Orbs Among Us

Several years ago, I attended a belly dancing showcase. The women were dancing in a small restaurant, and I knew several of them as I had been taking lessons for about a year. One of the dancers, Fern, asked me to take pictures of her with her camera, and I happily obliged. After her dance was over, she asked me if I had seen the orbs in the viewfinder, and I had no idea what she was talking about. She took the digital camera and scrolled through and showed me a picture of a woman who had just danced. She pointed to several small circular balls at the bottom of the image and then showed me several other pictures with blobs on them. That definitely piqued my curiosity.

 (image from Celtic Gardens website)

I'd studied spiritual phenomenon for years, but had never heard of orbs. What were these little balls that seemed to float in the air? According to Wikipedia, orb artifacts are captured during low-light instances where the camera's flash is used, such as at night or underwater—or where a bright light source is near the camera. "There is no doubt that dust particles, pollen, or moisture droplets in the air can produce images that may in some respects resemble true orb photographs, and care must be taken to assess the evidence," writes Miceal Ledwith in the book The Orb Project. Then what is a true orb? Some people think they are spiritual balls of energy, ghosts, or angels.

I asked Fern if she knew why the orbs appeared only on her camera, and she answered that she wore here camera whenever she could and asked for the orbs to appear. It was as though she "trained" her camera and attracted the orbs. I checked out some other websites discussing orbs and they claim the same thing: "Ask and ye shall receive." It seems orbs follow the Law of Attraction, which I discussed in my previous blog. Of course they show up at times when the photographer doesn't ask for them, so is there any theme as to when they appear? 

"It's not uncommon for dozens of orbs to appear in a photograph where there is a happy or healing event taking place" says Ledwith. Fern commented that they tend to show up when people dance or are joyous. I was still skeptical about these little spots on the digital screen until a few weeks later when I was discussing orbs with a neighbor. I described what they looked like and she exclaimed, "I'll be back in a minute!" She returned with her camera and started to go through her stored pictures. Then she yelled, "Look! Is that an orb?" And sure enough, there was the floating drop on the lower half of the image. It appeared in several shots of her daughter dancing in a restaurant while they were waiting for a table.

It does seem as though nature, music, dancing, joyous or healing situations tend to attract orbs. Sometimes there are only one or two, other times there are dozens in a photograph. But Dr. Ledwith points on his Amazon website out that once you develop a keen and sustained interest in photographing spirit entities, some quite interesting things begin to happen: the brain stops censoring these images, and you can begin to see with orbs with the naked eye -- in more color and detail than is visible to even a digital camera. Sounds cool! 

I watched a DVD, Orbs: The Veil is Lifting, when I was learning about them, and saw it in my DVD case today. It reminded me to try and capture orbs of my own. I'll use one of my old digital cameras to see if setting an intention to draw them to me works, and will post here if I see any orbs in photos of our upcoming trip to Mexico (where I hope to take lots of pictures of happy people and magnetize some balls of light!).