When I went back and looked at the pictures on the blog, I found the ones they belonged to, and there are dozens of dust particles in the picture. The last one was taken in a cemetery, and you can see the dust on the ground around the statue. That orb could easily have been dust, a bug, a particle, an anything. While they're interesting, I don't think these orbs are anything significant.

Jenn

Most orbs are dust particles floating around, especially in pictures where there are a lot of orbs. If the orb in question is very bright or if it has a trail then it could be real, but most are just dust or moisture particles.

Becca

I agree with Jenn. Most stuff in pictures and such, especially if you don't have proper equipment, is sketchy to begin with because the camera could be picking up dust particles or there is something on the lens. I believe in Orbs, but I don't think camera evidence is the best way to prove its an orb.  

Apparitions

Last night during my latest bout of insomnia, I was going through some old photos on my computer looking for one of the dressing rooms. While I was scrolling through, something in one of the images caught my eye:

Original Photo- no editing (except the red circle)

So, curious now, I put it in FotoFlexer, enhanced the brightness, zoomed in a bit, and was thoroughly impressed at what we managed to catch:

 

 

 

Once again, the only editing is the enhanced brightness

This photo was taken last year (August 31). I'm not sure how I missed this the first time, but now it has really caught my attention. The only three people in the auditorium besides me (based off the other pictures) were Jake and Becca, and while there is the possibility it was one of them, I'm not completely convinced.

Because I missed this picture, I started going through the other ones from that night, and I pulled out more pictures that had interesting things in them. This picture, of the balcony, is interesting because last year when we investigated we had no way of getting up onto the balcony. I can confirm that none of us were up there during the time this picture wast taken:

Unidentified Shape (original)

Shape with enhanced brightness & zoom

I checked the time stamp on this next picture. It was taken six minutes later, and still none of us were up on the balcony:

Balcony (original)

Enhanced brightness, zoom, and contrast adjustment

For this one, I wanted to put in two originals. The first is of Becca and Jake about  fifteen seconds before I took the picture of the black shape. They were both walking down the aisle in front of me, and at the moment I took the picture of them, they both heard a noise behind us and I caught their startled expressions. We got up on the stage and then I took a picture of the whole auditorium to see if I'd catch anything:

Jake and Becca

Shape (original)

Enhanced brightness and zoom

Could we have captured someone else wandering around the auditorium with us? If we have, then it's intriguing to think of which ones they are, and what they thought of us a year ago. Let us know what you think of these, we want your feedback!

The Doorway

As you all have probably figured out by now, I'm a bit of a procrastinator. I swear I'll have stories up of the haunted tours, but in the meantime...

So during the tours we met a few people who were pretty interested in the club, which totally made my night. They came by during the club meeting, and we were doing some investigating. You know, just basic stuff: EVP's, a little bit of provoking, and using the EMF detector here and there.

Before we began an EVP session, one of the new members Eric pointed to the right side doorway beside the stage and asked, "What happened in this doorway?"

Becca and I seriously froze. No, nothing we're aware of happened in this doorway, but myself, Becca, Emily, Matt, and now Eric have all asked about that doorway. Last year when we started investigating, Becca and I had a really uneasy feeling about that doorway. Okay, okay, I'll admit we were a little afraid of it in the beginning. After a while we just got uneasy. We heard a lot of growling coming from the doorway, and several times we saw an unexplainable figure standing inside watching us.

We never really told this to anyone (because really, who besides us would care?), and we let it go over the summer. When we started up again in August and we brought our new (now hardened veteran) member Emily into the auditorium, we never mentioned the doorway to her. So imagine our surprise when she walked past it, stopped, and then asked, "So what happened in this doorway?" When we asked her why she wanted to know, she told us, "I don't know, I just don't like it. It gives me the creeps."

Okay, so in all reality a lot of the auditorium probably gives people the creeps. I mean, it does look sketchy. But Why did that doorway draw her attention? When we brought in our other now-hardened member Matt, after not having mentioned the doorway to him, he asked us the same exact thing, and then explained his question the same way.

Can't you just feel the creepiness oozing out?

Honestly, I'd forgotten about that doorway and the creepiness emanating from it until today. I mean, it's always in the back of my head, but with so many more stories to keep investigating, and all the new places to be afraid of, it doesn't bother me as much. So when the newest member Eric asked us about it, it was pretty startling.

Adding onto this whole thing, my roommates went through our tours last weekend and after they were over, both told me that they felt unusually creeped out by the doorway. On the tours, we stop at the end of the aisle beside that doorway, and my roommate Rachel told me she didn't feel safe with her back to the door. She told me that "it sounded so close that I thought I was gonna turn around and see someone in the doorway". And, as always, with everything that has to do with Richardson, when she turned around, she saw nothing there. My other roommate Lisa said that she felt unsettled about the doorway too, and she also heard the voice. They told me it was a mixture between a hiss and a whisper. It didn't say anything specific, but it was clearly a voice.

When I asked them about the doorway, I never said anything about it being creepy. How we even got on the topic had nothing to do with anything paranormal. I was looking for a picture of the doorway, and I realized I took a decent one last year. I told her I was surprised I'd been so on top of it last year, and when I showed her the picture to explain my point, she looked unnerved and said she didn't like that doorway. 

At first I thought maybe Becca and I were the only ones that didn't like it, and I thought it was just a personal preference thing. But now that people not even in the club (that don't do any investigating of the sort) have come to the unanimous agreement that there is something weird about that doorway, I'm pretty confident it's not just based on personal opinions. I'm not exactly sure what happened in that doorway. I've never really focused our investigating efforts on that one spot, but I think now that it keeps cropping up, we have a new mystery to solve.