Ghosts In My Photos

Over the years, I have taken many photographs with strange and unexplained objects or entities in them.



Since it is the Hungry Ghost Festival this month, I thought it would be the perfect time to show you all those "ghostly" photographs. It is especially timely as at the stroke of midnight tonight, the Gates of Hell will be thrown wide open to let all those hungry ghosts roam the earth!



Yes, if you do not already know, 12am tonight marks the 14th day of the 7th lunar month in the Chinese calendar, which is the peak of the Hungry Ghost Festival. Be afraid. Be very afraid...



All the photos shown here were taken either with my old Sony Ericsson C902 mobile phone or my current iPhone 3Gs, so please excuse the not-so-good quality photos.



This is a photo I took last year at the KL Convention Centre. Those of you who have been there will recognize this long corridor leading to Traders Hotel. I and my friend had gone to SkyBar at Traders Hotel that night and on the way back, we walked through this corridor.



My friend had gone to the toilet and while waiting for her, I snapped a picture of the corridor just for fun. It was only the next day I noticed there was something unusual with the photo. Can you see it?







That dark figure on the right side of the photo - what is that? It looks as if it's someone dressed in dark robes walking towards me. But I did not see such a person when I took the photo!



They say many cinemas in Malaysia are haunted. If it's the cinema in Summit Subang, I will be quick to agree as I had felt uncomfortable the last time I went there. But do you believe if I tell you now that GSC Signature in The Gardens is haunted?



Look at this photo which I took inside the GSC Signature lounge. Can you see someone standing at the end of the row of chairs on the left?







Or was that just the light playing tricks on my eyes?



And how about this picture which I took on the same night in the GSC Signature lounge?







What is that ghostly white figure flying out from the chair near the curtain?



That's not all. One night my friend and I watched a late night movie at GSC Signature. If you have been to GSC Signature, you will know that on leaving the cinema hall, you will pass by this glass window overlooking the Gardens Mall below.



It was past midnight when our movie ended. As we walked out of the cinema hall, we passed by this glass window and I decided to take a photo. As I was taking the photo, I suddenly saw that face reflected on the window! Can you see it?







I quickly turned around but there was no one behind me! When I turned back to face the glass window, the face was gone! Somehow I managed to capture that haunting face in my iPhone. My friend freaked out when she saw this photo!



Two years ago, I was at Genting Highlands with another friend. I was waiting for my friend who had gone to the toilet at Highlands Hotel near Starbucks. While waiting inside the lobby of the hotel, I snapped this photo. When I reached home, only did I see it! Can you see it - that white female ghost at the ceiling?!







Another time - probably 3 years ago - I visited Genting Highlands with yet another friend. We were resting at the lobby in Resort Hotel late one night. There were not many people at the lobby at that time. I accidentally snapped this photo where a white figure was crawling on the floor.







Surely that can't be my imagination? This reminded me too much of those "japanese" or "korean" horror movies so needless to say, I was totally freaked out!



I love to go jogging in the park. One of the parks I frequent is Taman Lembah Kiara in Taman Tun. I dislike crowds so I normally go when there are not many people around.



One afternoon, I went there to jog. There was no one around at the time. As I reached the suspension bridge, I saw this blue figure standing at the bridge!







At the sight of the blue figure, I froze in fright. It appeared to be slightly transparent. Luckily I managed to regain my composure and quickly snapped a photo of it before running the hell away!



After seeing all these photos, do you believe in the existence of ghosts? Did my photos freak you out?



OK, I have a confession to make.



None of the photos above are true. Haha!!!



Yes, perhaps I have tricked some of you but I am pretty sure I did not trick all of you. If you have been using the Ghost Capture app on your iPhone, you will know how I created those ghostly images on my photos! LOL!







