False shadows from hair

False ghost anomalies can appear in photos if hair is in the way. The 'ghost photo' below shows a dark vertical shadow near the center of the picture.

At right you can see the same photo with white lines on either side of where the anomaly appears to be.

That shadow was from a thin strand of hair that fell directly in front of the camera lens.

It was too close to the lens to be highlighted by the flash, so it created an eerie, dark looking area in the picture.

Also, that's a bug at the far left side of the picture. (Enlargement at left.)

Usually, bugs look like irregular 'ghost orbs' because they move while the camera lens is open.

In this case, the flash was very fast and the insect was simply highlighted by the flash. It's so clear, it looks fake, or like a faerie.

When the strand of hair wasn't too close to the lens, but wasn't fully highlighted by the flash, it produced a slightly light area in the sky and a reddish tint on the foliage, shown in the photo below.

The effect is very subtle, so we've drawn lines on the smaller photo at right, to show where it is. (It's actually easier to see on this smaller picture.)

We're not sure that this would ever be mistaken for a ghost or any kind of paranormal anomaly, but we like to share all of our research results, in case they're useful.

The results were far more dramatic on our other page, False ghost pictures - Hair tests. However, in case they're helpful in your research, we've added many other 'fake' ghost pictures from our hair studies at More fake ghost pictures with hair