Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

I met Ron Bowers through Angie Christie who is the resident Spiritualist Medium on our website, The Night Watchman Chronicles. Thanks to the wonder of technology, I found myself looking at the most amazing photos taken by Ron in various areas of Essex, England. I set up an interview with Ron for him to talk to The Night Watchman about his photos and gave him a special page on the site for these photos to accompany the interviews.

Im certain youre wondering if I just took these photos at face value, without question, from a man I had just met via email. Of course not. I have 30 years under my belt in the study of the paranormal, have published three books before this one, and have three years as magazine editor and webmaster for our website. If Ive learned anything, its never to take anything at face value, but to investigate in every way possible, the validity of what is presented.

Before setting up the interview, I took the time to get to know Ron through email. Its amazing how much you can learn about someone just be emailing regularly. In essence, Ron and I learned about one another. He learned that he could trust us to promote his gift in a non-judgmental and professional manner, and I learned he was a trustworthy individual with a true gift.

I also discovered that Ron is an average man with a family and the normal concerns of raising four children, caring for extended family, holding down a job and making ends meet as well as dealing with a gift he instinctively knows people will have a hard time believing. My opinion of Ron is that he is a very honest, caring and considerate individual someone we can proudly call a friend

Rons photos were discovered on our website by a forum which is based from an extremely well known and popular paranormal group. One person from this forum found Rons photos and posted our website for others to take a look. Our website stats alerted us that hundreds of people were viewing Rons photos, so we clicked on the forum link to see what their impression was.

The comments were, of course, of disbelief which we expected, but it wasnt the disbelief that amazed us. It was the fact that these people looked at the photos and made immediate judgment that they were fake. The general consensus was that no one could take photos like this and if they could, why werent they famous?

What was even more incredible to us was that some of these people claimed to be experts in various areas of technology and the paranormal, yet not a single person tried to discover more about Ron and his photos. They didnt bother to listen to the 37 minute interview with Ron that was available with the photos. They didnt try to contact us to find out more about Ron. No one tried to discover how the photos were taken or if any one had witnessed Ron taking photos. The fact is, they were so advanced and so knowledgeable on every aspect of the paranormal that they could immediately state the photos as fake without doing any investigation at all. How amazing is that?

It wasnt until after we posted a reply to the forum, explaining more about Ron, that the posts began looking more like one would expect from people studying different aspects of the paranormal.

In point of fact, anyone who has ever taken a photograph and discovered a strange anomaly such as an orb, ectoplasm, or a vortex, can call themselves a psychic photographer. Why it is so easy to accept a photo of an orb or ectoplasm than it is an apparition is not understood, but skepticism seems to run high when our minds can fully understand what it is we are seeing.

If a person sees a ball of light in a photo, they can think, Oh, thats an orb. They can accept calling it an orb and accept its existence, knowing that the general consensus is that they are spirit energy, yet no one truly knows with any certainty exactly what these balls of light are. Upon seeing a photo of an apparition, maybe because we can recognize the apparition as a person who has passed on, we view it with instant disbelief.

This, of course, is contrary to what so many have been trying to prove that spirits can and do walk among us. We want to believe because we dont want to think that our lives just end at our deaths, yet we dont want to believe when possible proof is offered. We are a complicated species wanting answers, but not wanting them.

Ron has had witnesses to his photographs. Angie Christie, our website Spiritualist Medium, her friend Margaret and Margarets husband, accompanied Ron to the Holy Trinity Church in Long Melford, Suffolk, England where Margaret and Johns son, Peter, is buried. I wont tell you in detail here about the outing as you can read about it in the Special Section of this book, but all three of them saw the apparitions on Rons camera view screen as Ron was snapping the pictures.

Rons brother-in-law and all four of Rons children have witnessed the apparitions on Rons camera as the spirits were allowing themselves to be photographed. Joe and Sally Kemp, paranormal investigators in England, have witnessed Ron taking these photos and the owner of a famous pub called The Western Arms (another chapter of this book) has been witness to Rons photos in his own establishment.

None of these people have anything to gain by helping Ron create the image of a false gift, but they have much to gain spiritually by believing what theyve seen with their own eyes.