It was quite a fun app! All you need to do is to snap a photo or retrieve an existing photo from the picture library in your phone, add in the ghost you like (there are over 30 ghosts to choose from in the paid app), manipulate the size and position of the ghost, adjust how sharp or blur you want your ghost to appear and voila! You have a ghostly picture to share with your friends!







The only qualm I have about this app is that all the ghostly images they provide are Western ghosts! I would have preferred some Chinese or Japanese ghosts as they are more scary! Haha!



There is another app which I would like to share with you all as it is quite a scary app. When I first downloaded this app on my iPhone, it gave me quite a fright. There was a picture of this girl.







I don't know about you but this picture of the girl already seems to frighten me. She looks like a person who is dead, don't you agree?



And then as I looked at the picture, it began to change...in a horrible way.







The face then turned hideous and it was accompanied with ghostly wail and screams that were too terrifying to describe!







If you have a weak heart, do not ever download this app! The girl has now changed into an ugly ghost that will send chills down the spine of anyone who look at her!







Now the fun part of this app is you can take anyone's photo (including your own) and change the face into a horrible looking ghost! Not that I want to do any such thing! No thanks! Haha!



The app is called HauntedFace available for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.



Although all the ghosts in the photos which I took and shown earlier in this post are fake and were created using the Ghost Capture app, there is however one photo in my collection that is genuine. I took this photo while walking the suspension bridge at FRIM 2 years ago.







Is that my imagination or is it a long haired lady in dark glasses wearing a robe or something on the tree trunk? What do you think?

FIRST COMMENTER

My Take On Insidious And Astral Travel

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OK, confession time. I did not know the meaning of this word INSIDIOUS.

A check with Merriam-Webster site revealed the following definitions:
1. awaiting a chance to entrap (treacherous)
2. harmful but enticing (seductive)
3. having a gradual and cumulative effect (subtle)

If you didn't already know, INSIDIOUS is the title of a new horror movie playing in cinemas right now. As a horror movie fan, I heard some good reviews about this movie and decided to catch it yesterday.

Before you proceed, take note - SPOILERS AHEAD!

But first, you might want to watch this trailer from the movie.



Frankly speaking, I was not at all impressed with the trailer. It didn't look that scary to me, but on learning that INSIDIOUS is a collaboration between Saw co-creators James Wan & Leigh Wannell and the Paranormal Activity team comprising Oren Peli, Jason Blum and Steven Schneider, I decided to give it a go.


Director James Wan on the set of Insidious

I did not expect it to be scarier than The Exorcist - still the scariest horror movie to me - and it wasn't. Well, I was hoping it would be scarier than The Eye, my No.1 horror movie from Hong Kong directed by the Pang Brothers, but it still wasn't.

You know how it's like after I watched The Eye? Right after I stepped out of the cinema, I started to imagine things whether I was in the lift, in my room alone or in the bathroom! The Eye really freaked me out for weeks! Now that's what I call a real horror movie!!



In fact, I even find The Ring (the original Japanese horror movie), Shutter (the original Thai horror movie) and The Exorcism Of Emily Rose much scarier than Insidious.

The Ring was horribly disturbing, especially with that video thingy; Shutter gave me the goose bumps especially with the nightmarish shocking ending and Emily Rose made me worry about waking up at 3am every night!



Insidious? Let's just say I was not at all traumatized leaving the cinema hall. Haha! Perhaps I watched too many horror movies and it's getting harder to scare me? Maybe.

But that does not mean Insidious is not a good movie. It was simply not scary enough for me, but it was engrossing enough to keep me at the edge of my seat, at least for the first half of the movie. Yes, it was more suspenseful than it was scary, at least to me.



Briefly, the movie is about a couple Josh and Renai Lambert (played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne respectively) whom upon moving into their new home with their three kids discovers that their house is haunted and that their son Dalton has inexplicably fallen into a coma. In order to escape the haunting and save their son, they move again only to discover a shocking truth - it is not their house that was haunted, but their son!



