The Ubiquitous Orbs

 “Orbs” have appeared in many digital photographs and video footage and many individuals and paranormal TV shows persist that they are the result of spirits that have been captured, but the truth of the matter is these are caused by environmental influences. There are a variety of factors to be considered and many renowned paranormal researchers have discounted orbs as being paranormal for many different reasons. Here are a few things that need to be considered and ruled out.

On rare occasion an orb captured on film will be of interest if it is shown to manifest, radiate its own light, either move directly to/leave a person and affect them in some way or follow a distinct path/route. The common factor for orbs appearing in photographs and on video are dust and debris. This can also include dead skin cells, dirt, pollen, animal dander, hair, decomposing insects, dust mites, waste from dust mites, lint, insulation from the building, etc.,

Dust Particle

Dust appear in film as orbs because of the retro-reflection of light off the dust particle. As investigations are carried out at night there might be flashlights involved, flash from cameras, infrared (IR) lights, and natural lights from the etc., that can light to reflect. It doesn't take much light to reflect from these dust particles and cameras are quick to pick it up. This can also be captured day or night.

Dust particles pics

Commonly people will argue that there was no dust in the area but that cannot be proven as it may not be possible to see dust particles with the naked eye it does not mean that dust particles are not present. Dust particles can be carried on clothing without even realizing it or may have settled on flooring, seating etc., Dust orbs can appear as translucent to solid depending upon the type of particle, proximity to the camera lens. Usually dust orbs are not bright, but this doesn't mean they can't be.

Another familiar cause are insects, naturally drawn to any light sources, even infrared light, they often appear as solid bright orbs of light. Again, people will argue that there weren’t any insects around at the time of shooting. This cannot be guaranteed as many insects are tiny and go unnoticed, such as gnats and fruit flies unless there are several flying together.

Elongated orbs are often insects in-flight that due to the speed of flight and the shutter speed, aperture of the camera creates an orb that appears to have a tail streaming behind it.

Moisture Particles

The atmosphere is filled with moisture molecules that cannot be seen with the naked eye but can be captured by a camera lens. Some moisture orbs are octagon or spherical but not all, they can be a variety of shapes and colors as well as moisture refracts light like a prism causing a rainbow of colors. However, not all water molecule orbs have colours.

 moisture particles


Orbs can also be a retro-reflection of light off an object, but light itself can cause orbs in photographs such as a light source like light poles or the reflection of the camera's flash. Also, try to rule out another person's flashlight in the distance or reflecting off a wall, window, or door. In physics, the phenomenon that creates orbs in photography is referred to as back-scattering. Back-scattering is a diffuse reflection of waves, particles, or signals traveling back to the direction it came from. So, this phenomenon can occur with more than just dust, insects, moisture, and light.

 Sony Cybershot diagram

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Energy, Frequency, Vibration









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The Stone Tape Theory


The Stone Tape theory is the speculation that ghosts, and hauntings are similar to tape recordings, and that mental impressions during emotional or traumatic events can be projected in form of energy that is then "recorded" onto rocks and other items and "replayed" under certain conditions. The idea draws shares similarities with views of 19th century intellectualists and psychic researchers, such as Charles Babbage, Eleonor Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney. Contemporary, the concept was popularized by 1972 Christmas ghost story called The Stone Tape, produced by the BBC. Following the movie's popularity, the idea and "stone tape" term was retrospectively and inaccurately attributed to British archaeologist turned parapsychologist-T. C. Lethbridge, who believed that ghosts were not spirits of the deceased but were simply non-interactive recordings similar to a movie.

The idea that environmental elements are capable of storing traces of human thoughts or emotions was introduced by multiple 19th century scholars and philosophers as an attempt to provide natural explanations for supernatural phenomena.

[0pokijIn 1837 polymath Charles Babbage published a work on natural theology called Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. Babbage speculated, that spoken words leave permanent impressions in the air, even though they become inaudible after time. He suggested that it is possible due to transfer of motion between particles.

