An Orange Orb

 Photo date: November 8, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin .

Below we see a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. The photo was taken with an old camera that I rarely use these days, because its flash only works about half of the time. The photo was taken in darkness, and it was one of the roughly 50% of the times in which this old camera fails to flash.  The background was not a black surface, but a white wall. The photo showed nothing but this orb, with the whole rest of the photo (more than 100 times bigger) being black. 

His "Window Rock Haunting" Account Tells of Apports and Orb Faces

 The year 2024 book "Paranormal Ranger" by Stanley Milford Jr. was published by the well-known publisher William Morrow. The subtitle is "A Navajo Investigator's Search for the Unexplained." According to the dust jacket, the book is written by a person who "worked continuously as a sworn law enforcement office for over twenty-three years." We read of Stanley's police work in the Southwest USA, often including places that have a reputation as paranormal hotspots. 

The highlight of the book is Chapter 9, entitled "The Window Rock Haunting." On page 186 Stanley says that in November, 2010 he went to investigate after a woman "said that nearly all of her employees -- ten to fifteen individuals -- had experienced paranormal phenomena that were deeply disruptive and making it difficult for everyone to do their jobs." On the same page we read this: "The employees had heard disembodied voices, felt unseen hands touch them, saw office supplies move across the room, and witnessed many other strange incidents."

Stanley says on page 189, "I felt an invisible finger touch my upper lip." On the same page he says, "I heard two distinct male voices, apparently in conversation, only about three feet to my left," even though "there was no one there." 

On page 191 Stanley reports the first of numerous apports -- objects that seem to appear out of nowhere. He says, "I felt a small, hard object hit my shoulder and plunk to the ground behind me." Looking on the ground he found a quarter, saying, "It had apparently fallen out of the sky." Then things got weirder. On page 192, Stanley says this:

"As we waited in the darkness, the sound of coins hitting the ground began. One of us quickly turned the lights back on just in time to see more coins raining down. There were eight in total, of varying denominations: quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. They were all heads up. Coins continued to apport, or appear from thin air, for the duration of our time investigating the government building....There were sixty-five coins that fell over the two-day period....With at least ten of the coins, I saw the moment of their apporting, as they appeared from thin air right in front of my eyes." 

In a photo in the book, we see all these coins, and the caption says they all landed heads up. On page 193 Stanley says he saw a chair move across a stage, "rolling twelve to fifteen feet." On the same page and the next page,  Stanley says he took some photos, and that one of them showed that "in the air over the cubicles hung hundreds of orbs, three-dimensional in appearance with different sizes and hues, like what you would see if a bubble-making machine were pumping soap bubbles into the air." On page 194 Stanley says this:

"Then I used photo software to zoom in. All of the orbs had human faces." 

He says on the same page that "several consecutive photos showed the same," and that "he felt sure that each of these faces represented a human soul that had died."  

On pages 195 to 196 Stanley claims that he asked "is anyone here" and eventually got a mysterious voice saying "yes, I'm here," one captured in a recording. On page 199 he says that his camera "clearly captured a disembodied hand floating behind Dusty's head." 

On page 200 Stanley says that the haunting "followed me back to my home," and that there "the coins continued to fall, each of them heads up." On page 202 Stanley says this:

"Years later, I am still experiencing the ongoing effects of the haunting. Coins appear throughout my home and sometimes even fall near when I'm out in public -- in broad daylight." 

The average reader may dismiss these accounts as fiction, but I do not. I have had too many similar experiences myself.  My post "Spookiest Observations: A Deluxe Narrative" (which you can read here) discusses my own experiences in which I sometimes seemed to observe apports -- small objects that rather seemed to appear "out of nowhere."  I have never seen a coin that seemed to fall from above my head, but I have seen (while alone in an apartment) a coin mysteriously roll up from behind me, the coin rolling on its edge. This was in an apartment that I had just finished double-checking for it to have a complete absence of loose coins, a double-checking because I was trying to methodically investigate what seemed like a phenomenon of coins mysteriously appearing. I have also experienced an event in which a set of keys (not belonging to me) rather seemed to appear out of thin air right in front of me, with the keys falling down every one of a long set of concrete stairs I was sitting at the top of.  I still have those keys. 

As for single photos showing quite a few faces within orbs, I have sometimes got that effect while photographing falling drops of pure, clean water, with the effect repeating for many consecutive photos. You can see some examples here and here and here and here. My post here includes two videos of my camera viewfinder while I was photographing such marvels. 

I have had no luck in getting paranormal voices in any of a few attempts I have tried that with recording devices. As for mysterious phenomena called "spirit hands," they were listed by the leading 19th century physicist Sir William Crookes as one of several types of paranormal phenomena that he observed. The link here takes you to a page in a book by Crookes, in which he describes witnessing such a phenomenon. You can read about other reports of witnessing spirit hands using the link here. 

Mysterious Green Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 8)

 Below is Part 8 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious green orbs.

The photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed indoors.  

The two orbs below appeared in the same photo I took indoors.  

The photo shows four mysterious orbs I photographed indoors, three of which were green. They all have rings near their outer circumferences, something often seen in such orbs.

The photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed indoors.  As in these photos, we see two different rings near the circumference of the orb.

The photo below shows two mysterious orbs I photographed indoors. 

The photos below show some colorful mysterious orbs I photographed. The one at bottom was in front of an air filter that has no green color at all.

In the photos below, we see two mysterious orbs I photographed near my TV, one green and one blue. 

Fast and Bright

 Photo date: October 26, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors.

