The Floating and Bouncing Orb

This was captured early during our June 26th investigation of the Rohs Opera House. We had a Sony Super Nightshot digital cassette camcorder set up on the stage and aimed at the balcony. The camera was set to slow shutter mode to enhance the image and we were using a 140 LED IR floodlight for illumination.

This is obviously not dust nor a bug. That leaves two possibilities that I know of: a reflection on the lens or something paranormal.

The orb enters frame from the lower left at about 14 seconds into the clip. It bounces about for a moment, then moves to towards center frame and disappears at about the 24-26 second mark.

It then fades back into the lower left of the frame at about the 34 second mark. It does not glide in from the side as it did the first time. It bounces about slightly and fades in and out but does not really move until it fades out for the last time at about the 46 second mark. After this point I can't say that I see it again.

Since we had a handheld camera in use at the same time, we thought we would match up the videos to the exact same starting point and see what the other camera was doing at these times assuming it was nothing more than an IR reflection caused by the light on the second camera. The handheld camera is a Sony Super Nightshot DVD camcorder illuminated by a 36 LED IR Sima illuminator.

At the 14 second mark when the orb appeared Anita is starting to hand me the camera, but has kept it surprisingly steady and aimed at the center stage. From the 16 to 18 second mark that camera moves around as she actually hands it to me, but at the 26 second mark when the orb moves to center frame the handheld camera is aimed back at center stage and is not moving. This camera slowly pans towards the other camera between the 34 to the 46 second mark even though during this span the orb appears relatively stationary in the lower left as it began, bouncing and fading in and out. That's what throws me. The handheld camera actually is pointed back to center stage at the time the orb disappears.

Despite both cameras running for 4 hours each, this was the only time anything resembling an orb appeared. Several times we got the IR glare you would expect from having two cameras in the same room.

If anyone out there has a better analysis of this or feels that my time line is off enough to account for the differences in camera movement versus the orb's position, by all means let me know. I did the best I could, but I am not a video or video editing expert.

As it stands I am calling this one unexplained. Everything in my being tells me that it looks like an IR reflection but the second camera's movement does not seem to match up.

If you would like to download the videos to your computer and do your own analysis here are the links. Just "right click" and select "save target as".

UPDATE: Upon closer review, and after finding a way to display the images "picture in picture", I am sure now that it is the weirdest IR reflection ever, but that it is in fact an IR reflection. The correlation between the handheld camera's movement and certain movements the orb makes are too close to be coincidence. There are still movements that that I don't understand, but I occasionally don't have to understand everything.