f you have read this far, we should talk!  But go ahead and read this- it is the idea that has been driving me of late, sorry it is so long but really, give it a serious bit of consideration:  This is my Fingerprints in Time and Space theory.  It takes far reaching and scientific ideas into a single cloth woven together as a understandable substance.  So, while it may wander (weave) back and forth for now, keep reading as it goes in and out  and I will attempt to bring it all together in the end.  Here goes:

 I think that no matter what you think that Ghosts, Spirits (insert your own term here) are, they are pretty much around us all the time to some extent or another.  In our little three dimensional world we live in we occupy space.  But, step back and see how we all move about and come and go.  A space like the mall for instance has hundreds of people in it at once.  Other spaces have only one person in it right now, but later, as the day goes on it may become very busy or even completely empty.  We are all people with an intelligent purpose, but if we were being looked at by say a giant that was a million times bigger than us, we might all look like ants that scurry around.  Don't be put off as I compare us to an ant, but think about it.  We look at an ant and we know it is collecting food or building a home or something very simple as would be expressed by Manslow's Hierarchy of Need Theory.  But being intellectual people, we do things that a ant would not understand.  Music, art, those things would not be understandable by an ant.  It would look as if we were just random and strange.  OK, so what might we think if we encountered some entity that had a much higher state of existence than our own.  Would they look at us as we do an ant?  Would we look up  at them and only hope to not be squashed and fear the shear size of them and being so big and hard to understand just ignore them.  Would we just continue to run along a line with the other ants and allow what we don't understand and have no control over pass us by? If we were as ants looking up at the  people and had no understanding at all of the intelligence that was on a magnitude so far ahead of our own little tiny 3 dimensional world, we might be just like that ant and in our lack of understanding.  We would just go on to collect the food or whatever it is an ant does hoping not to be stepped on.  Maybe WE do. 

Now, look around you right now.  The room your sitting in is full of stuff.  All that stuff got there somehow.  In our scurry to collect stuff we handle it.  Every surface in your current place- no matter where you are if your reading this- is COVERED in fingerprints.  Oh yes, thousands of them.  As a former police officer I can tell you that we often would be called to the scene of a crime and the victim would look at you and having been educated with the crime shows on TV would demand you fingerprint that rock that was thrown through the window.  Or dust for prints on an object that had been handled by everyone in the building on a daily basis.  They were sure it could be done because they saw it on CSI.  You had a little fingerprint powder and a brush- not the laser that CSI used- but often we would throw a little dust around to appease. Was a print there-?  Sure it was too some extent.  But, it was not visible now and getting it to develop was not easy given the rough texture and or many other prints that were also there.   Now, do a little experiment for me:  Pick up a real glass or go to a glass door and look directly into it.  You see right through it.  You see beyond into the area past it.  Now, if your holding a glass, tilt it in the light.  If your at a glass door, open it and look along it at a sharp angle.  The light will most likely give a faint refraction on the fingerprints left behind and you will see them.  It may be that you can see the smudge and not be able to see it in detail.  But, you may get lucky if the glass was clean, the light just right, the oils from your fingers were enough and the print is perfect that you can see fine details.  The actual loops and whorls of a fingerprint are right there and you can see them perfectly.   Now look around the room again.  Everything there has prints all over it.  Some areas are covered- other areas not so much.  It depends upon how it is touched or handled as well as what the object is.  The bottom of the computer desk may have only been handled when it was moved there.  The top is covered, even though they are a half an inch away.  So close but yet so far!   Say- come to think about it fingerprints are somewhat like people grouped in some areas, dispersed in others- easy to see on some surfaces, hard on others.   

 Are you jumping ahead right now?

 OK, so now think about this if you have not already.  WHAT IF:  Ghosts, like people are all around us just like fingerprints.  But, just like the rough rock, some of the prints are hard to see.  On the other hand, when the light is just right and the surface smooth, we can see them pretty easily.   It is just a matter of getting the right surface, the right light and having a good clear print there to see.  If a ghost is like this- under the right conditions, we see a full blown real as you and me ghost.  If, under worse than ideal conditions the print is there but the surface is not as good as glass we may see it but not as good, just like a misty ecto something we sometimes see.  If the surface is poor, the lights are wrong and the print is bad, we may struggle to see anything at all, but might make something out, little as it was- kinda like the majority of the paranormal photos we see.  Humm??  Makes sense don't it!  Now, some of you may stop right here and be pleased to do so.  But if you are like me and the first thing you do when you buy something is void the warranty and take it apart - read on! 

