Ghosts are Proof of God

Good for you. You are recycling.

"Catching on" to what? That professional artists work for money? Earth shaking news, Wong (and I mean that in every sense of the word).

Then if ghosts exist, like the one so many have experienced at Raynham Hall, it's quite possible to photograph it. Thanks.

No. You declined to chase my "red herring" because you couldn't do it, and there is no reason whatsoever, as I pointed out, to believe that you could track down English sea captains of the '30's, or commercial photographers, for that matter (much to the contrary of your attempts to claim as proof of his lack of success, you can't find a trace of Provan on Google). It's asinine to say the least.

All of these photographers are non commercial photographers and their artistic merit makes them famous.
This says nothing about other photographers that may not be on your very short list. Try harder next time.

Exhibit number 2,896 of your unbounded elitism.
No photographer could be good for anything but taking pictures of children on Santa's knee unless they make your list...right? God, you are sad.

The matter was examined and it is you who are taking the position that you know the examination was faulty. Not me. Now prove it.

Right.... In the same sense that Sports Illustrated and National Geographic photographers
are little better than Olan Mills rejects? That Country Life chose Provan and Shire to do a pictorial for it's magazine is ipso facto proof of their highly regarded reputation. Someday you may admit the obvious (it must suck to be taken to the wood shed like this).

All easily countered. (1) Did defective bellows cause a hoax photo of a ghost? I don't see how.
(2) The "almost certainly" level of proof absolutely certainly does not constitute fact. (3)Did Indie Shira, knowing he was at a place reputed to be haunted, make his comment in jest or ironically? This seems completely likely. (4) Did Lady Townsend take the photo herself? If not, you have no point and the Townsend estate was already known for housing the Brown Lady, so there goes that motivation.

(5) I don't see how this is germane in any way (Lady Townsend thought it the Virgin Mary).
By the way, from your excellent Fortean piece "He (Harry Price) was also a skilled conjuror, but his reputation has suffered greatly since his death, with allegations that he colluded in photographic fakery." This certainly puts your claim that photographic hoaxes, far from being harmful to a photographers reputation, may benefit it, where it properly belongs...in the garbage bin. Thanks for the article, by the way.
And (6) without seeing the uncropped version I cannot comment on a feature of the photo that no one but one single examiner claimed to have seen.

 

The truth is always worth repeating, especially when it is being avoided.

Who has said otherwise? Certainly not me. It's really very sad that in order to glean a tiny victory it has to be on an issue I never disagreed with you on.

No. I declined to chase your red herring because it was a red herring. And you have just admitted as much in that you had no interest whatsoever in the result.

Every single one of these photographers was a professional, and almost all of them did commercial work. You really have no idea what you are talking about.

You are the only one here who has talked about pictures of Santa Clause. But I note in passing that taking pictures of a fake ghost is not that different from taking pictures of a fake Santa.

Provand and Shira were essentially nobodies. Had they not taken this single photograph, they would be even less.

Oh... I am very content with the result of the examination of the matter. Lets review what the investigation found:

1. The camera was known to be defective.

2. The photograph was almost certainly a double exposure.

3. Indre Shira showed up hoping to photograph a ghost.

4. The then Lady Townsend had just contributed to a book about the ghost and could have benefited from the publicity.

5. The then Lady Townsend was insistent that the image was not actually the "Brown Lady" at all.

6. The image commonly seen is cropped to conceal a number of anomalies caused by shaking or double exposure.

I can find vast amounts on line for any of these people who were important. Sports photographers: Walter Iooss, Neil Leifer, Aaron Chang, Hy Money, even from the 1930s... people like Charles Conlon and Tony Frissel.

National Geographic Photographers: Ira Block, Joel Sartore, John Stanmeyer, Frans Lanting, and in the 1930s folks like Luis Marsden... google any of them.

Compare what you find to Provand and Shira.

It very well could have. The problem with the bellows was it let in light. That could easily create an amorphous smudge of the sort seen in that photo.

Every time you make a bald demand for proof, you do so only because you actually have no counter argument at all. What happened to "easily countered?"



There absolutely are double images on the photograph. An actual double exposure is the single most prosaic explanation.

Who knows? All we know is that he made the comment, thus eliminating any excuse that Shira hadn't thought about it ahead of time.

Are you crazy? You don't think getting a photograph published in Country Life would help her book sales? Naive and credulous. Life must be very hard for you.

You have yourself repeatedly stressed that this was a ghost with a long history , and that it was recognizable as the lady in the portrait in the brown brocade dress. Lady Towsend seems to agree more with me that it is little more than a smudge on a staircase.

