Ghosts are Proof of God

I have faith that my friends will stand by me, that does not mean that I worship them. All faith means is onconditional trust and devotion.

 

Still not quite amusing, even after all the usage you've gotten out of this.

You are free to characterize it however you wish (for all that's worth).

This is 100% projection and speculation on your part and for just a little comparison, imagine a couple of National Geographic photographers concocting a Bigfoot photo hoax to get published in a story on the northern Rocky mountains.
It would be an incredible black eye and embarrassment for National Geographic (should the hoax be discovered) and those photographers who committed fraud would be lucky to get jobs taking passport photos in the aftermath of such a stunt.

What you say shows a stunning bias and and a willingness to claim anything, no matter how absurd.
Mili Vanilli didn't get rewarded for their scam (though they also weren't neurosurgeons, bankers or lawyers). Their careers got terminated!
James Frey, no brain surgeon either, was publicly flayed for his fakery when he scammed Opray Winfrey. You need to dig a little deeper. Fakers are not celebrated. They make people angry.

I have no idea if Country Life got a bump in their circulation and I'd be shocked if you could verify what you claim. In any event the key piece of information you omit is that when Country Life printed the photos of the Brown Lady a call to reveal the hoax was made and when studied and examined, no one could say the photos were frauds.

Oh, okay.... We'll take your unbiased word for it.

And how many times would you like me to repeat that a study of the photo was made and no one (No One!) could find any trace of fakery or any reason why these two photographers would risk their careers to pull such an unwarranted stunt.
You'll just have to try harder to establish doubt where none has been found.

 

Who cares if it's amusing, as long as it's true?

It is not speculation that they were just photographers. It is not speculation that they got paid for their work. It is not speculation that Daily Life magazine is not and never was National Geographic, and that these guys were hardly Ansel Adams or Margaret Bourke White. It is not speculation that (as a google search will show) had they not taken that photograph they would be completely unknown to history having made no appreciable contribution to the art or science of photography. And it's not speculation that they knew ahead of time they were supposedly photographing a "haunted house."

It is not speculation that most "ghost photos" are obvious fakes, or that professional photographers have been involved in faking many of them. And it is not speculation that this photo is little more than a smudge on a staircase.

Why would I need to speculate given all of that?

It happened just a couple years ago when National Geographic had to apologize for reporting on faked fossils from China. Gosh... it happens!!!

Better than being a credulous sucker.

Except in the "field" of paranormal phenomenon. Demonstrated fakes like Yuri Gellar and Ted Serios can keep running their scams long after they've been exposed. After all, they have pre-identified the community of folks who will not only fall for their hoaxes, but defend them for it.

Again, they risked nothing. They needed a payday, and they got it. Based on an internet search, this single photo was the high point of their careers. Neither did anything else of note. This is true of Daily Life magazine as well.

As to "studies" of the photo, there are no chemical or mechanical traces left from a double exposure or a smear of Vaseline on a camera lens. Such "studies" are pointless.

 

Are you asking me, or telling me? The point is, your well used bit is trite as can be.

You mean Country Life?

Irrelevant. Country Life was a respected magazine in it's own right and whether these two photographers were the best in the world or not it's still bad form to lie to people (just ask Milli Vanilli...hardly the greatest recording artists in their day). You fail!

And this proves what? They were prominent enough that a major magazine employed and depended on them. You are really grasping wildly here.

Undoubtedly that's true, but then again, so what?

It also is not speculation that the Brown Lady is not "most" ghost photos.

Because you desperately want to "win" any argument you get into. So you stack the deck by calling the photo a "smudge", and by claiming that these photographers were unconcerned if they were implicated in a hoax (they had "nothing to lose" is how you put it).

That's pure undiluted speculation based on nothing at all but your wish to tip the scales in your favor. What they had to lose was professional credibility and employment in their chosen field as "those two guys" that are fooling around perpetrating fraud upon the public and editors. Don't be asinine!

And National Geographic was really pleased about it...right?

I note you don't disagree with my assessment.

But Captain Provance and Indie Shira were top commercial photographers. Not seance scammers.

