The camera sees all

A few years back, I snagged what is sometimes called a “grab shot” of my cat Ben perched in the bathroom, and liked the effect of his glowing eyes in the depths. So I captioned it, a la LOLCats, but never bothered to submit it. More amusing to me is that Ben lacked any shred of threat or ominousness (you don’t think that’s a real word, do you?), being one of the most mellow and friendly cats I’ve known. Also one of the least bright, but those are stories for another day…

Unfortunately, I’m one of those people where half of my offline reading is done in the bathroom, and to the right of Ben’s pedestal (all cats have one, you know) sits my reading table. When I stumbled upon this image again recently, something there caught my eye, and I had to go in for a closer look. The original was shot much wider than this and cropped down, and done with a low-resolution digital camera yet, so the result isn’t exactly TV forensics quality, but it suffices.

As I suspected, the book is recognizable, and indicative of a skeptic’s bathroom for sure. In fact, I had a friend tell me that he’d picked up the book in my bathroom while visiting, became too engrossed, and ended up having to get his own copy – so now I even have a rough timeframe of when that occurred.

At this enhanced resolution, however, something that almost escaped attention now becomes obvious – there’s a sprite or orb or whatever in the shot! Don’t try telling me that it’s just a reflection of the flash, because reflections don’t have dark edges like that! Nor is there any reason for them to be purplish. No, the arcane processes that comprise photography served to capture the evidence of something not visible to the naked eye. I’d suspect the ghost of some past resident but the building was only about twenty years old, so perhaps the ghost of some previous structure on that location, though since I’m in North Carolina there’s a good chance this was a still. Then again, they do call liquor “spirits”…

Undoubtedly, it was locked in mortal combat (well, okay, immortal combat) with the spirit of the book. Which also explains why Ben was in there, because everyone knows cats are attuned to ghosts and such. He was probably refereeing.

I still have the book, but have noticed no arcane stacking behavior or anything. I’ll keep watching…

One thought on “The camera sees all”

  1. You post stuff like this on April 1 not June 2. Are you becoming befuddled in your advanced age? :-)

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