You don't find that germane? Weird.

Again, you seem hopeless confused. Read his wikipedia article. He actually had a reputation to lose.

Provand and Shira were nobodies.

Lucky you.

 

Remember this?

Guess what. It does prove to be a magazine given to publishing ghost stories after all.

More at... wait for it....

Country Life

 

Oh, oh, oh... it gets worse. Here are just a few ghost stories from Country Life:

Country House Ghosts

Ghost experts called in at Croxteth Hall

Top 10 haunted country houses

The most haunted houses in England and Wales

Tim Richardson on haunted gardens

Haunted houses – easily sold?

Haunted house in Yorkshire

OMFG... it goes on for six more pages of just story headlines!!!!!

Yosh, you want to rethink that claim that "Country Life was not a magazine given to publishing ghost stories?"

 

The only thing we have that indicates any god or gods is human myth and superstition, and supposition. There is NO fact, no bit of real evidence that any god exists. Just anecdotal human witnessing to what they believe. There is no evidence of any supreme being and creator or any god. There is much evidence that primitive humans who had little real knowledge of the world, believed that everything was a god, rocks, rivers, the sun, everything including animals,oh, they left out one thing--MAN. So, over a period of time they left the animal and rock gods behind and created a god in their OWN image. When civiliazation began and mad had free time (not spent with hunting and gathering food to survive) he suddenly realized that he was better than the rocks and critters and so began to reshape his gods into the most powerful thing he knew, HUMAN FORM. The more civilized, the more human the gods, LOL. OOG and OGG, gods in animal form, Egypt gods with animal heads and human bodies, Greece and Rome, gods in human form but more powerful, as powerful as humans of the time wished they themselves could be. Then you have today's Christianity, with GOD actually becoming a human, ROFLOLOLOL, all the way from rock to human, I guess it is time to reverse the process or, no, wait, Maybe god was a alien, LOLOLO,.

 

Religious faith is the unreasoning, non-fact based belief in nonsense.
FAITH on the other hand is a strong belief in something for valid reasons. I have faith no god or gods exist, I have faith that barking dogs bite, I have faith in million things, and all of it is based on factual info.

Yes, you can have faith without religion, but that faith is not the unreasoning faith that religious people claim, that is why I keep them seperate.

 

I always crack up watching shows like Ghost Hunters when they "ask" a ghost to do something to reveal themself. Hearing is physical in nature where sound waves are tranmitted as vibrations which are picked up by the ear and then tranferred to nerves which are interpreted by the brain. If there isn't a physical entity it can't hear sounds. I always laugh at these idiots because if there were ghosts, and no physical evidence suggests ghosts exist, then GHOSTS CAN'T HEAR YOU!!

 

You should start a Greek Mythology thread.

 

You are entitled to your opinions.

 

I find proof of god everytime I eat a bowl of pasta. The evidence for the Flying Spaghetti Monster cannot be denied.

 

Is the picture you provided supposed to be a picture of your god or is it supposed to be a picture of what is in the bowl that you are eating from?

 

You can't handle the truth!

I just want to make it clear that you admit a photo of a ghost is possible.

Not even remotely! In order to denigrate Provan and Shirie you have to falsely claim that because you can't find any Google information on them (aside from the Brown Lady stuff) that's proof they were little better than Olan Mills hacks.

So I invited you to Google up information on another popular profession ('30's English sea captains) to demonstrate Google isn't omniscient and that sort of information is well before the internet age and out of their reach.
After providing a couple of lists that were nothing like what I requested you simply and disingenuously threw in the towel and claimed it didn't matter anyway (a red herring, you called it...after you failed miserably).

Like Ansel Adams, perhaps? He did "commercial" work only in the sense that he took pictures of the wealthy patrons that bought his artsy portfolios. You must have really suffered a head injury in order to claim that the photographers you listed were not known absolutely for their artistic merit.
There certainly is no other reason for you to list them other than their artistic renown. Ironic.

Right...because successful magazines always hire untalented nobodies. It helps their product so.
Did you laugh when you wrote this? Because it made me laugh.

Already dealt with. Must you repeat yourself constantly?

Incredible the lengths you will go to stack the deck. Charles Conlon, for instance, was known precisely for his thousands (per Wikipedia) of portraits of major league baseball players. If Provan were American, instead of English, and took photos of celebrity ball players, instead of moldy English ancestral homes, he might be as well known as Conlon. For you to constantly, and dishonestly, insist that Provan was a hack is a lie and not one you can possibly substantiate.
I am tired of dealing with the same B.S. claims over and over again.