"Stone tape theory" could also be derived from concept of "place memory". In the early days of Society for Psychical Research place memory was considered an explanation for ghostly apparitions, seemingly connected with certain places. In late 19th century, two of SPR involved investigators- Edmund Gurney and Eleonor Sidgwick, presented views about certain buildings or materials being capable of storing records of past events, which can be later play backed by gifted individuals. Another 19th century idea associated with "Stone Tape Theory" is psychometry - a belief, that it is possible to obtain knowledge about history associated with an object through physical contact with it.

In the 20th century, the idea that objects are able to store and playback past events was re-introduced in 1939 and 1940 by then SPR president- H. H. Price. Price speculated about "psychic ether" as an intermediate medium between spiritual and physical reality, which can enable objects to carry memory traces of emotions or experiences from the past. In his works, he stated that existence of such traces should be provable by means of scientific methods and that they yet remain unproved hypotheses. Following Price' ideas, an archaeologist turned paranormal researcher- T. C. Lethbridge, claimed, that past events can be stored in objects thanks to fields of energy, that he believed to surround streams, forests or mountains. His 1961 book Ghost and Ghoul popularized these ideas which allegedly could have inspired creators of 1972 BBC movie-The Stone Tape.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

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UFO Sighting Cyprus


Parent Category: Features

Category: Haunted Devon Content


The Cyprus UFO – From the Archives of The Plymouth UFO Research Group

One of the very best UFO cases that our UFO Research Group ever investigated (and indeed, in my opinion, one of the best UFO cases of all time), came from a retired Regimental Sergeant Major with the Royal Marines whilst he was in command of doing night manoeuvre exercises with 1400 marines in Cyprus in1971.  Photographic evidence of the UFO was also obtained, and the 4 photographs are reproduced for this article, but please bear in mind, these photos are time exposures, so shows the object as it trailed across the sky.

The retired Regimental Sergeant Major  (now to be referred to as ‘Steve’ for this article) contacted our group shortly after hearing us on the local BBC Radio in 1993, to let us know of the extraordinary incident which occurred.  Our report was published in several journals, including Issue One of the best ever UFO magazine (but now sadly no longer in publication) ‘UFO Reality’. What is now detailed below is a verbatim by ‘Steve’ of this astonishing UFO incident, witnessed by 1400 Royal Marines, and virtually the entire population of Cyprus!  What then follows is further research and conclusions.  Enjoy!



Shortly after getting on the ground, I located the various places and cleared them out. About 8 o’clockish a very bright light appeared behind a crest maybe a thousand metres away. What it looked like initially was the headlights of a car on full beam, situated behind the hill. Because this was a night move with no lights, I got on the radio, gave my call sign and told them to turn their lights off. The light just got stronger so I transmitted again, negative lights. As I’m talking this light came over the crest about a thousand meters away and you go, ‘it’s not bloody headlights, it’s a flare’. I thought at first this was a mortar flare I was looking at. Mortar flares are stationary. You fire it up in the air and the aim is to illuminate the area. They hand by a parachute. The initial reaction was mortar flare and I was pretty concerned because we were in carbon grove, which is dry trees and if a flare lands amongst them you’ve got major problems. Twelve men had been killed in similar circumstances. A flare started in the Troodhos forest and a large number of English troops were killed. This was years before in 1957, which was in my time.

So now when I’m in a senior position in 1971, I think I’ve got a phosphorous flare hanging above a bloody carbon grove and I’m not going to be very happy. It appeared from a thousand meters, which as I said was from behind the crest but it could have been quite high in the sky. The impression I got was that initially it was quite low. My initial impression was that this object of light was about 5-10,000 feet. That’s a complete guess.




There was a lot of chat among the 20 men. You’re all talking about it. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life. We are now watching this for some minutes. Remember I told you that I’d left a marine corporal guarding at the track. We all of a sudden hear this (beats hand on table) and this guy came over the hill doing about 600 mph!! This is in full kit. And you know Cyprus is a hot and sticky place. Anyway, he came up and after panting for a bit said, ‘Can you see that?’ We said yes and he said ‘Thank Christ for that’. It wasn’t till that happened that you realized that by being in a group of people watching, it wasn’t frightening as it was if you were alone. I mean for a Marine Corporal to disobey my orders and bugger off, then it was something. To a lone individual… run away from something is a serious offense, let’s not disguise the fact. He deserted the post that I had given. For a lone individual, what he saw by himself…..meant it was a bit more serious than that.

