i got a question, and i hope this thread goes long enough so i can hear from everybody: when we see a real good picture, and no sign that its fake, why do we always say " too good to be true " if it is real isnt it normal that it would be too good? if it is fake , why cant we find any proof of it? we want to believe , we believe actually, but when we see a real good picture of a ghost, we always try to find a way to proove it fake, help me out here

Because a lot of the good pictures and video footages look very "staged". Unfortunately the paranormal is used to cash in on several occasions and still going strong. When people stop capitalising on it and are get sincerely interested in finding the truth, then we will see better documentation...


and pigs do fly.............

Ho, ho ho! At last someone after my own heart! I have been pondering this for years. If it is a really in-focus, sharp picture of, say, a UFO or a ghost, it is always condemned as too good to be true. If it is blurred or out of focus (maybe because the photographer was caught off guard and had to act swiftly) the picture is condemned as "...could be anything". You either take it or leave it. I agree, too with Bio-mage's answer. I believe there is a big difference between seeing such pictures presented by unknown people on a Forum and without any indication of the circumstances surrounding the picture, and...being shown the picture by someone you know and trust and who explains all the details of where he was and when etc. They say "one image is worth a thousand words". I would prefer, especially on a Forum like this one, both the image AND the thousand words (or more) One HAS to assume the image is genuine and work on it from there and not waste time wondering whether it is fake or genuine first and THEN start to analyse it. The people who confect and then present fake photos are just causing obstructions to people's search for the truth. Either THAT or they are saboteur de-bunkers deliberately trying to discredit this whole field of research. Lonecat

I think that part of it has to do with the fact that there are so many fakes out there that we don't know what to believe any more. And the only way to prove a haunting is to disprove everything else first. I know how all that feels though, I have some pictures that, so far, we can not find an explaination for, I have asked everybody. Most recently I have asked a photoghrapher and I have now sent them to somebody to have them looked at. I just feel like there is something I could be missing. I am very passionate about the paranormal and am always trying to learn more about it and trying to understand it, well I don't feel I can do that if I don't know for sure what I've got.

All of these reasons are are very true. Here's one other theory to add to the list. If someone looks at a picture with a "ghost" in it. There's no valid reason for it to be there, it's been proclaimed "not fake", etc. People will then say, "It's too good to be true". Could this be because if they accepted that it's a genuine ghost pic, then they would have to change their point of view? Or that it simply scares the bejesus out of them?

I would also like to add that in this age of technology, with digital cameras, the internet etc etc its only going to get harder to believe if something is the real deal as it is increasingly easier to fake stuff, and convincingly too. Lets just hope with the advancement of technology, we also find a way to really detect and uncover these 'mysteries' if they are indeed real.

My 2 cents

Hoagy

Well, I know that, for me personally...I WANT to believe it. And I am sure I am not alone.

But we dont want to jump to conclusions. I am not going to say "yeah, that is definately real" if I dont know for sure and then look like a fool.

There is also a stigma attached to stuff like this and those of us who do believe in it. And taking a supposed paranormal picture at face value only makes that worse.

Even in a forum like this one we are still subject to ridicule. It isnt as bad as most other places but just yesterday I saw some really rude posts made by someone who came to debunk everything they could.

Anyway, I want to believe that ghosts and such can be caught on film. I DONT want to believe that aliens are real! LOL!!! I want to believe that we can communicate with people who have already died. But I also dont want to be played for a fool. I am not a crazy and I am not stupid. I certainly dont want people thinking I am nuts just because I think a picture of a ghost is real. And I am intelligent enough not to accept something as real without proof.

Anyway, that is my two cents. I try really hard not to judge a picture or whatever too harshly without knowing one way or another. Especially since I dont have the capability to check them out like so many here do with photoshop or whatever.

Either way, thats my 2 cents.

becuase people here just dont get it they want you to stop beliving so they say fake fake

Mauricio, it doesn't help that people post fake pics on here and admit it later.

hahhaa, the thing is, there's no such thing as proof of supernatural forces that we know of, so using what we have how could we prove something to be true? Well think about it- there's really only one way, we have to prove this by elimination, the "if it's not this, then it might be this" mentality, so you we can only try to prove something is fake to see if it's real.

you are making a typical laymans mistake of thinking we don't want to know, it's the opposite, but your views are not uncommon among believers in the supernatural

I agree, whole-heartedly with this post.