You call it an amorphous smudge. Others, like Lady Townsend (who thinks the photo shows the Virgin Mary...hardly an amorphous smudge), disagree.

No one else has mentioned this double exposure. Let's have a look.

Again, based on the few spare words you provided, it's impossible to know the spirit in which the comment was made. Did he mention photographing a ghost in jest because of the reputation the Townsend estate had?
If he was at Area 51 might he also joke about getting a snapshot of ET while there? The chances are, yes!

Interesting theory. Perhaps Townsend paid off Provan and Shirie to produce a ghost photo. But then again, perhaps not. We just don't know and in any event, Townsend thought the figure photographed was the Virgin Mary (not the ghost, Lady Walpole). So we are back at square one.

A smudge? She called the figure the Virgin Mary. That's hardly a "smudge".

Irrelevant by the standards you have already spouted off. By your own words hoaxers not only have nothing to lose by deceiving people, but they actually gain popularity and notoriety for their scams. But we see in actuality what happens to your lame theories when put into practice. Let's see, what did you say again?
Oh, yeah...now I remember.

Except in the "field" of paranormal phenomenon. Demonstrated fakes like Yuri Gellar and Ted Serios can keep running their scams long after they've been exposed. After all, they have pre-identified the community of folks who will not only fall for their hoaxes, but defend them for it.

Nice call, Dr. Deception!

I'm sure you'd prefer that I just take your word for everything, but as the previous comment shows, you really can't be trusted with the truth.

 

Actually ghosts and gods are on the exact same level, both are superstitious nonsense.

 

Then you have religious faith. A faith based on not one iota of evidence.

 

Contrary to your opinion... there is equal amount or more for the existence of God as there is for the existence of an electron. Science dubbed the name 'electron' and assigned it to something that they cannot prove to exist. They recognize a 'force' that is active and they arbitrarily assigned it the name 'electron'. No fact involved to justify the name electron,,, just imagination.

 

A pointless act.

Prove otherwise. Find me a single other photograph either of them took.

Sucks to be you. Read this and weep:

How many times now have we caught you in this thread red handed just making up bullsh*t? You insisted that Country Life didn't publish ghost stories when a cursory check found they do so constantly. You insist that Provand and Shira were highly respected photographers when Shira wasn't apparently even a photographer at all. And now you insist that Ansel Adams never did commercial photography when he depended on it for almost his entire career.

My god, Yosh. Control yourself.

Who said they were untalented? We have no way of judging their talent beyond this one photo, since they left not a single additional trace of their existences.

But they certainly were nobodies. In Shira's case we don't even know his real name.

Yep. He was an important photographer.

Provand and Shira were nobodies.

How wonderfully impressive.

Family Sees Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus in a Tortilla

‘Virgin Mary grilled cheese’ sells for $28,000

Some see Virgin Mary's image in hospital window

By the way... all of these are amorphous smudges too.

Why do I bother linking you to resources you never read?

For god's sake man, Read the article. It was Lady Towsend who testified that he arrived hoping to photograph a ghost.

And square one is a smudge on a staircase.

And in this case that has been starkly played out. The only reputation of these two men that even survives is because of this photo. Had they not taken it, nobody would be aware they even existed.

A strike down the middle.

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHSKgdVd_I"]Famous Ghost Picture debunked: The brown lady ghost of Raynham hall - YouTube[/ame]

 

I don't necessarily believe the explanation but as a former photographer I could have faked this on the negative without any problems whatsoever. A long exposure with a piece of paper cut to that shape and placed on the lens for part of the exposure time will produce the identical image by blocking the light enough to leave the image shown. It will also be "out of focus" leaving the edges blurry like the photo. It is so simple that literally anyone with a manual camera, which professionals use, can do it.

The explanation used relates to a double exposure and it is possible but is more work for the photographer. In any case the photograph is unquestionably a fake.

 

Aren't they the same? LOL

 

I always crack up when I hear that people actually watch such nonsense as Ghost hunters.

 

You are calling them hacks...not me! It's up to you to justify your claim. The fact that they were chosen by a prestigious magazine to photograph the Townsend estate is all the proof I need to dispel your lies.

This does absolutely nothing to dispel my claim. What is Ansel Adams known for? His photos of Yosemite or his work on behalf of PG&E? To even ask the question is to answer it. You had to go dig up the information that Adams made side money by working for corporate interests, whereas everyone knows about his nature photographs. Sucks more to be a disingenuous clown like you.