If you mean they were professional photographers, then yes, of course they were paid for the jobs they were hired to do.

Again, you must mean Country Life magazine (which goes to show your fact finding skills).
And please, don't B.S. me about the careers of these two photographers. You have no way in hell of knowing about their professional career arc by trying to Google up information on them.

It's not possible and you might as well try and convince me you can Google up the top English sea captains of the '30s as trace the career ups and downs of these two.
The information just doesn't exist, one way or the other, but as we've already established, you will claim anything to advance your poor argument.

Both the photo and it's negative were studied by experts, as well as the camera used, and nothing out of order was found. I'm not surprised you try to discredit the investigation.

 

Yes, but can you have religious faith without religion?

 

In some ways you are right; ideas of ghosts are derived from reactions to physical occurrences while ideas of godhood are purely conceptual.

However, the mind works on the exact same level in either case.

 

Then you agree that one can have faith without religion...great!

 

I don't know.

I am not a very religious person. I don't go to church. I have never read the entire Bible. However, I believe in God, Jesus, and Heaven.

 

Yep, some people have a more open mind than others.

 

Who cares if it is trite, as long as it's true?

So was Stern when it published the fake Hitler Diaries. So was National Geographic when it published the fake Chinese fossils. Wake up Yosh. The real world actually contains people who fake stuff. For some reason, the field of paranormal phenomenon has a surfeit of such people.

This proves that they were nobody special with nothing significant to lose. Again... this single photo proves to be the only thing of note they ever did. That alone would be a motive for many to fake something.

If you are unable to connect those dots yourself, I am unable to help you.

There is absolutely nothing to distinguish this ghost photo from scores of others. It has all the trite boilerplate details of "hauntings" from pubs in Brislington to the Amityville Hoax which is still making people money. Remember this one from that proven fraud?

​

New York television station Channel 5 employees produced this "infra red time-lapse photograph" and first showed it on the Merv Griffin show. Professionals all around. Respected journalists all.

Wake up Yosh.

I am sorry if my honesty offends you. The photograph is, in fact, a smudge on a staircase. If you can identify that as a person at all let alone a specific person from an old painting then you are either hallucinating or a liar. It is not stacking any deck to acknowledge that what is presented is both unremarkable in and of itself, and indistinguishable from any number of other known fakes.

Again... the historical record shows that except for this picture these two guys left no professional trace of their existence. It is the single event that gave them any reputation at all. I think you have risk and rewards here completely backwards.

It is a historically unsupportable argument you are making. History is filled with competent professionals who went on to do disreputable things that seem inexplicable to the naive and credulous like yourself. I really wouldn't have expected Ted Haggard to do meth with a male prostitute either. But he did.

"They would never do that" are the famous last words of people setting themselves up to have their illusions dashed.

I once again overestimated your ability to read sarcasm. I repeatedly end up giving you too much credit. My disagreement with your assessment has been the single most consistent characteristic of my posts in this thread. Did you really miss that somehow?

There is nothing to genuinely indicate they were "top" anything. They were photographers who made their living selling photographs. This is one of them. They got their paycheck. And I suggest to you that yes, in at least this one instance they were probably "seance scammers."

Actually, that might have been true in 1995. Today, yes, a google search can do a very good job of indicating whether or not a person has left any impression at all on history.

These guys.... not so much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sea_captains
http://uktv.co.uk/yesterday/item/aid/529704

There's a couple good places to start. Have fun.

If it was a double exposure or a smudge of grease on the lens there is no examination of the photo, its negative or the camera that could show anything amiss.

We can put photography on the long list of things about which you apparently know nothing.

 

I would hope you would.

Country Life was not a magazine given to publishing ghost stories. As the name indicates, it specialized as a high end "life style" (as we would call it today) magazine.

I just love how you cruised right past my comment that these photographers, regardless of what you think about them, were the equivalent of today's high fashion photographers that pull down six figure salaries working for Vogue, Marie Claire, etc . They were hardly "nothing", despite your sad attempts to denigrate them (so as to make your arguments stand up). You should be such a "nothing".

