The Mysterious Orbs Captured In Photographs

By James Donahue

We have all had it happen to us at one time or another. We notice what appear to be strange balls of light in photographs we have taken around the house or places we are visiting. They have been written off as reflections of light on the film because there was never any other way to explain them.

Or was there?

We like many other observers have noticed that these balls, or orbs, have frequently shown up on pictures taken in old buildings or in areas where paranormal activity appears to be occurring. If the building is known to be haunted, you can bet orbs or even unexplained smears of light will appear on some photographs shot in the rooms.

My wife and I have enjoyed a hobby of buying and restoring old houses over the years, and at least three of them turned out to be quite haunted. Also we took ownership of a 150-year-old, two-story brick building that had a long history of use as a Masonic Hall, a courthouse, police station and local jail. It also was the site of a newspaper and village offices. There was evidence that the place had even been used as a speak-easy during prohibition. And boy was it haunted! There were places in that building where the energies made the skin crawl. There were unexpected loud bangs and crashes that could not be explained. And images on film shot there, especially around the old jail cells that were still intact in the basement, were loaded with orbs of all sizes.

Our theory that connected orbs with ghostly energies from the spirit world around us has found lots of support among paranormal researchers.

Metaphysic writer Stuart Wilde once wrote: "Some people think that the orbs are a quirk of digital photography but if you enlarge an orb photo, you can see that some orbs have images of spirit animals in them, and in others orbs are images of beings. They almost all have the concentric circles. It is hard to imagine these images inside the orbs to be an artifict of photography."

An article by researcher Jane McCarthy, "Orbs and Orb Theory," states that she and her partner, Christopher McCarthy have captured orbs even on video footage. She notes that some of them appear in various colors. "I have also noticed that these color orbs are detected around abbeys, churches and ancient sites," she wrote.

McCarthy said she has occasionally observed orbs with the naked eye and has received communications from others who say they have personally seen orbs. She questions whether the balls of light sometimes observed in fields at the time crop circles are being formed are not in some way connected to the orbs filmed in old buildings.

She noted that orbs can be captured on any kind of camera, from the old film type to video cameras. While she admits that some of the "orbs" might be created by pollen, bits of dust in the air, or rain, this cannot explain all of them. She believes they are some kind of spiritual entity that is somehow being captured by the camera.

Wilde agrees about the spiritual connections. He says he perceives us in our three-dimensional existence is "inter-meshing" with a spiritual world that is becoming more and more visible to those of us who are awake and aware as the curtain between the two world is lifted.

"We were surprised to discover just how many transdimensional entities co-exist with us here in the earth plane -- trillions: nature spirits, animal spirits, ghoulish blobs, angelic beings, etheric entities of one kind and another. We humans are greatly outnumbered," Wilde wrote.