I'd LOVE to believe in the existance of things beyond my comprehension. But for me to be truly sure that they're real, I have to offer all possibilities that they could be FAKE. When all these possibilities have been disproven, and there is only 1 option left (the option of reality), then I will believe.

Good post, Kalabalana. (What does your name mean?)

What? That made little to no sense what so ever...



My thoughts exactly

This post proves my point. This is exactly what I meant. In fact, Kalabalana is the person who wrote the post I eluded to in my last post.

There is no point or reason for attitudes such as this.

I'm guilty of saying "too good to be true", after viewing 'paranormal' pictures. I'm always trying to find a logical explanation.



But, that's just me.

This is the world today, we cannot take anything for face value, if we did, we would believe all kinds of different things, we need proof. Once humans are taught, and believe one thing, and follow one way of life, it's hard to think " outside that box ". For instance Galileo Galilei was the man that said the Earth circled the sun, and the sun was actually the center of the universe, for this, he was executed of heresy. People were afraid of this, cause it changed all human thought and shaped relgious and text book beliefs from the start of time.

We humans need exact proof or we doubt everything, it cannot be an assumption, and it cannot be a grain of salt explanation, it has to be hard facts. Some people do not need that concrete fact, hence why some of us are as active in this belief as we are.

I posted pictures on here but I was just looking for someone to debunk them. The deal with the face in the window was that at the time I was having some little things happening in my house, it seemed like everytime I would take a picture of my daughter something would be in it. The weird things that happened, locking of the front door, sounds moving after I went to bed, etc. led up to the time my father passed. After that it stopped. I truly wanted to hear that I really didn't have anything in the pictures.
I have been interested in the paranormal since I first saw, what seemed like, a spirit fly by window on halloween night. I was 13 at the time. I found this site to learn. Like a lot of people I would like to understand why things are the way they are. Some of the pictures I have seen seem as a good thought as to what everyone is looking for. I have to say for photoshop, which I have never used, it must be a good program. Seeing how everyone keeps talking about it. I still look at the pictures that everyone post at times agree with people about them but at times I don't. At some point I just want to say " proof is in the eye of the beholder". But all we have to go on is what people say. I never seen any pictures of Spirits until the internet. But I have beleived in the after life for some time.

Well what I think of that is u need a picture or footage of the dead person in todays date. My wish is of someone that everyone knows that had died yrs ago and take his/her picture as a ghost . A photograph, a EVP, video, anything. Why I am here I guess

I agree with everyone so far on this one. I would also like to add that also alot of us know how really rare it is to even get a full body appearation pic of a spirit. And so many people want to believe that they have a pic of a orb or ghost so badly. And i think lots of ppl want the attention. Like someone said already it is too easy now for someone to fake them with all the technology out now.

I think WannabeSkeptic hit the nail right on the head. It is fear. People are afraid of what they don't understand. It's human nature. Accepting that a ghost or ET photo is real would mean that they might now have to be afraid of things they wouldn't be afraid of otherwise. So they squash down that fear by saying everything is either fake or "too good to be true". As the old saying goes...."There is nothing to fear but fear itself."

I think it's hard for some people to believe in something they can not see or touch. Therefore they have a hard time finding this subject to be true, also you have alot of people who do not believe in God or satan, no heaven or hell, so this would make it hard to believe in the spirt world!

thank you for all your replys guys, you know spending a month here made me realize something, real or not, ghosts does exist, either visible or in our minds, and no matter what no one can proove us which one should we believe, maybe they are reflection in our minds that made us believe they are real, maybe they do exist but our mind makes us believe they cant be, i guess it will take a long time for us to figure that out, there are too many paranormal stuff going on and many of them are unexplained, who can answer for sure? nobody i guess, but with the help of people, we at least will have a little proof that will take our belief one step closer to the answer, thank you guys

Although this thread started out talking specifically about photographic proof of the paranormal, it has also expanded to a discussion of the larger subject of belief and the role of proof in belief. Which is a huge subject, to which I have given a lot of thought... (More on that later.)

As for the initial subject of photographic proof, I would like to introduce something which I did not see come up in the other posts.

