An image captured on a digital camera provides the ultimate evidence that ghosts exist. The image - of ruins of a Scottish castle, Tantallon Castle (near Edinburgh) - captured by Christopher Aitchison, a day-tripper is a solid evidence of ghosts being real.
"I was not aware of anyone, or anything, being present in my picture, only noticing the anomaly when I got home," Aitchison said.
The image was clicked in May 2008 and was released publicly on 26 March by Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire.
To check the authenticity of the image, three experts on Photoshop verified the image and concluded the image was real with absolutely no special effects incorporated in it.
Three weeks before Wiseman had embarked on an online research project, wherein he invited Web users to send in photographs of ghosts, if they had any. He initiated this activity just for fun, but received a huge response from people across the globe.
He placed 50 best images on the Web out of hundreds of images that he received. About 250,000 people voted for the best and the most realistic image.
About existence of ghosts, Professor Wiseman said, “That belief is everywhere, across countries and cultures. It plays on much bigger ideas about life and death, and there's no doubt that, for many of the people who contacted me, there is comfort in the notion that people who have been harmed in life might be able to come back and wreak their revenge.”
Nearly a third of people in Britain believe in ghosts and one in ten claims to have seen one. But nobody has a concrete proof.
Most of the images sent by the Web surfers had probably been clicked in petrifying environments; dark, dusty, unfamiliar and scary, which led many of them to interpret “orbs”, the reflection of dust in a camera flash light, as evidence of ghosts, maintained Professor Wiseman.
Thus, most of the images were rubbish and were not at all convincing, he further added.
However, the photograph taken at Tantallon Castle had spine-chilling elements in it.
“I do find the Tantallon image curious. People are often keen to find ghostly explanations, and to kid themselves about the paranormal. But equally, science must be open to possibility - you have to hold fire when you can't explain something, or you haven't all the information,” Professor Wiseman said.
Ghost hunters and believers suggested that the ghostly visage is James V, the Scottish King who was imprisoned in the Scottish castle in the 1520s when he was a teenager. But there is no explanation why he has returned to haunt the place as a full-grown man.
The image has created a buzz around the world and has become the ultimate proof of existence of ghosts for thousands of people.
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