Everybody on the exercise, about 1400 men, saw the light. During this period the unit, you remember, is doing a night move. As I said we had radio sets and we could hear transmissions of other people taking about the light, and at one stage the following dialogue took place between a call sign which is a unit and a commanding officer, Sunray. There was a little bit of chat about the light then Sunray said, ‘It must be a flying saucer ha ha’. There were the words he used.


A point I want to make is that there was no impression of speed, sound or movement. You were looking at something that seems to drift past you. I’ve been trained for 27 years to judge distances, that’s what I’m paid for. But I couldn’t tell you if that was 1000 meters high, 5000 meters high, 50 mile high. I’m also a professional parachutist, so I knew distances in the air, but I couldn’t tell you how far away it was or how high. It was just something you’d never seen before. The day we saw the light was the same day that the Americans had launched one of their moon shots. I think it was the second one.

pic1 ufo

We then moved back to the barracks. When I got back to base, I wrote a complete report of everything we’d seen that night. It covered about 5 pages. I posted it to my wife first and told her to keep the letter because I knew it was something different – and she ditched it!! The next morning, we were all talking in the mess about the light, so I rang Akrotiri and asked to speak to the station Net. Officer and I couldn’t get hold of him. The lines were burning. So I contacted my opposite number there and spoke to him. He said, ‘Is it about the light we saw last night,’ and I said yes. He said ‘the switchboard had been jammed solid’. Then he said that ‘it was the Mariner shot (NARAS) that’s all we were watching’.





 pic 2 ufo

Weeks later it was confirmed that this was a UFO. You see what happened, the first morning when the colonel asked me to get the reports, he didn’t give me a full brief. I would be responsible for running the unit and he would normally be dead straight with me. Now for some reason he had a top level meeting with his company commanders and would have discussed it with them, but he didn’t tell me the full story. In the centre of Cyprus is a place called the Troodhos Mountains, on top of which they’ve got the most sophisticated radar in the world. They’re called golf balls because of their appearance and are maybe 3-400 feet in circumference. They used to monitor the U2 flights and long range radar transmissions. There’s a fighter base at Akrotiri and it’s a very sophisticated fighter base. On RAF bases abroad, they always have QRF (quick response) fighters burning internally. So on an operational base you always have the latest aircraft there, ready to go.

About 2 or 3 weeks later we were off the coast of (location deleted) doing a job. I went in for my morning sherry with him and he said, ‘That UFO’s been confirmed.’ So I said, what UFO? “Didn’t I tell you?’ he said. I said, no but you’re going to tell me now, aren’t you? And then he explained that this was a UFO and it was an official job from reports, they went off and then it then came back as confirmed as a UFO. I was told this by him – that is the colonel – that during this, those ‘golf balls’ up on Troodhos had traces early on in the game. They put 2 Lightnings up (RAF fighter aircraft), which were capable of about 1200 mph. They would obviously have an early interception course on this particular object, whatever it was, and they could be put alongside it. And the way it was said to me was, ‘Two Lightings couldn’t touch it’. In service parlance that means that you can up two aircraft and they could not get those planes in contact with the object.



 pic 3 ufo







That is the end of ‘Steve’s’ account of what was witnessed.

We at PUFORG contacted the MOD in 1993, and got this response:

“The files for 1971 would have been sent to the public records office a long time ago and are covered by the terms of the public records act, remaining closed from public viewing, until 30 years after the last action was taken” Since 2008, the MOD has been releasing it’s UFO files to the National Archives Database, and interestingly, the Cyprus UFO event is never mentioned.  This is very surprising, and is also highly notable by its absence, when you consider “Steve” was ordered to collect all photos and reports, and that later his Colonel had confirmed that it was a UFO!

Further research has been carried out regarding the launch of the Mariner 9 probe.  Experts in this field have ruled out any possibility that the object seen over Cyprus could have been misidentified as being the space probe, which was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 22:23 GMT.

The Royal Marines are amongst the best trained observers anywhere in the world, and to have 1400 of them, along with the population of Cyprus, to observe this, makes this report one of the best UFO cases on record.

 Written By Martyn Hicks and the Plymouth UFO Research Group



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