The Great Orb Debate

"Hello, my name is Skeptic," is pretty much the label affixed to my highly fashionable PI uniform. If people wanted to talk orbs it was going to elicit an eyeroll and some firmly stated comments about light, dust particles, water and movement from me. A colleague of mine insisted this wasn't so. The competition was on.

I had been to this house before. At the time it had been my very first residential investigation. The owners were kind enough to have us back to run some experiments and get some test footage. The first time around had been fairly uneventful. Any questionable evidence from that night had proved to be of a non-paranormal origin. With the exception of that latched steel cabinet that kept opening...but I digress. That, dear readers is a story for another day.

Excerpts from my report:

8:30 P.M. - it is determined that the infrared camera should be set up in the children's bedroom. Liz makes the proper adjustments to the camera, with the help of Christopher, as she views from the laptop. Soon after, Liz, who is monitoring from the laptop at home base, announces she can see orb-like objects moving across the room intermittently, Molly is also viewing. Merricat arrives and confers that she, too sees them. Liz then enters the doorway of the room and sits on the floor so as not to disturb the environment of the room. A few minutes later, dozens of orb are visible. At one point, Merricat is able to clearly view a formation of four small orbs hover for what is estimated to be about seven seconds in a North, South, East, West formation then, rotate counterclockwise, halfway, before "flying" off in different directions.

As the orbs seem to all be flowing in one direction, toward Liz, she crosses to the doorway between the master bedroom and the children's bedroom to test if we can visibly see them flow in the opposite direction. After about five minutes the activity slows down and a few of the orbs flow in the opposite direction. Liz exists the room to return to home base while Dave enters the room. The activity increases slightly. It is during this time that the camera captures and records something moving across the room. In the footage you can see Dave react to it by seemingly flinching back from it. (see video)

After they exit Christopher enters the room to do some tests. Liz and Molly watch on the laptop. Merricat tries various experiments with shining lights in the room, in the hallway outside of the room, reflections off various objects, including a small, palm sized disco ball. When light is directed at this object it shows a very obvious and definitive pattern, completely unlike what has previously viewed. The disco ball is taken down and removed by the primary resident. Dave and Merricat take their turns "kicking" up dust, by running hands over the carpet, moving the blankets on the bed around and disturbing dust on various surfaces, so we can compare and contrast this with the orbs earlier captured on film for our research.

No more eyerolling on my part. From the moment the the four orb formation thing happened, which was freaking amazing, I had no choice but to admit I was wrong...although I steadfastly believe I am mostly correct - orbs are typically not paranormal in origin, just an indication that someone needs to clean a little better - I will admit that sometimes, I just don't know.