The Mystery of Orb Crescents and Orb Veils

In this post on another blog, strange-creature investigator Linda Godfrey shows a trail cam photo showing what looks like photos I have taken of what I call orb veils and orb crescents. Committing the logical sin known as "false dilemma," Linda asks whether the things in her photos are fairies or dew drops.  Of course, we are not limited to those two possibilities.

Not citing any experience of such things, Linda says the best conclusion is that the unusual things in the photo were caused by "water droplets, perhaps dew, on the trail cam lens." But that's not the correct conclusion. I have got hundreds of photos of unusual crescent shapes rather like the shapes she shows, along with hundreds of photos of unusual veil-like objects like the ones she shows. There are three reasons why water droplets on the lens is an untenable explanation for such things.

(1) Orb veils and orb crescents typically appear as objects with sharp edges rather than blurry edges. But when you get a water drop on the camera lens, it always looks like a blurry blob. That's because the camera cannot focus on something that is right on the lens.
(2) When you get a water drop on the lens, it persists, so that, for example, if you get such a drop on the 5th photo in your series of 10 photos, you will also see it in the 6th photo, the 7th photo, the 8th, and so forth. But these mysterious orb veils and orb crescents will almost always not appear in the next photo you take. They are one-shot wonders rather than things that persist in the next photo.
(3) Orb veils very often appear as polygons with lots of pointy edges -- not at all the shape you would get from water smudges on the lens. When I actually get water smudges on my lens, they don't have pointy edges.

Below are some orb veils I photographed on October 14,, 2016. Note the pointy edges.

The question we should be asking here is not whether we are seeing fairies but whether we are seeing an unknown that we don't understand.