Researcher and photojournalist, Shannon Taggart, shares stories from her 16 years of photographing Spiritualism for a project called SÉANCE: Spiritualist Ritual and the Search for Ectoplasm.
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Every now and then I receive photos from readers or listeners. Often they come with a subject line like “What do you make of this?” I’ve never claimed to be an expert when it comes to analyzing possible paranormal evidence in a photograph. I don’t even bring it up much. And honestly, when I was out investigating, the photographs were always kind of an after thought. I used photos more for documentation of the surroundings, and never really thought about them as a way to capture evidence. As you probably know, my focus was always on audio.
Like many others in the paranormal field, the photos we often get sent to us involve “orbs”, which most of the time end up being quite obviously explainable. And just as often, it’s an awkward offended reaction that I get when I respond with my usual answer. People want SO BADLY for things to be a ghost… even after someone gives them 30 possible explanations for what they’re seeing. I’m not sure why some folks ask if they don’t want an honest response. And so some of these photos end up sitting in my inbox, or maybe I reply with something harmless like… “Cool photo!”
But this photo was different. I am NOT making a claim that this is paranormal. But isn’t it interesting? You don’t see one like this often. Here’s the information I have from the photo that was sent in by Sarah. I was given permission to share it with you. Sarah writes:
“I wanted to send you this photo and get your opinion. I just [took] this picture of my daughter’s basketball team in our grade school gym. There were children running around behind the team prior to me taking the picture but I sat and waited for them to leave before I snapped the pic. If you look behind the chair of the last girl you can see that the white figure continues down behind her chair. Please let me know what you think of the photo.
Thank you so much!”
My mind immediately saw what looks like a solid foot or shoe planted on the ground behind the chair. If this were a child running behind the players in the photo, the foot would have been somewhat stationary, at least for the moment the picture was taken. But even then, seeing a solid foot doesn’t mean it isn’t paranormal. It’s definitely something to think about though.
I also think that if Sarah admits to knowing children had been running around the team prior to the photo, could it be she captured one of them and she just doesn’t remember? That’s probably the most logical explanation. But… even then, I wouldn’t expect such a ghostly, unrecognizable flash of white from a camera in this day and age… even if the kid was super fast! But I could be very wrong. Thankfully, when I mentioned my question about a possible kid running behind the players, Sarah wasn’t offended. She responded very politely with the following:
“I will tell you that when I took the picture I was not looking at the screen, I was actually looking over my camera to make sure all the children had ran past. I steadied the camera on my knees and watched above it. I actually have a sequence of pictures, one with the kids running past then the one with the figure that I sent you and then one with no one but the team. They are time stamped about 8 seconds apart.”
Surely we have some photographers or experienced investigators out there willing to weigh in with their thoughts or explanations. Is this a Warrior ghost?
And thank you for the photo, Sarah!
Don’t forget about the Love Never Dies Book Giveaway! Deadline for entries is Monday March 30, 2015! Can’t wait to hear from you!
If you enjoyed the documentary video and my recent post on The Scole Experimental Group and their Scole Experiment, then you may just enjoy the book that chronicles and recounts the 5-year experiment of life after death, and many of the simply amazing experiences that few people have ever been lucky enough to see. And it all happened in the “scole hole”, a dark cellar in a Norfolk village in England.
The Scole Experimental Group was started by two mediums who joined several other spiritual individuals in what most probably know as a spirit circle, which is also similar to a séance group. One thing I didn’t know before reading this book was that the structure of the group and the experiments were pretty much organized and guided by their “spirit team”. The team was composed of around 6 main entities, but other spirit scientists and technicians were involved in the process. Most of their communications came by using the two mediums in trance, but this was not the case every time. Some of the phenomena were moving spirit lights, manifestations of hands and faces, being touched, surround sound-like voices speaking in the room, levitating objects, faces and pictures showing up on sealed photographic film, and some of the cooler experiences involved many gifts of apports (the manifestation of an object seemingly coming from nowhere). Most of these apports were historical in nature, and many of them, such as an old newspaper (see below for correction), were inspected and verified to be authentic.
What was the goal of this group? In his first visit, Manu, the “gatekeeper” and leader of the spirit team told the Scole Group that “The team of beings I represent is made up of many thousands of minds from the many other realms of existence. We will be working with your group to provide very tangible evidence of the reality of these other realms. Our plan is to pioneer important methods of communication between the dimensions using ‘energy’ rather than the more traditional methods such as ectoplasm.”
It might be easy to blow this group off and say that there is no way to prove any of this phenomena and the experiences were real, but there are a number of scientists, psychologists, parapsychologists, and other wise and educated professionals who were present and inspected and studied the experiments. Some of these individuals were connected with the highly critical Society for Psychical Research.
In future blog posts, I may have to share some of my favorite interesting parts from the book and some of my “aha” moments. As many of you know, I’m preparing for some possible séance experiments coming up soon, and this is just one of the books I’ve been researching in preparation for this next experience.
*Correction: I discovered a piece of information that is incorrect in this post. I mentioned an apport of a newspaper that was verified to be authentic. It turns out this wasn’t an apport. It was actually the photo of a newspaper, ‘The Daily Mirror’, from 1936. It manifested on sealed photographic film during a sitting. The following is from the caption of the photo in the book: “A copy of the original was obtained. It was almost identical to the photograph, with some minor differences which indicated it might have been from another edition on the same day. The newspaper was tested and proved to be genuine wartime paper.”
I am about halfway through The Scole Experiment, a book that documents a 5-year investigation into life after death by The Scole Experimental Group. It all started in 1993 in a cellar in Scole, a Norfolk village in England. I don’t think there’s ever been anything quite like it since.
Below is a documentary of the experiment. If you’re not familiar with The Scole Experiment, be sure to at least watch the introduction. It’ll give you a good idea of what I’ve been reading for a few days now. I have another outpatient surgery tomorrow with some recuperating time this week, so I’ll get it finished in no time and report back.
Peace!
*The filmmaker has requested that I remove the link to the video. If you’d like more information on the documentary you can go to http://www.theafterlifeinvestigations.com/#! or simply search YouTube for several videos that are there.
