Korotkov

Dr. Konstantin Korotkov

(Photo provided)

Being an investigator - and a fan - of the paranormal, I follow many paranormal-themed pages on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

During my Christmas vacation, I saw and shared a video claiming to be of a man's soul leaving his body after he was killed in a car accident.

His red car, facing a rocky hillside, was surrounded by emergency medical personnel working to free his body from the wreck.

Suddenly, a shadowy mass rises from the vehicle, hovers for a second, and then ascends towards the sky.

Moving? Yes.

But is it real?

On another occasion while browsing Facebook, I saw a disturbing video of a mouse being caught in a trap.

The critter is innocently nibbling at a glob of peanut butter when the trap is sprung, sending him airborne with a broken neck to die a slow death.

After about 35 seconds of struggling, the mouse finally falls still.

Seconds later, a white light shoots out of it's tiny body towards the sky.

Curious, I went to YouTube and searched "soul leaves body" and found quite few amateur videos claiming to have captured the human soul ascending from the body after death.

PhotoShop?

Trick of the light?

Most likely.

I've said many times, I'm the biggest skeptic you will find and that I need more than just a YouTube video to prove to me that a cell phone video camera can catch the ascension of one's soul.

I do believe we each have a soul, and I also believe that soul lives on after our body dies. That doesn't mean I necessarily take these videos as truth.

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When I shared the video of the car accident, a few Facebook friends left comments such as "that's way creepy," "wow" and "chills."

The YouTube videos had many more comments - some not so nice.

Non-believers, or just plain grumpy people, can become mean or hostile when they see things that could be conceived as fake.

However, if seeing a video of what could be a human or animal soul ascending to heaven can make someone feel comforted or reinforce someone's faith, what is so wrong with it?

And who's to say it's not what the videographer says it is?

Russian-born physicist Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, deputy director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Physical Culture, has developed a camera that allegedly photographs plant and human energy fields by using gas-discharge photography.

Korotkov claims every living thing has a "biological field," or aura, which is an invisible structure that correlates its activity to create a unique united system of electromagnetic and gravitational fields, molecules and other unknown parameters.

The camera creates a high-intensity electrical field around a fingertip or plant placed on the special, fiber-optic plate. The field produces a visible gas discharge glow around the object.

The image is captured instantly in a computer and can be processed in a variety of ways using software, also developed by Korotkov.

This method of photography is also used to capture a person's aura for medical purposes.

Korotkov once photographed a person who was dying and noticed that the life force left their core first, then the head, and lastly the heart and groin.

Can this doctor's camera really photograph a soul?

I don't know.

But I do know everything is made up of energy and once in a while, during an investigation, we are lucky enough to capture that energy on audio or video recorder, or by simply seeing our equipment react to something that's not visible.

So, is it possible that someone captured the video of a soul ascending from a recently deceased body?

As they say, anything is possible, I suppose.

Kelly Roncace is senior investigator with Jersey Unique Minds Paranormal Society, a professional paranormal investigation team based in Salem County. Do you know of a haunted location that JUMPS could research and investigate? Contact Kelly at kroncace@southjerseymedia.com with your suggestions.