The Orb Defined

An orb is loosely defined as "the soul of a once living person or animal that appears in photographs as a spherical[ly] shaped light." Both ghosts and spirits can manifest as an orb (The Orb Controversy, Miller's Paranormal Research, 2001). Many paranormal investigators pooh-pooh most orbs in photographs as dust, small flying insects, light refractions, et.al. Whatever. All I know is that we, at Ghost Hunters of Asheville Tours, get a lot of them. 

An orb is the lowest-energy manifestation of a ghost or spirit. Ghosts need energy to manifest and move, but cannot create energy -- only steal it. Common sources of such paranormal theft on our tour include lightning, electrical wiring, cell phone batteries, even us! Once ghosts' reservoirs are full, they tend to be conservative with their supply so most often choose to manifest as orbs since these take the least amount of their energy.

If you get an orb in a photograph, you might want to zoom in on it as faces and words can sometimes be embedded in them.

A last, sobering thought regarding orbs: Guests reveal that the most orbs they've ever gotten in photographs are at Ground Zero.

Bye-Bye Big Blue

The first few years I did ghost tours, he was there every night -- hovering off the top of the LBJackson Building. He was big, blue and reliable. Night after night, there he'd be. I started thinking of the blue orb as Big Blue.

There was a psychic on the tour one night. A guy that was the real deal. Scarily so. He claimed to be able to look down into graves and see the people buried there. At one of our sites, I'd been told there were four people buried at that location. I told the ghost story and he looked down. "I see six [people], he said. I checked with another source later that week. He was right; there were six.

At the LBJackson Building, Big Blue attached himself to this paranormally sensitive guest. In every subsequent photo for the rest of the tour, there was Big Blue suspended over him. When we returned to the hotel after the tour, the orb sat on his shoulder for the last photo. Big Blue didn't show up at the LBJackson Building for two nights. I've always thought he probably went home with the psychic.

I was new to touring and didn't ask for a copy of the pictures nor his email address. I wish I had; he might have been able to tell me some of Big Blue's secrets -- who he was, where he'd been, why he was there. (I always thought the orb was male.) As it is, Big Blue no longer haunts the LBJackson Building. He disappeared two years ago. Ghost do travel after all.