do you believe in GHOSTS

[McQ]

Well, it looks like I have to change my mind. Just in time for Halloween is this spectral image taken in my own home. It is purported to be the ghost of a teenage boy who killed himself in this house before we moved in. Pretty spooky, huh?

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a184/ ... 285277.jpg

[Tom62]

Welcome to the "HAF" Twilight Zone, where scary ghosts wear jeans under a burkha.

[Big Mac]

Haha, nice photoshop! Massive lULZ!!!

[McQ]

Pretty amazing, huh? But it's not a burkha. It's a blue blanket dammit! Get it right!  

And I have no idea how to use PhotoShop (or any other like software). I promise you that no post-processing of any kind was done to this picture.

Now, that said...can you figure it out (obviously I don't believe in ghosts, as I've stated before, and this is posted just for fun before Halloween). No post-processing, no photographic manipulations of any kind in fact. Just a regular digital SLR, one shutter actuation, and no superimposing of shots.

Maybe it's really a ghost...

 

[MommaSquid]

Just in time for Halloween, University of Central Florida professor Costas Efthimiou proves mathematically that vampires
do not exist.  

Party pooper!  

Ghosts and zombies not real, and physicist is out to prove it
Seth Borenstein
Associated Press
Oct. 28, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - It may be the season for ghosts and zombies. Just remember, they're not real, warns physicist Costas Efthimiou.

Obviously, you might say.

But Efthimiou, a professor at the University of Central Florida, points to surveys that show American gullibility for the supernatural.

Efthimiou explains why it is that ghosts that can't walk among us while also gliding through walls. That violates Newton's law of action and reaction. If ghosts walk, their feet apply force to the floor, but if they go through walls, they are without substance, the professor says. "So which is it? Are ghosts material or materialless?" he asks.

Zombies and vampires fare even worse under Efthimiou's skeptical microscope.

Efthimiou looked at the most prominent child-turned-zombie case that aficionados cite: the 1989 case of a Haitian boy, 17, who was declared dead and then rose from the grave a day after the funeral and was considered a zombie. The boy, who never died but was paralyzed, had been poisoned by a relative of the deadly Japanese pufferfish, later research showed.

Efthimiou takes out the calculator to prove that if a vampire sucked one person's blood each month, turning each victim into an equally hungry vampire, after a couple of years there would be no people left, just vampires. He started his calculations with just one vampire and 537 million humans on Jan. 1, 1600, and shows that the human population would be down to zero by July 1602.

Take that Casper, Dracula and creepy friends.

All this may seem obvious, but to Efthimiou and other scientists, the public often isn't as skeptical as you might think. Efthimiou points to National Science Foundation reports showing widespread belief in such pseudosciences as vampires and astrology. More than 1 in 3 Americans believe houses can be haunted, a 2005 Gallup Poll indicated. More than 20 percent of Americans may believe in witches and that people can communicate with the dead. Such TV shows as Medium and Ghost Whisperer are popular.

"We're talking about a large fraction of the public that believes in subjects that scientists believe are out of the question," Efthimiou said. His paper is awaiting publication either in the journal Physics Education or the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, he said.

University of Maryland physics professor Bob Park, author of the book Voodoo Science, said scientists have to keep telling the public what seems all too obvious.

"There are things that we need to point out that are crap," Park said.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1028vampire-science1028.html

[Whitney]

Pretty amazing, huh? But it's not a burkha. It's a blue blanket dammit! Get it right!  

And I have no idea how to use PhotoShop (or any other like software). I promise you that no post-processing of any kind was done to this picture.

Now, that said...can you figure it out (obviously I don't believe in ghosts, as I've stated before, and this is posted just for fun before Halloween). No post-processing, no photographic manipulations of any kind in fact. Just a regular digital SLR, one shutter actuation, and no superimposing of shots.

Maybe it's really a ghost...

 

Ok, I have no clue....how'd you do it?

[Big Mac]

He used the force.....

[McQ]

[glow=red]Ok, here is the spooky solution........[/glow]

All I did was have my son stand in the room with a blanket over him. I shot him, he died and became a ghost.







Ok, I didn't shoot him....but dammit, he was asking for it!

What I really did was have him stand there with the blanket over him, and simply took a ten second exposure with the camera (on a tripod). Five seconds into the exposure I had him walk out of frame. Voila! Simple. One shutter actuation, no tricks. Just walk out of frame. The more time in frame, the more "solid" he would appear.

[Big Mac]

Of course! That's how they used to make the ghost pictures of days gone! I thought of it (I honestly I did) but I dismissed it because I thought no one would use such an archaic technique. My hat tips to you, McQ, you taught me a lesson in dismissing a valid, if unusual, theory.

[McQ]

Of course! That's how they used to make the ghost pictures of days gone! I thought of it (I honestly I did) but I dismissed it because I thought no one would use such an archaic technique. My hat tips to you, McQ, you taught me a lesson in dismissing a valid, if unusual, theory.

Yeah, it's a really old technique. Goes back to Daguerreotypes. It's funny, because I figured no one would think about it because of all the new digital photography techniques out there. But it's also so much easier to do than any photo-manipulations. Glad you enjoyed it!