The Incident in The Night

Recently, as I sat watching a film on my laptop, a purple light whizzed by in the dark sky outside. I caught it from the corner of my eye and just as I was asking if I’d really just seen it – it reappeared. Another one joined it and the two lights made their way across the night sky in formation. It looked as though two large drones were being flown around and as someone who occasionally investigates local UFO sightings, I knew I should record what I was seeing.

This is where things went a bit wrong.

Here is what happened, in sequence:

• I try not to take my eyes off of the lights while getting my phone,
• I can’t find my phone so I take my eye off of the lights,
• I grab my phone and in my excitement throw it on the floor,
• I swipe the screen to use the camera but mis-touch the screen onto the emergency call screen,
• I get back to the main screen, all the while intermittently checking the lights are still there,
• I swipe up for the camera but my phone alerts that another mis-touch has been detected and I have to swipe twice in a specific way to get rid of the notice,
• I shout some swear words,
• I get the camera open,
• I take a photo instead of filming a video,
• I shout another swear word or two,
• I eventually start filming a video

Everyone Has a Camera These Days

This encounter of mine wasn’t that significant because I had a good idea of what I was seeing – drones. It turned out to actually be two motor gliders being flown in test practice by a local airborne pyrotechnics company. However, it made me think about those occasions on which people claim to have seen something strange while going about their daily lives, and the more sceptically-inclined of us say “everyone has a camera in their pockets, how come there’s no evidence?”

Well, there’s video of the lights I saw in the sky but it doesn’t show you what I was actually seeing – a colourful display of two professionally-flown small aircraft. It shows two, small white blobs instead. I also fumbled and failed to film while they were up close and obvious.

I’ll remember this the next time I’m handed low-quality footage or photos of someone’s encounter because let’s face it, a large number of the reports of potentially paranormal activity come from people who were just going about their business when something happened. Whether that’s walking their dogs and seeing an alleged Panther, sitting at home and seeing a UFO, seeing an apparition while in the office, sailing a boat and seeing something odd in the water, and so on. This coupled with the fact that not everybody’s first reaction is to film what they’re seeing means that we can’t rely on people to film or photograph their experiences, and even when they do, we still need to approach with caution…

A Question of Evidence

I’m not saying that some sort of evidence of what has occurred isn’t needed. Of course it’s still important to try to document that which you are encountering to help identify the source of the anomaly. The recent case of the Birmingham building site ghost is a great example of how recorded media can help solve a case, as I wrote about for The Skeptic Magazine here. However, as much as it’s a good idea to rely on people to film videos or take photos just because we all have mobile phones that now have decent cameras built in, it’s equally important to also recognise the limitations of these devices too. And the people who are using them, as also demonstrated in the Birmingham case on the part of CCTV professionals, no less…

We should also ask ourselves what it is we are asking for. Usually, the demands for photographs or video are presented in an “evidence or gtfo” manner, but would you really be satisfied with footage or a photo as evidence of something spooky if it was presented to you?

There’s that brilliant ghost car footage from a while back where a dashcam captures a car appearing on the road ahead out of nowhere, which we now know was likely due to the forced perspective of the camera. Forgery and trickery are big issues too, and low-quality footage filmed on a mobile phone is used as a good way to cover up the more tell-tale signs of a hoax because it can hide strings, narrow in on a scene to hide what else is happening in the scene, or lower the quality of faked CCTV footage etc.

Sometimes, documented media can add to the mystery rather than helping to solve it, so while we should encourage it, we shouldn’t over-rely on it.

Reframing the Picture

All of this demonstrates the importance of remembering that reported paranormal phenomena is person-centred. A person either sees something which they interpret to be potentially paranormal, or perhaps a CCTV camera captures something which a person then watches and determines could be paranormal. When a case is presented to paranormal researchers, it can be easy to want to dismiss it a priori simply because there is no supporting evidence other than personal anecdote. Yet, even just an anecdote or two can still help you to determine what happened and what might have caused it to happen. It’s good to consider recorded media evidence as a supplement to anecdotes, and not as a replacement.

One person’s odd purple lights in the sky is another person’s drones, and another person’s professionally piloted motor gliders.

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