I wondered, last time, if any of those surveillance cameras had ever captured a ghost.
A quick search on Yahoo (surveillance camera ghost) turned up this as the top hit. It's an impressive one, with no immediately obvious alternative explanation.
There was also a famous story of a ghost caught on video at Hampton Court (UK), in 2003, although that looks like it might have been faked. It's certainly not a particularly convincing image.
A fairly recent camera-capture (which I admit I should have remembered!) took place in a shop in Gloucestershire . This was one of a UK-wide chain of shops, who would not need to set this up to gain publicity. Unfortunately the video is grossly out of focus. Inexcusable! The picture quality wouldn't be good enough to identify a live burglar, never mind a ghost.
There are a few reports available, though I expected more. Most of the links I tried linked to the same reports, and most of those were reports with no pictures. The Gloucestershire film is too fuzzy to be sure of anything. By far the best I've seen is the car lot image (the first link).
There must be more of these snippets of film out there somewhere. Every high street, every railway and bus station, every public building is thoroughly covered by surveillance cameras, inside and out, and they're all active all night long.
Perhaps, as I've often suspected, nobody's actually watching at the other end. Most security systems run unattended and are only examined if there's been a break-in. Why check the tape in the morning, if everything is as you left it the night before? It makes me shudder to wonder how many recorded sightings were never watched, and might even have been taped over by now.
Bring back the nightwatchman. All those cameras represent an enormous potential for study, and it's all going to waste. Someone should be there, all the time.
It'll never happen though, not as long as video recorders are cheaper than guards.
2 comments:
Hey Rom!
With Halloween coming up I'm wondering - how do all the ghosts handle that?
Sorry to disappoint, but there's nothing all that special about Halloween as far as the sprits are concerned.
All that devil worshipping nonsense, all that black magic, was made up by the early Church to demonise the religion of the time - particularly the Celtic religion - and turn people against their festivals.
It's Celtic New Year. There can be no satanic involvement because the Celts had no equivalent of Satan or Hell.
The 'witches dancing naked' stories owe more to the imaginations of Puritan witch-trial judges than to real life. Midnight on October 31st is pretty damn cold in the UK. You won't want to be naked out there. The whole 'sky-clad' idea comes from Gerald Gardner's New Age witchcraft. It's not authentic.
Neither are the ghosts of Halloween. The spirits are there all the time. They might not even be aware of the passage of time, never mind the date. Halloween is a creation of the Celts, corrupted by the Church and usurped by modern-day Pagans. There's nothing particularly 'hallowed' about it. Pagans use the date as a convenience for the timing of their rituals, just as Christians regard Easter and Christmas (both timed to overlay original Pagan events) as symbolic, rather than actual representations of events in their faith.
If you want to test whether ghostly activity is greater on Halloween than on any other night, the infrastructure is already in place to do that. All those surveillance cameras will be running.
You'll need massive funding though, and there'll be an awful lot of tape-hours to scan.
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