You got that right! The dots you are trying to connect exist solely in your own mind. YOU have decided these photographers decided it would be fun (profitable? exciting?) to create a ghost photo based entirely on what the little goblins inside your own head tell you. And nothing else.

Your You Tube debunking counterpart freely admitted that sightings of the Brown Lady were fairly common at Raynham Hall. If people can, and have, seen the Brown Lady with their own eyes then why couldn't that image be captured on film?

The photo is clearly a human figure and I have to believe that if I were there in person, at relatively close proximity, then the details that everyone else reports (brown brocade dress, identical to Lady Dorothy Walpole) would be instantly apparent, even to a frothing skeptic like you.

Maybe you can compile a list of prominent commercial photographers in England in the 1930's (since you seem to think that information should be right at hand). If you can't (and we know you can't) then you might have to admit you've been bluffing and talking out of your rectum this whole time.

But can you prove these two fit that description?
That's the point and for two professionals whose livelihood depended on their good and solid reputation I don't think you ever will.

No. I just took it for granted you also believe you are prone to claim anything to win.

The fact that they worked for a high end respectable magazine, that still exists to this day, means nothing to you?
Yup, you'll claim anything. That's like claiming that the producer that worked with the Beatles or on the set of Star Wars was just an average journeyman working Joe. It's absurd B.S.!

I asked specifically for a list of English sea captains of the 1930's. Why not have another try?

Grease on a lens surface would not show?
That seems doubtful.

 

No... I care about the substantive stuff and leave the dissembling quibble to you.

Except for when they published ghost stories.

Uhhhh... no. They weren't. They were two guys who ran a photography studio and got hired by the magazine to go shoot a job. They shot their pictures, got paid for their work and faded from history like ripples on the surface of a pond.

Oh... I certainly have more than that. I have the picture. So do you.

I have no idea who you are arguing with here. It does not appear to be against anything I have offered.

LOL... the photo is not "clearly" anything. The rest of your self serving speculation is noted.

I will allow you to chase that particular red herring. Here is another great place to start. Provance and Shira did not make the list it seems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photographers

I don't need to prove anything. That's your job. You are the one making the claim that this is a real ghost photo.

I simply need to keep stating the obvious things that you refuse to confront.

Almost no photographer's livelihoods depend on their "good and solid reputation." They are photographers. They take pictures. When was the last time you checked the moral rectitude of the person snapping pictures of your kids at the Olan Mills portrait studio?

Nope.

In the 70s I got a couple stories published in Reader's Digest "Humor in Uniform." That did not elevate me to any level of status as a literary icon.

Wake up Yosh.

Chase your own red herring, Yosh. I'm not interested. I have shown you the way. Go learn something.

Not after it was wiped off. No.

Like I said... We can put photography on the long list of things about which you apparently know nothing.

 

While I was shaving, I had to chuckle about this particular comment of yours. So I came back to share my amusement.

This is specifically the kind of detail that screams fraud.

First, why would ghosts wear clothes? I mean really... do brown brocade dresses have ghosts of their own? Do ghosts have a little ghost closets somewhere with a change of ghost shoes, ghost corsets, ghost underwear and ghost Easter bonnets?

And why would a ghost always seem to appear dressed exactly the same as in a portrait elsewhere in the house? It's a clue, Yosh. Like the striped shirt on the little boy in the movie Inception, it's the clue to the actual source of the description and whether or not the ghost was a real.

You really are easy. I hope you have a spam filter removing all the Nigerian emails before you get around to sending people your bank account #.

 

There is no scientific proof of ghosts just as there has never been any scientific proof of aliens or of god.

 

If you call your biased rambling "substantive" then I would agree.

The ghost comes with the estate. You can't show one without acknowledging the other. Their goal was the Townsend estate...not the ghost, per se.

Is it really necessary to denigrate two people you know nothing about just to make your crummy little case? There's nothing you won't say.

There. I fixed your comment to reflect the truth. You're welcome.

Really? You called the photo a hoax. Don't run away and disavow knowledge of what I say when you haven't any counter.

Your opinion is of no matter to me. The interest in the photo speaks for itself.

As predicted, you have failed miserably to produce the goods. What a surprise!