Now that revelation may be shocking for the couple but definitely not to us viewers. That's because the filmmakers had already revealed that the boy is the source of the hauntings in the trailer! I thought this sort of hurt the movie a bit since I would have preferred to discover it myself during the movie! Oh well, maybe they needed a twist since not many would want to watch another movie about some haunted house!

Anyway, to cut the story short, Dalton is found to be gifted at astral travel in his sleep. Don't know what astral travel is?


Image courtesy of mattstone.blogs.com

Astral travel or astral projection is an out-of-body experience where the person who practises it is able to project his "astral self" or consciousness out of his physical body and travel in the astral plane. It appears that some people are more gifted in this than others but experts in astral travel claimed that everyone can do it if one practises enough.

In fact, some experts said that all of us travel out of our body in our sleep every night! Read more HERE.


Image courtesy of Mind Petals

Since astral travel seems like a foreign topic to most people, many are afraid of trying it out of fear that they may not be able to return to their physical body. Some people are also afraid that evil spirits will possess their physical body while they are away on astral travel.

And this is exactly what this movie Insidious is trying to exploit. That fear that you cannot return to your physical body and forever trapped in the astral world while an evil spirit takes over. Creepy.


Image courtesy of Wisdom Quarterly

Experts on astral travel had however, debunked such thoughts as myths. Some maintained that you are connected to your physical body by a silver cord and this cord cannot be severed under any circumstances unless you are to leave your body forever like in the case of death. Others said that actually it is only your consciousness that is traveling, your soul is still in your physical body. But with no concrete proof of this, would you believe in the experts?

The bottomline is, are you daring enough to try astral travel? If yes, here is a step-by-step guide on how you can travel out of your body. Do it at your own risk yes? : )



Back to the movie, Dalton is highly gifted in astral projection and because he had traveled a bit too far into the dark realm called "The Further", he could not find his way back. His physical body lapses into a coma and this attracts all those spirits who are craving to possess his body.

That certainly explains all the hauntings that the couple experienced, but that's not their only problem. It seems that in the dark realm, there is a demon who is hell-bent to possess their son's body and will stop at nothing to achieve it.



And from then onwards, the movie started to remind me of Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist with the arrival of the three ghost hunters with their gadgets and mumbo jumbos. It all still remain quite engrossing and entertaining until the descend into the dark realm.

I was really quite put off with all those dead souls, like the bunch of dead family members in the living room, the laughing child that runs across the hallway, and the demon himself. It was not even scary anymore! Oh by the way, did anyone notice that the demon looks like Darth Maul from Star Wars? Or is it just me?



And to see Dalton with his legs chained to the floor presumably by the demon? I mean, seriously? This just makes it look like a scene taken out from Charmed or Supernatural! Gosh!

So yes, the movie started off really well and managed to build up its suspense and momentum effectively. There were many creepy moments like the raspy whispers on the baby monitor and the front door of the house found wide open in the middle of the night. And of course the sudden appearance of the demon behind Josh almost threw me off my seat!

The actors all did a great job and this include excellent performances from Barbara Hershey as Josh's mom and Lin Shaye as the ghostbuster.



Unfortunately, it started to go downhill from the moment Josh crossed over to the other side towards the later part of the movie. Maybe they showed too much of the ghosts? Over exposure is never a good thing in horror movies and I think the filmmakers made a mistake of doing just that.

Also I thought some of the scenes in the later part of the movie looked funny and probably a bit corny. If they wanted to be funny, then I think that Sam Raimi did a better job with his movie Drag Me To Hell. Now that was one hell of an entertaining horror movie!



Still, I consider Insidious to be one of the better horror movies among all those mediocre horror movies churned out by Hollywood. I am rating it as follows:
Scariness : 6/10
Suspense : 9/10
Storyline : 7/10
Acting : 9/10

One thing's for sure though. I will never attempt astral travel. Not after watching this movie!

FIRST COMMENTER