We all of us have grown up in a time where Hollywood and its stepchild Television have striven very hard to fool our eyes. When one speaks of "special effects" it once meant just fire and explosions, but now means creating a virtual body or character which is designed to be indistinguishable from the real. Their whole task is to make us accept it as real.

So we are now 2 generations who have the idea built into us that something which looks "too good to be true" may have been built from the ground up by some guy sitting in a studio.

We have kids watching Gollum talk to them every day from their TVs. So it is not so much an unwillingness to believe as common sense, when we question the "reality" of something in a photographic or video image.

When I see what I can do to a photograph (restoring, not faking) with off-the-shelf software on my home computer, it is only reasonable to question any photographic "proof" of anything.

-=Stanton=-

maybe cause we dont want to belive, or maybe " i gotta see to belive " since theres SO MANY fakes out there, and just want to belive but at same time dont. confuisng i dont know...

sorry i didnt get your point, whats that got to do with our belief? i mean even if they make it perfect, we can see special effects in pictures or videos, expecially in videos, its obvious, when it comes to pictures, some pic hoaxed very very good, thats where our good friends come in play, they make it visible to our eyes using programs like photoshop etc.. so one way or another if it is fake it is fake, my point is, even if we cant find a clue that it is fake, and it has to be true, we still say " its too good to be true"

So your saying, that we all should just believe everything blindly without asking any questions

Absolutely not! My point was that I have seen Kalabalana belittle someone on more than one occasion for asking questions that might clarify a situation. They seem to think that because we ask questions about a story or situation that we automatically agree with and believe what is posted. There is a haughty attitude that Kalabalana carries around these boards that seems to convey a message that if anyone has ANY belief in ANYTHING paranormal they are ignorant. If one does or doesnt believe it shouldnt bother anyone else around here. We are all here to research, learn, grow. Everyone has their own questions and fear and experiences and no one should be belittled for what they post.

I would say that the main reason most people don't want to believe is that they have been taught from childhood to not believe, or rather, exactly what to believe. Christians have been brought up to believe that the Bible is a font of truth, and the holy "Word of God". Muslims have been brought up believing the same of the Q'uran. More importantly, children are taught that anything they see which is "out of the belief envelop" is nonsense, and are admonished to "stop making things up." In our western culture, the vast majority of us have been schooled in conventional science, by educators who seem to think that they know everything about everything, or at least if an individual educator doesn't, one of his/her colleagues does.

I was brought up to believe in conventional science, and did. It wasn't until, as an adult, I had experiences which I could not deny, and weren't explainable by conventional science, no matter how I tried to do so. Just the impossible, thank you. I don't pretend to know all the answers, I don't. But I am more than willing to look beyond conventional science for answers. After all, at any point in time there has been what would be equivalent to conventional science, and a vast majority of what was considered to be "truth" in fact wasn't, and there has been a continual change in what is acceptable to believe. While I don't accept anything at face value, neither do I automatically dismiss that which appears to violate conventional science. I remind myself that just over a century ago, Roentgen, in 1885, discovered X-rays. He noticed that photographic film which hadn't been exposed to light in any way was somehow fogged when developed . It would have been easy for him to dismiss that, by rationalizing that somehow it had to have been exposed. (It must have been a defect in the film, perhaps) Instead, he believed that his observation was not deniable, however weird the results were, It must have seemed impossible that anything could pass through opaque coverings, and invisible in every other way, but which caused a similar result as light would have. His reasoning had to fly in the face of everything he had been previously taught. Instead of dismissing it, or ignoring it, he experimented and came to discover what was previously unknown . . X-rays. A heck of a lesson for all the absolute skeptics out there. We might not now have explanations for everything, but it is a certainty that we never will if we just dismiss that which doesn't conform with present scientific beliefs.

Something has to thought-provoke these ppl in the forum someday. I wonder what it is...
I think the footage or proof of Ghosts wont be in the public's eye for sometime. Because, it would the scientists will be all over it. There is some lucky person will win the noble prize in the Paranormal, or Physics. Will life go on with the new awareness? I think so and then we will know with a 99.99999999% certainty that All of is will go to Heaven or to Hell

I don't know why i guess its just human nature

Speaking from experience iv realized allot of people just don’t want to be disappointed. Its sort of a similar thing with believing in god. Some people don’t want to put all there hopes into something that could be nothing.