Is this supposed to be the authoritative be all and end all list? Where is this guy, for instance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Frakes
Another failure, it seems.

How fortunate for you that suddenly somehow the burden of proof is shifted from the shoulders of the doubter. Otherwise your argument would amount to...well, just what it is. Nothing! The onus is on you, even if I claim the sky is green, to correct my error. Go fish!

More disingenuous B.S. An Olan Mills portrait photo has almost nothing in common with the work of high end commercial photographers.
How desperate are you?

The better your work, the better your reputation
and certain people work for glossy high end magazines while others take pictures of your kid sitting on Santa's lap. You idiotically pretend there is no difference between the two and it's a fool's argument that's absurd on it's face.

Gee..imagine that! And the guy that illustrates the Bazooka Joe comics is not in the same league as Michelangelo, either. I can't tell if you are serious or not.

Yeah...NOW that you've failed miserably to obtain information that should be at your fingertips (if you are to be believed) you have no interest in proving your silly arguments count.
Again, who could have see that coming?

How do you know it was there originally then, and how do you know it was wiped off? Go fish, fool!

Sum up your list of failures here. That should tell you something.

 

Gee! I hope you didn't cut your own throat while chuckling....

This moron's point was taken up about twenty pages ago. Why wouldn't ghosts wear clothes?

The dress is specifically what many eye witnesses have reported. You should go argue with them, if you have doubts.

Don't worry. Dealing with liars like you has immunized me against the frauds of others. Thanks.

 

This thread is amusing, 50 pages and no proof.

 

It is simply an axiom of science that anecdotes are not data. I could be as biased as all get out and this would still be true. Deal with it.

Their goal was a paycheck. They achieved their goal. Oh... and by the way, the were apparently not hired by Country Life to take the photographs. They were hired by the then Lady Townsend to take pictures of the estate, and it seems it was specifically the ghost picture that got them into the pages of the magazine.

Naaaaaaaah. Everything here is clearly on the up-and-up.

If they are offended, let them come back and haunt me.

What does that have to do with your pointless burbling regarding whether or not it should be possible for a ghost to be "captured on film?" You are making no sense. Please... if nothing else try to keep track of your own arguments.

No. As I said though, it's a great place to start. Have fun.

Hardly a failure. Instead, you are arguing against yourself at this point.

Google Bill Frakes and you will get 163 thousand hits and hundreds of different photographs taken by him.

Google Hubert C. Provand and you get a mere 12 thousand hits every single one having to do with this ghost, and a single picture he ever took.

Thank you for proving my argument so comprehensively.

The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim, Yosh. I shift nothing. That monkey has been on your back since the OP, and you have never come close to delivering.

There is no difference. Indre Shira Ltd was a photography studio, just like Olan Mills. They got paid to take pictures.

Don't know, don't care. The point remains unchallenged by you that an examination of the photo, its negative or the camera is not capable of detecting the simplest, least technical of frauds.

 

Just a nick.

Enjoy this article from folks who are generally believers; The Fortean Times. They seem less than convinced.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/86/the_brown_lady_of_raynham_hall.html

Oh man... it just gets worse and worse.

 

And it's still trite and you've made the observation numerous times. Deal with it.

Every professional has the same goal. This is, even by your standards, extremely disingenuous.

That's what this single source says. Every other account of this story that can be found says Provand and Shira were working for Country Life. "On 19 September 1936 Captain Hubert C. Provand and Indre Shira, London-based photographers working for Country Life magazine, were taking photographs of Raynham Hall for an article to appear later in the year."

When you have been arguing this issue over and over and then tell me "What does this (the issue of ghosts on film) have to do with me?" I can only assume you've had a mid post stroke, or some severe head trauma. Get well soon!

It is of no interest to me.

You, and by "you" I mean someone of average intelligence and honesty, would hardly expect in 2011 to find any background information (not related to the Brown Lady episode) at all on a London based commercial photographer from seventy-five years ago!

I will put this bit of idiocy down also to your recent stroke and just like your failed attempt to locate internet information about English sea captains of the 1930's I would expect some people to realize information of such humdrum nature from 75 years ago is well beyond the scope of Google or any other internet entity.
For you to pull out such arcane information someone 75 years ago would have had to have recorded the events of Captain Provan's professional life
AND leave them in such a place that three quarters of a century later someone could find them and want to put them on the internet.