In the beginning of this piece I told you I wanted to weave you a fabric and here it goes:

For a moment forget all else and lets make this fabric one thread at a time:

"To catch a ghost"

THREAD 1.  Occupancy.  To see a ghost they first have to be there.  There is no doubt that as I sit here in my home there are about a dozen other people in their homes all within a block away.  I cant see them, they cant see me.  But, they are there, no doubt.  I look out my window and there is not a person to be seen.   We have to leverage the "occupancy" by going to a place that has a higher occupancy if we want to catch a ghost.  (IE "haunted" areas?) Think of this as the difference between an apartment complex and a sparse addition.

THREAD 2.  Time.  Again- there is noone on my street right now- its empty looking out the window right now- this exact second. In a moment a car will drive by but you have to be looking at the right time and place to catch it.  At 5pm the cars will be going back and forth.  At 7pm the mall will be full but at 1am it is empty.  We have to be at the right place at the right TIME if we want to catch a ghost. 

 THREAD 3.   Quality.  That smudge of a fingerprint next to the door handle is nothing compared to the pristine print left on the wine glass.  Choose the wine  glass if you want to catch a ghost.  Sure you will see the smudges, I think we do all the time.  They are the misty ecto somethings that are here for a fraction of a second and are gone.  They are more common than that single fingerprint on the wine glass.  You will likely get more smudges than grade A text book ghosts.

 THREAD 4.   Lighting:  This is a big one!  The fingerprint was not visible until you got the light just right.   This is not just to say it has to be dark- oh no.  (We are going on a ride now- hang on) White light is made up of multiple colors.  Each color has its own frequency.  Red is on one end blue on the other.   IR is on the red end and UV is on the blue.  The electromagnetic spectrum may hold the key to "see" a ghost.  Not what a ghost is mind you but how to see a gimps of it.  The light that allowed you to see the fingerprint was refracted, it was bent and the colors broken a little and the light refracted enough to make out the ridges left behind. Now, the visible light spectrum is part of a larger whole called the Electromagnetic Spectrum.

Before we introduce the next threads of this fabric, it is important to note the following information.  It was taken directly from Wikipedia and you can read more there:

" Light is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye (in a range from about 390 nm to about 750 or so nm). In physics, the term light sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not.

Four primary properties of light are intensity, frequency or wavelength, polarization, and phase

Light, which exists in tiny "packets" called photons, exhibits properties of both waves and particles. This property is referred to as the wave–particle duality. The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics." 

OK folks, even if your not fully with me on the above subject, read on- it gets interesting!

THREAD 5.  Frequency:  The term frequency refers to the number of cycles something happens. In light this is often refered to as a WAVELENGTH.  Measured in Nanometers, or nm, it is one billionth of a meter.  Very short.  We see in the spectrum that goes from 400 to 700 nm, or the "visible light spectrum".   We sometimes see ghosts with our naked eyes.  Sometimes they are captured in a photo and not seen.  What is the difference?  We will get there in a moment.  But, while we are waiting- have you ever seen something through the corner of your eye and when you turned your head, it was gone?  The lens in the eye is designed to block some light out-  UV being one.  It is not only a matter of your lens blocking out all the UV, because it cant- that's why we wear sunglasses that do.  But, UV is rather easy to block in general.  But, according to my optometrist, UV  light can enter the side of the eye at times.  Even though our rods and cones do not pick up on most IR, UV light can be detected- think about the light from a "black-light".   Farther down the UV spectrum, things do not look like the bright black light posters you may be thinking about- but things you don't see now, can be seen in UV.   Why do we not see UV?  Maybe we were not supposed to see some things. 

THREAD 6.  Lensing:   Did you know that light can be bent without touching it, and without passing it through another substance like a lens would? Enstine predicted and we have now proven that light passing by a high gravitational force can be bent.  This is called Gravitational Lensing.   It is also (aptly so) described as gravitational mirage.  This is kind of important....  you have seen them on the horizon,  the light "floating" on the far visual plain.  Now, we talked about light being part of a larger electromagnetic spectrum and we are now coming back to that.  Gravitational lenses act equally on all kinds of electromagnetic radiation, not just visible light!  Not only that, but it is being shown now that it is not just light passing a planet or black hole that can be disrupted in its path.  "Micro Lensing" is being studied as well.   One thing that can happen when a lens allows light to pass is it can be separated into the different bands- as in a prism.  Can this "lensing effect" separate the light allowing it to be visible?  Can it bring out the individual colors that the may have appeared as white and allow us to see it more clearly?

