New Scientist 's field guide to spotting ghostly apparitions in your photos – and whence they may have arisen

Woo… what a picture! Gill Hutton/Ghosts Caught on Film: 3

ARE the souls of the departed becoming fidgety in the great beyond? “I certainly get more ghostly photos sent to me now compared with 10 years ago,” says Caroline Watt of the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Phil Hayes, an investigator at Paranormal Research UK, agrees. Last year, he reported record numbers of spooky images reaching his inbox. So what’s going on?

A century ago, spirit photography was all the rage, tantalising the public imagination with what purported to be hard evidence of wispy apparitions. However, its resurgence may have less to do with the paranormal than with the increasing use of social media and cameraphones.

Serious ghost hunters might be expected to welcome such technology. Yet, according to Dave Wood from the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, low-cost cameraphones are making the business of spirit photography even more fraught.


Many mass-produced phones don’t use high-quality lens systems and this can lead to optical artefacts that look “spooky” to the untrained eye.

Photographers are also shooting more images, raising the likelihood that one or two will feature something extraordinary. “Take a few hundred snaps in a dusty old building at night and you are sure to capture a few odd photos,” says Wood.

So what exactly are modern ghost hunters catching on camera? Are the images truly mysterious or are technological slip-ups and wishful thinking to blame? Let New Scientist be your spirit guide…

See more: You won’t believe your eyes in our ghostly gallery, “Ghouls on film: Ghost or glitch? You decide”