Having said all that, I'm sure you never took any of that under consideration.

Nope. If you doubt what I say (based on accounts of examiners) then it's your job to show why you think what I relate is not so. The event long ago was investigated. YOU need to explain how it was wrong.

On the broadest possible level (Olan Mills and Provan and Shira both take photos) there is no difference. But you spout nonsense and B.S. because by that so called "reasoning" there is no difference between the St. Louis Cardinals and your local Little League team...because they both play baseball. Go back to your cave and don't come out until you are ready to be honest.

An examination was conducted and no deception was found. I don't know how I can make it more simple than that. IF fraud can not be ruled out then by the same token it can not be proved either. We are back at square one and the photo only shows what so many eyewitnesses have reported. If an image can be seen by the eye, then ipso facto, it can be photographed as well.

 

*Shrug* Who knows if the comment was made in jest or not? You certainly don't.

And who can corroborate Fodor's statement, remembering Fortean's maxim that for every expert there is an opposite and equal expert. It's also interesting to note that out of all the text you completely ignore all the exculpatory information (including Fodor's statement that he could not recreate the photo of Provan and Shire, despite reproducing the exact "circumstances" of the photo) in favor of that one inconclusive, and possibly out of context, snippet.
Thanks for the laugh.

 

Who cares if it is trite, as long as it is true?

Splendid. You're finally catching on. Good for you.

Another wrong assumption. You simply can't help yourself. I have never even once pretended to hint that if ghosts existed they couldn't be photographed. Your insertion of this pointless straw man is completely inexplicable.

I knew that. That's why I declined to chase your red herring. Thanks for confirming.

If they were important, yes. I would. If they were essentially nobody, no. I wouldn't. Here for example is a non-inclusive list of important photographers from the 1930s. All of them have extensive presences on the Internet.

• Ansel Adams
• Margaret Bourke-White
• Walker Evans
• Lewis Hine
• Dorothea Lange
• Gordon Parks
• Man Ray
• Edward Steichen
• Carl Van Vechten
• Edward Weston

See how that works?

Why yes. They would. Just like the photographers listed above. That no one did is pretty much proof that we are talking Olan Mills, not Ansel Adams.

Welcome to the real universe, Yosh. You have that exactly backwards. The burden of proof is always on the affirmative, not the negative position.

That said, I guess you haven't read that Fortean Times article yet. Read the whole thing. It's actually very balanced.

It still is pretty d@mning though.

There is no difference here. Both Olan Mills and Indre Shira Ltd are (in your analogy) minor league farm teams.



Let's review what the original investigation files of the Society for Psychical Research found out at the time.

1. The camera was known to be defective.

2. The photograph was almost certainly a double exposure.

3. Indre Shira showed up hoping to photograph a ghost.

4. The then Lady Townsend had just contributed to a book about the ghost and could have benefited from the publicity.

5. The then Lady Townsend was insistent that the image was not actually the "Brown Lady" at all.

6. The image commonly seen is cropped to conceal a number of anomalies caused by shaking or double exposure.​

And these are just the ones identified in 1937.

You got nothing, Yosh. You got a smudge on a staircase.

 

Read it and weep. It's the contemporary account.

Read it and weep. It's the contemporary account.

Read it and weep. It's the contemporary account. Determine for yourself how "out of context" it is.

You are completely and absolutely welcome!

 

And still we don't know if the comment was in jest or not... .

And who can corroborate it?

Unless Indie Shira showed up for the photo shoot and said only those five or six reported words his whole time on the job, we still don't know the context (or spirit) in which the comment was made. Go fish.

It's a funny bit, I have to admit.

 

What about it strikes you as even vaguely jest-like?

Who need corroboration? It is the contemporary account of the immediate investigation. You don't get any better testimony that that.

Who cares? That's the contemporary testimony. Deal with it.

Hilarious!!!

It was weak evidence to begin with. Don't feel bad that it turned out to be even worse than that.