THREAD 7.  X-Factor:  I admit freely that this is a huge unknown, but let me insert a few known s and then leave it to science.   The X-factor is the area where Ghosts Reside.  I would like to say it is in one of the 11 hypothesized dimensions and leave it at that.  There are many theories that are out there from the M-theory on down.  BUT, I would fall back on this:  The Bible.  The bible tells us there are Ghosts.  The spirit is separate from the physical man and can and will be detached upon death.  When Jesus told the disciples that "Where I go you cannot follow" he was not saying that they wont see it (in fact his teaching says we will)  he was saying we PHYSICALLY cant go there.  Where that "there" is is less important that how we interact with it.  SO, for now, I will call it the X-factor.  Some may call this the big hole in my theory but I submit that there are enough parts of the puzzle to see the image.  I think that one day, the dimensional part will be at least in theory be agreed upon.  Until then we have to say it is 1. It is Possible and Probable that these exist and that  2.  That this may be where we go or others exist right now.   I caught a show on History Channel the other night called 'The real face of Jesus".  It was about the Shroud of Turin.  The people (highly trained in their field) talking about the effect that caused this image on the cloth all agreed on one thing- It was done by light.  Because the cloth was draped, it holds more information, as in 3d unlike a 2d flat image.  Amazing.  Could the one thing that passes from one dimension to another be LIGHT?  Because light has two properties, would it not make sense to be the one thing able to carry the "data" from one to the other?  Unlike our zeros and ones (a 2 dimensional way of thinking) add to this "z and y" axis a third bit of data- the "x" axis.   If you think this is fantasy, think again.  It is now being worked on as the newest and best way of storing data.   Companies have now made data disks that use this 3D element to store up to 3 TB of data and it can be all accessed in less than 2 seconds.  This makes a blue ray disk look like a 8 track tape!  It is possible RIGHT NOW.  Take what we know right now and guess what we will know in a few more years!

THREAD 8.  Collision of Factors:  It is just as true in a car crash as it is in winning the lottery.  You were in the right place and the right time and did or did not do something that caused all of the right factors to come together to produce the big moment.  It takes ALL of them, and if just one is out of place, nothing happens.  Most of our life is spent that way.  Just doing along our little ant trails and going through the motions.  It is no wonder that people that spend many many hours in the casino will eventually win something.  But if they never went in it would not have happened.  It is no wonder that the paranormal investigators at times DO get great evidence.  Even the average Joe in the right place at the right time will get hit by the city bus or snap a photo in which we capture that dithered image of a "ghost".  

NOW you have 8 threads.  Put four of them in a line and the other 4 in line at 90 degrees and weave them back and forth and you have the fabric I promised.  It is small, frail and might need re-woven here and there as you handle it- that's OK,  we can do that and I very well may have to do that too as my experiments progress.  Brother, that is a lot of talking!  BUT  let me tell you my story thus far:

I think that the existence of a ghost or spirit is right in line with Biblical teachings and thus it should not offend a Christian reader at all.  I think that unless you are one of the few humans that still think we did not go to the moon, you have to accept that this is possible.   Furthermore, I think that the existence of ghosts and spirits from a scientific point of view also makes perfect sense.  We are energy beings and our energy is NOT destroyed when we die.  Our energy goes to another place that is beyond this one in terms of dimensions.  But, when the conditions are right, the fabric is thin and the veil CAN be pierced if just for a moment. 

 HERE IT IS IN A NUT SHELL

If you just happen to be in the right place, that place where our ghost is (Thread 1 and 2).  Our ghost is like a fingerprint, and the better quality the better view you will have (which at least in part explains why some photos are better than others- Thread 3).  Now, with the light just right  (Thread 4) in terms of quantity and the frequency (Thread 5) and being acted upon by the electromagnetic duality of particles and light and the duality of Magnetic and Electric, there is a lensing effect (Thread 6) to the light allowing us to see it.  In other words, (thread 7) something in that other place (call it what you want) aligned (much like the door opening or tilting the glass) with all the other factors and POW, you get the visual ability to see "through" the veil and possibly even take a photo.  Often, the result is a dithered image that is not as clear as we would like, but it is there!

 It is my job to find the right light and right frequency to increase the chance of making this happen, at least more often.  We must leverage our ideas toward areas that we both understand and don't understand to get the evidence.  Let the science and theology people argue about it later, in the mean time, I am making a light bulb.  So far, I have found many ways how NOT to make it.  The most promising area so far has been with the introduction of electromagnetic fields along with the introduction of an ionic charge and crossing those with light from around the 360nm zone to produce the best effect...really, you can easily take all of the above theories and what ifs from this page and they can very easily be added to this fabric and not look out of place.  I am still perfecting my techniques and materials.. 

Keith Engel  4/16/2010.