the cemetery test

Tonight we made a pit stop at the cemetery by our house with Brittani and Jason to see if any orbs would show up in our pictures. We weren't disappointed. Josh and I aren't convinced of what this is all about yet, but I can say this... it's quite odd.

The perfect OCTOBER tale...

I have a crazy story to share, but first I must preface it with a little history. For those of you that don't know, I work at pictureline. It is an amazing photography store in Salt Lake that caters to professionals. I have worked there for 2 years now and have loved learning more and more about this line of work. You can check out my amazing face on their website at http://www.pictureline.com/info/aboutus.php.
Just before Josh and my honeymoon last year we decided to buy a fancy point and shoot camera. We purchased the Canon TX1. At the time it was a pretty innovative camera that has a 10x zoom and can also record 480P HD video. To say the least we have loved it. It takes great pictures and even better video. Up to this point we have not had any complaints about this little guy.
Well Tuesday night I met up with my sister and her husband Dean at a gymnastic tumbling gym in South Provo, and while I was there I took several pictures of everyone goofing around and having a good time. When I got back to the house I pulled out my camera and looked at the pictures I had taken. Several of the shots had translucent circles in them.
Since working at pictureline I have helped customers on numerous occasions with their cameras, but I could not figure out what might have caused this. Sometimes dust on your lens or sensor can show up, but it would be consistently in the same place in EVERY picture. Puzzled I went to work the next day to consult with my coworkers of whom many are professional photographers themselves.

I was surprised that no one really knew what the cause could be. Luckily our Canon sales rep, Kevin, was scheduled to come in that afternoon. He would for sure have an answer on how to fix my camera. As soon as he arrived I pulled him aside and showed him my images and ask him what could have caused the spots. His reply was that there was nothing wrong with my camera, and that it was just an encounter with "orbs". I don't know about you, but I don't know what the heck "orbs" are. He then told me that they are spirits. At this point I thought he was just messing with me so I told him that I wasn't buying it and that I needed a technical answer. He told me that there was no technical answer and that it was a commonly experienced phenomenon, especially in old buildings and cemeteries. I still thought that he was full of it, but he told me to google it and see what I could find.

Here are the google results...

What are these balls of transparent light we find in photos taken in allegedly haunted places? I won't tell you I know the answer to this question. No one has the true answer to this question yet, but that's part of the job of researchers and investigator.

One of the leading theories concerning what orbs are and the one that I lean towards the most is that they are not the spirit at all. The orb is the energy being transferred from a source (i.e. power lines, heat energy, batteries, people, etc) to the spirit so they can manifest. This may not even be a conscious thing the spirit is doing, just a natural way they get their energy. This would explain why the orbs are round balls. According to the laws of Physics energy being transferring like that would assume is natural shape of a sphere. This theory can also be tied into the EMF readings we get during spirit activity.

I always approach things with a bit of skepticism, so when I saw all these websites start showing off these photos as ghosts, I was just as weary as most of you. I just had to try it for myself. I took a 35mm camera that I had used regularly for 6 years in all types of lighting and weather and had never gotten an orb or other unexplainable photo before and went out with a few seasoned field investigators on a cemetery investigation. One of the investigators was psychic and she pointed out a few areas we should take photos, so I did. I also had ghost footsteps walk up behind me twice and I turned around quickly and took photos of the empty air. When I got my photos developed, I had these orbs and fog in those photos that I was told to take, as well as the footstep ones. All my other photos were normal. Coincidence?

Kevin then said his dad had just recently passed away and all the pictures that he took at his dad's house had just one orb in them. Crazy right?

I couldn't handle all this orb talk without getting to the bottom of it, so I started questioning all of my co-workers to see if they had heard of orbs.

Ken said that one of our customers had an experience similar to the one I found online where she had gone to a cemetery and taken pictures at night and when she developed her film, it was covered in orbs. One of the prints she blew up and inside one of the spheres was a women's face. She was so shocked that she brought in the print and shared it with everyone and has now joined a group that studies supernatural events such as these.

Dana, another co-worker was a major skeptic. However she said that she first learn about orbs when she was visiting Prague last year with her husband. One night they went out, shot some pictures of a Jewish cemetery, and every shot was filled with these translucent spheres.


SO I DON'T KNOW IF I'M CONVINCED, BUT I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE MY PICTURES AND YOU GUYS CAN TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF IT.

