Out There often get sent photos, that people want us to look at, because some sort of strange anomaly appears in the image, that they just cannot explain.
Most of the time we can see it's just something like an orb or a lens flares, anomalies that quite commonly appear these days, with the advent of modern digital photography .
I’m not going to go on, and explain about these sorts of anomalies, that particular topic, is already earmarked for a future Out There video, explaining the orb phenomena, and touching on other anomalies that can appear in images.
What I want to look at now, is one particular image, that was sent to us, by one of our FaceBook group members, and here it is.
At first glance, its fairly obvious that there is a lens flare in the picture. Taking photos directly towards a light source, can produce these anomalies, and they can appear in all sorts of different shapes, and sizes.
They often appear off at a similar angle, from the light source in question.
What caught the eye, was the actual shape of the anomaly itself, on close inspection, it resembles an angel
Now of course, its very easy to just write off these images, it is, after all, just a lens flare, easy to explain, and pareidolia makes the image resemble an angel, as your brain tries to find a pattern, in the random image.
This time however, I was very interested in the back story attached to the image.
As a research based group, we like to get a full background story for the images, if we can.
So here is the chain of events leading up to the image being taken. "I heard my daughter calling me from her bedroom, she sounded quite scared, so I went to see what was wrong. She pointed up to the corner, and said there was a strange light there. I looked up, and could see this little light hovering in the corner.
My daughter took a photo, using her iPhone, no flash was used, and the picture we sent you, was the result
The little light I saw, did not look like the one in the photo.
It all happened so quickly, just a few seconds if that.
I told my daughter, not to worry, it was just her Angel looking over her."
Reading the back story, suddenly makes the image more interesting, so lets take a more indepth look at the whole thing. There was something visible there, prior to the photo being taken, something that scared the daughter into shouting out for her mum.
On entering the room, the mother also saw something, she described it as a light hovering there.
They decided to take a photo, as it was so unusual, and the resulting image is the one we see.
The light they both witnessed in the room, did not look like the anomaly captured in the photograph.
Yes the photo is a lens flare, unfortunately taking a photo directly towards a light source, will produce a flare.
The small green light anomaly does have the shape of an angel about it, but as I said earlier, your brain is going to try an match the image to something familiar, and the shape will make you think, its a angel, because angels are a common image, that most of us have seen depicted in picture
if you were to share his image on any number of paranormal group pages, you would get two schools of thought, one would see the angel, and tell you..its definitely an angel, they might elaborate on the tale a bit, by saying its a guardian angel looking over you, in a similar way that the lady did to reassure her frightened daughter.
the other school would tell you its a lens flare, nothing more nothing less, sometimes you would get an explanation of what a lens flare is, they would point out the obvious light source, the ceiling light, and say thats why there is a flare, or perhaps they would be rude, and make the person sharing the photo, feel completely ridiculous.
I could have just said lens flare, given a brief explanation, and left it at that, but I always ask for the story behind the image, because its important to understand the reasoning for taking the image. In this particular case, there was something unusual taking place, two eye witnesses both seeing the same thing, prior to capturing the image.
Now, if the lady in question, and her daughter start to experience more unusual activity, and want us to investigate, we have already started a chain of evidence, and thats so important when you are investigating.
So. do I think the photo contains an image of an angel? No, its a lens flare, with a particular shape, that resembles an angel, nothing more than that
but most importantly of all, we took the time to carefully analysis the image, and we asked for extra background information, we now have that on record, ready to use, if we are called into action.