Ghostly Apparition? or light anomaly?

Close-up of anomaly

What many people refer to as “the holy grail” of the paranormal is to capture an actual full body apparition on film. The term and meaning are taken lightly at times, thus the naming of anomalous humanoid-shaped objects as “full body apparitions” (of ghosts). What is considered an apparition?

I’ve seen several “shadow people” pictures in which investigators call a full body apparition, some looking more like a hoax and others are just unexplainable. The picture of the “shadow being” on the previous link reminds me of my own personal observation of a shadow person.

Something that to this day I have no explanation about. No real understanding of what it was that I saw.

The following news story is from the Miami Herald. About one active haunt at the Deering Estate which was investigated by the “League of Paranormal Investigators“.

Full source: Miami Herald

BY HOWARD COHEN
[email protected]

Neither the hot film Paranormal Activity nor TV’s popular Ghost Hunters can compete with Miami-Dade’s historic Deering Estate at Cutler.

Ghost trackers investigating paranormal activity on the site say they recently found more than 60 disembodied voices coming from the county-owned estate — once the home of wealthy industrialist Charles Deering, of International Harvester fame.

One voice captured on a digital recorder seems to say, “We’re trapped here.”

Don’t believe it? The Deering Estate is opening its doors to the public Thursday evening for its first-ever Ghost Story Tour. And two days before Halloween, the Palmetto Bay site will allow ghost hunters to bring in their own equipment — aura cameras, pendulums, EVP recorders — to snoop around.

Investigators say they found two “full-body apparitions” on the grounds of the estate at 16701 SW 72nd Ave., in Palmetto Bay.

The images were of translucent human forms, a male and female, by the boat basin on Biscayne Bay — with photographic evidence for naysayers to ponder.

“This is what we consider the holy grail in paranormal investigation — a full-body apparition is not a common finding at all,” said Colleen Kelley, from the Coconut Grove-based League of Paranormal Investigators (LPI), which spent two days on the estate in August.

Even seasoned ghost tracker Atena Komar pronounced it “severely haunted.”

Deering scored a 58 on LPI’s point scale, which assigns a value to digital recordings, photographs and eyewitness accounts in determining whether a space has spirits. Any figure 30 and above suggests haunted. LPI had never recorded higher than a 29.

“Any ghost hunting group may have one in all of their collection in all of their years of doing it,” said Kelley, artist by day, ghost hunter by night.

“We had two.”

The 444-acre Deering Estate once was the domain of Paleo-Indians, North America’s earliest human inhabitants, who lived more than 12,000 years ago.

Charles Deering built the two main houses — the 1896 Richmond Cottage, the last surviving structure of the town of Cutler, and the 1922 Stone House — as his retreat. He died there in 1927.

His heirs owned the home until 1985, when Miami-Dade and the state of Florida jointly purchased it and turned it into a historic site.

Over the years, staffers spoke of hearing noises and witnessing odd occurrences, such as elevators moving on their own.

In August, estate administrators commissioned an investigation.

Jennifer Tisthammer, the estate’s deputy director, says there are places on the grounds where she’d have a sense of foreboding, and other places where she’d feel happy.

“I’ve been on this estate for three years,” she said. LPI’s paranormal search validated her own feelings, she said.

Psychics picked up on the presence of a young woman wandering about the boat basin. They felt she was frantically searching for someone to save from drowning.

The Miami Herald reported in a November 1916 article that an explosion on the estate killed five Bahamian workers dredging the channel.

A photo of what LPI says could be an apparition reveals a female figure, headless, and clad in white Victorian-era dress. She’s hovering above the water, with arms crossed. The shot was taken with a camera pointed at the basin, with its shutter wide open.

“If someone walked through that shot, you’d see a blur of someone moving, not someone standing there,” Kelley said.

“We couldn’t debunk it,” Kelley said. “We tried several times.”

Komar and partner Ed de Jong formed the nonprofit LPI out of their Coconut Grove home in February 2008.

In its first year, the firm handled about 20 cases. Business grew — from homeowners seeking guidance to nonprofits asking for spirit assistance. In the first six months of this year, LPI already has fielded more than 20 cases, from Miami to Lake Worth.

Fueling the interest are popular television programs like A&E’s Paranormal State, ScyFy’s Ghost Hunters and the Blair Witch Project-like Paranormal Activity movie.

But not everyone’s a fan. Skeptics abound, like James Randi, who founded his nonprofit James Randi Educational Foundation 13 years ago in Fort Lauderdale to promote critical thinking on the supernatural.

He calls such talk “a farce, with no evidence.”

His foundation is offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can provide solid, irrefutable evidence of a paranormal event.

Just because someone doesn’t take the prize doesn’t mean they don’t have proof, Randi said. “But until they do, and offer evidence, there’s no proof either way.”

To a degree, Kelley concurs.

“We don’t conclude,” she said. “It’s always a maybe. Without a doubt, [Deering] is haunted. We can say that for sure. But by whom, we can’t say for sure.”