ENJOY :)

I know this last shot is pretty blurry, but that did not chase away the clarity of the orbs.

This is a picture that I took today at work just to make sure that my camera IS working and that it could take an "orb" free image.



DO YOU BELIEVE IN ORBS???

Our New Car

So Sharon & I found out that Mini Coopers are TERRIBLE cars. They basically fall apart and cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix...that's why we bought another Avalon! Since mine has been amazing we thought it would be a good route to go. Anyway, here are some pics. 

Babysitting

Last night our neighbors asked us if we could babysit their kids. I have been home sick with a cold for the last two days, so that left Josh with baby duties. He really stepped up to the plate. He is going to be such a cute dad. This is MaKenna and she is the perfect baby. She never cries. She just sits around making cute baby noises all night long. If we could only guarantee that when we have a child they would be just like this.
MaKenna is totally content to sit her baby carrier. She was especially mesmerized by the dangling butterfly and flowers.

It looks like he's a natural!

American Fork Canyon

We went camping with Brittani and Jason in American Fork Canyon. Brittani already blogged about it, so I stole her blog because she told of the experience so well. I am pretty proud of these pictures because I was able to take a Nikon D300 and an 18-200mm lens with me (about $3,000 worth of equipment. ) It was a blast.

Hurley loved to be outside in nature.Just setting up camp.

We bought matching camping chairs. They are so comfy!

Brittani and Hurley dog.

After we got all set up, we decided to go on a little hike. The trails close at dusk, and that is when we arrived. We decided to head out on our journey anyway thinking there would be enough day light left. After we had been walking for about a mile, Josh heard a noise that spooked us all. We decided the trails close at dusk for a reason and took off running for our lives thinking there was a bear or wild bore out there! Once we got to the car, we realized there really wasn't anything out there, but we were ready to leave. Josh reached in his pocket to get his car keys to open the door, and they were gone. We figured they fell out of his pocket when we took off running. So we headed back down the trail trying to find our needle in a hay stack. We decided to say a prayer for some help and guidance on finding these keys.

This is what the sky looked like after we had been looking for about 30 minutes. So we were out in the mountains stranded, about 30 minutes away from our camp site, and it was getting dark. One other thing you should know is that we didn't have a flash light. So we were using our cell phones as light, and they weren't working too well. Just a side note... On the way to the trail we talked about turning around to bring a flash light, but we decided against it. I'm pretty sure we were regretting that decision about now.

After about an hour and a half of looking, Josh found his keys! They were about 2 feet off the path in the tall grass. I know our prayers were answered that night and we were blessed to be able to find the keys and get back to camp. I am so grateful for prayer!


On our way back to the camp site we had an interesting experience...

So we just had this spiritual experience with being blessed to find our keys and we started the drive back to the camp. On our way down the windy narrow road, we saw a man running down the right side of the road. We thought that was kind of weird for him to be jogging late at night in the mountains. Well, it got even weirder when we got closer because the only thing this man was wearing was his socks and shoes, and the Burger King Man mask. (you know the burger king man you see on the commercials) Yeah... I am not lying to you! It was so random and after the fact pretty funny. We decided it was probably a college kid who lost a bet.So you'd think that was enough adventure for one night...not quite! When we got back to our campsite it was locked. There were a few of us locked out with all of our stuff inside, so we had to figure out how to break in over the exit spikes. The middle car didn't dare try and took off.After we came up with the plan of using our car mats to hold the spikes down, Jason and I helped this guy get his SUV through, then he and J helped helped me get over the spikes too.

Once we finally got back we decided to build a fire and cook some dinner.

About an hour after we went to bed that night we woke up to animal noises in our camp site. At this point we just couldn't handle any more excitement in our night. We were scared thinking it could be a bear or something. Turns out is was a couple of massive raccoons who were eating Hurley's dog food. So the boys got up and put the dog food and the coolers in the cars. Finally, it was time for the eventful night to be over.

The next day we woke up and hiked the Timpanogos cave.
The hike was really hard, but so beautiful!

This squirrel picture was one of my favorites of the trip.

Welcome back to UTAH!!!

This is a picture that I took out the window of our car in Utah on our way back from Texas. Although our heart is in Texas, Utah can sure be beautiful.

The Lake house was one of the highlights of our trip. The Vernon's have been such a big part of all of the Falk kid's lives and they think of them as a second set of parents. My little sister Amy was able to come this trip and wakeboarded for the first time. She did great!