http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2008/05/alttext_0507

Sad Explanations for Supernatural Phenomena

Lore Sjöberg  05.07.08 | 12:00 AM
I was pleased to see the recent news about alien images appearing on a wall
in Canada.

If you haven't seen the story, the upshot is that some reflected light shows
up every non-overcast day on someone's house in Calgary, and the resulting
image looks something like a cross between Gollum and the Reddit mascot.
Thus, aliens.

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This is nonsense, unfortunately. I would love for even one of the completely
wall-slappingly insane phenomena that bubble up these days to be true.

If even one funnel-shaped cloud or particularly reflective seagull ended up
being an actual alien craft, if even one person's Pomeranian really did
house the mind of an ancient Egyptian emperor, if even one winged hominid
got run over by a meth-infused trucker and examined by reputable scientists,
then I could be happy in a world that's even weirder than it initially
appears to be. Tragically, though, none of them pan out in the long run.

And yet, people keep devising theories. Some, not content to come up with
explanations for unexplained phenomena, instead go to great lengths to come
up with bizarre takes on explained phenomena.

Exhibit One: Rods
On some videos and photos, you can see odd smudges made up of a straight
line with a sort of twirly fuzz around it. What are these things? Well, one
theory is that they are creatures living in the atmosphere, invisible to the
naked eye but for some reason able to be caught on videotape.

This theory is wrong. While I love the idea that your basic handheld
Panasonic camera has mystical-vision powers, the fact is that you can
capture "rod" video of your own by pointing a camera set to a slow shutter
speed at a bunch of insects. The paranormal response? Yeah, those rods are
insects, but there are other rods that are visually identical to the
insects, but which are actually rods!

Exhibit Two: Orbs
If rods are too interesting for you, check out orbs. Where rods take the
form of moving blurs, orbs manifest themselves as roughly circular blobs.
Spine-chillingly circular!

Here's how it works. You take a photo of something with your cheapie digital
camera, and the picture has a translucent gray dot on it. Clearly there's no
explicable way for weird little visual artifacts to end up on digital
photos, so they must be the spirits of the departed. This one's just sad.
It's like you want to see Bigfoot, but you hate camping, so you just
classify the dust bunnies under the couch as cryptids and call it a day.

Exhibit Three: Crowd Demons
I'm being a bit unfair here, because crowd demons aren't really a well-known
phenomenon among the desperately wacky crowd, but the idea is so deliciously
stupid I'm highlighting it here in hopes it will catch on.

On the GhostStudy.com website, you'll find a photo that purportedly shows
two demons sitting next to each other at a musical recital. The site
suggests that if you look long enough you'll see a shadow ghost.

It also says it shows "a dinosaur attacking a man (however, this is most
likely an illusion)."

Yeah, most likely. There is less than a 50 percent chance that the photo
actually shows a demon dinosaur eating a guy's head. Another guy found a
bunch of crowd demons at a Republican rally. I'm not actually seeing most of
those, but maybe I just don't have the patience to play a proper game of
Where's Weirdo?

As obvious as the rational explanations for all these phenomena are, I'm a
bit sad. I'd enjoy living in a world filled with normally invisible
creatures that only show their true, blurry forms on discount audiovisual
equipment. Kind of like YouTube, only with more flying and fewer anime
clips.

-- 
Ken

"Buddhism elucidates why we are sentient."
"Buddhism follows thought throughout the Universe."
"Karma means that you don't get away with anything."