Define "ghost story". Did they identify English properties that were renowned for being inhabited by ghosts? Yes! Did they promote, elaborate and pimp on behalf of ghosts per se? No!

I identified some of the commercial portrait work that Adams did to support his artistic photos. Stop lying.

Ummm....you have. Over and over again. You said they were no better than Olan Mills hacks. Did you forget so soon?

That you can locate, anyway.

Without looking it up, what was Houdini's real name? Most people couldn't tell you so I suppose by your standards he was also a "nobody". But your standards are incredibly biased so it figures.
Also empirically the mere fact that Country Life hired Provan to do a photo shoot is ipso facto proof he was held in high regard. So suck on that!

That's the B.S. you try to sell, anyway. I'd refer you back to the rest of my reply to your original point that you omitted dishonestly.

The point is that a main figure in this story didn't find the photo to be an "amorphous smudge" at all. What you think is irrelevant.

I did read it.

Should I repeat the part about the spirit in which he made his remark? He undoubtedly knew about the reputation of Raynham Hall.

Which proves what, do you think?

That proves you've been trapped by your own asinine claims.

 

I have never called them "hacks." You really need to stop putting words into other people's mouths. You simply got caught making up bullsh*t about how they were somehow highly respected professionals who had to worry about their reputations. It turns out to have been a complete fabrication... like your claims about Ansel Adams never doing commercial work or Country Life not doing ghost stories.

It completely exposes your claim as an ignorant lie. Here were your exact words:

"He did "commercial" work only in the sense that he took pictures of the wealthy patrons that bought his artsy portfolios."

Instead the truth was that commercial work was his bread and butter for four decades. You lied. You got caught. Be a man and just suck it up..

More ignorant lies on the part of Yosh Schmenge. Worse, they are completely gratuitous lies since I have even linked you previously to the articles that prove you wrong again. You ask, "Did they promote, elaborate and pimp on behalf of ghosts per se?" Why yes they did. I linked you to a number of articles where they did exactly that.

That was the second example in this thread alone where in the desperate attempt to invent an argument where you have no evidence you simply made up crap.

I can only imagine that even behind the safe facade of an anonymous user name it must sting to be so baldly revealed for what you really are.

As I recall, his name was Eric Weiss.

(looking it up)

Okay, spelled it wrong, but yes that was his name: Ehrich Weiss.

Now it's your turn and I encourage you to use every search engine and library you have access to. What was Indre Shira's real name?

I'll wait.

Because it actually is an amorphous smudge.

So... in little more than three days your "best" proof has been revealed worthless and you have thrice proven to have only the most casual relationship with the truth..

Not your best thread.

What is it about religious belief that drives people to just make sh*t up?

 

Says you. You are of the opinion they were not but I've yet to see the proof they were not respected professionals. Big difference.

My basic central claim is that his name was not on your little list because he did such great work for PG&E. It was because of his artistic reputation and work. Same with the other photographers you listed.
For some reason you try and deny this.

Can you give specific examples?

Like your claims about Provan and his lack of professional accomplishment, you mean?

You ought to know.

Why the little bit here? You probably went straight to Google not knowing who he was.

I have no idea and can't figure out why it should matter?

Your biased opinion matters little still!

Why do you constantly lie and distort the truth to fit your contentions? That's what I want to know. For instance, why do you constantly denigrate Provan based on nothing more than your biased imagination?

 

More ignorant lies on the part of Yosh Schmenge. Worse, they are completely gratuitous lies since I have even linked you previously to the articles that prove you wrong again. You ask, "Did they promote, elaborate and pimp on behalf of ghosts per se?" Why yes they did. I linked you to a number of articles where they did exactly that.

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/countr...Ghost-experts-called-in-at-Croxteth-Hall.html

Here is one of your links. Please demonstrate the section where Country Life, in this brief blurb, is encouraging and promoting a belief in ghosts. The closest you can get to an endorsement for ghosts comes from a spokesman for Croxteth Hall (where this ghost supposedly resides) who says the video of the spirit is "intriguing" and he was "tempted" (but not swayed) to change his mind about the presence of ghosts.
Why lie?

 

You ghost photo is toast. Nothing more to talk about there.

So, just answer me this, Yosh.

You've been caught three times in this thread just making sh*t up that turned out to be so easy to prove false. Three times you tossed out specific information that you just invented on the fly to patch up holes in your argument.

Three times.

Isn't there a commandment against that? Or something?