Synchronicity Strikes Again

 I have quite a few times on this blog discussed remarkable cases of synchronicity I have observed, often cases that seemed to be a potential spiritual manifestation. The latest such case happened just a few minutes ago. 

I sometimes amuse myself thinking about the fantasy of a mind-reading polyglot who dazzles people in a subway car, by going from person to person and speaking in each of the diverse languages used by those sitting in a New York City subway car.  In this fantasy I also imagine this person being able to read the minds of those sitting in the subway car, so that he knows their names, though they have never before met. 

This time I thought of the fantasy with a twist involving a deceased sibling. I imagined the mind reader knowing a pet name occasionally used by my deceased mother when referring to one of my two deceased sisters. I imagined the polyglot mind-reader encountering this sister and saying, "Aha, it's V___ J____ R____. " When I imagined that, I used the full name(s) or word(s). 

Within 1 or 2 seconds after thinking of that V___ J____ R___ referring to a deceased sibling, the light in front of me (from the window in back of me)  mysteriously flickered quite noticeably, causing the wall shown on the right half of the photo below to briefly look different for a moment. 

There were no electric lights on. Here was the view in front of me:

And here was the view in back of me (the windows were all closed, and the curtains are heavy):

I can't imagine any reason why the light falling on the wall in front of me would have flickered. The back lot behind the window shown above was an unoccupied concrete lot with no trees or bushes, surrounded on three sides by white walls about 7  feet high. After the event described above, I stood for minutes facing the spot where I noticed the strange flickering, and noticed no other flickering of the light from the window. 

New US Government Document Dump Mentions "Orbs of Light" at the Spookiest Ranch

 The US government has just released Tranche 7 of its release of documents related to UFOs or UAPs. Searching for the word "orb" using the search page you can reach here, I get a search result corresponding to the page here. The page has this remarkable statement: "It also records extensive reported accounts involving 'dog-like bipedal creatures,' orbs of light, 'little people,' 'prehistoric-looking' birds, among other phenomena, and states that BAASS intended to use interactive methods to attempt communication with the presumed source of reported anomalous activity." 

There is a link to a pdf file you can read here. The file is a report on mysterious occurrences at the famous Skinwalker Ranch, which has been associated with the strangest observational reports. On page 8 we read this jaw-dropping claim: "Eleven (11) separate individual witnessed a bipedal 'dog-like' creature and/or orbs of light at different times in different locations near the Utah property."

Around page 46 we have a "Lighting Anomaly" table. Reading the table is a bit tricky, because rows on multiple pages of the table refer to the same observation(s). The presentation of the data is clumsy, and it would have been better to have presented the observation reports outside of a table arranged in such a way.  The table seems to tells us this:

• Multiple people saw floating "glowing balls of white light" the size of basketballs, which had "flickering colors within."
• One person saw a blue orb the size of a basketball at an altitude of 3-4 feet, and another person saw a blue orb the size of a golf ball.
• Another person saw a golden orb. 
• There were various other orb sightings. 

The document dump also includes the pdf file here, where we read the following: 

• "Witnesses say the amber glowing orbs are like nothing they've  seen before" (page 36). 
• One man saw a single ball of light, which spawned several other lights (page 36). 
• Witnesses saw for 20-30 minutes a white ball of light with a red ball of light traveling around it (page 77). 
• "One of the blue orbs flew across the road in front of the car, while the other two entered the car as it sped along at 85 miles per hour" (page 126). A witness reported one of the orbs entering her body and exiting it, and causing nausea, and also additional symptoms.

"String of Pearls" Orb Motion: A Retrospective (Part 6)

What I call the "string of pearls" effect is an effect in which a photo seems to show multiple position states of an orb traveling very fast. Below is Part 6 of a retrospective of my photos showing such an effect.

My photo below was taken in Grand Central Terminal in New York,  We see a most spectacular example of a moving orb. This example shows what I call the "string of pearls" effect, where we see multiple position states of a moving orb, which end up looking rather like pearls on a pearl necklace. 

My photo below was taken in Grand Central Terminal in New York. We seem to see an orb that is moving in a W-shaped motion (tilt your head and you can see the W-shape). We see an example of the "string of pearls" effect in which different position states of a fast-moving orb look like pearls on a pearl necklace. In this case there are at least six "pearls" in the "necklace."

My photo below shows a featureless indoor wall. We see an orb that seems to be moving very fast. The camera seems to have captured four different position states of a hurtling orb. The apparent size was about 20 inches.

My photo below shows what seems to be an orb moving fast above a wooden floor. The camera seems to have captured three position states of a fast moving object.

My photo below was taken in Grand Central Terminal in New York.  We a blue orb that seems to be moving very fast, in an undulating manner (as we also see in these 20 photos).  We also see the "string of pearls" effect shown in this series of photos, in which we see position states of a moving orb that resemble pearls on a pearl necklace.

Below is the larger photo from which this photo was cropped.

My photo below shows what I call the orb "string of pearls" effect, in which we seem to see multiple position states of a single fast-moving orb. The end result looks like a string of pearls on a pearl necklace.

My photo below shows an orb that seems to be moving very fast, in a squiggly wiggly path, next to a big flag in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

Below is a closer look at the orb. We see the "string of pearls" effect in which we see contiguous position states of a moving orb, which look like pearls on a necklace. There are three different changes of direction in a short space, something that is impossible for dust, insects, or birds.

See-Through Something

 Photo date: October 21, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

One Was Brighter

 Photo date: October 18, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

We see below two mysterious orbs I photographed indoors. 

The previous day I got this photographic anomaly:

When a Spooky Event Occurs, Record What You Were Thinking or Saying

 Over the past 12 hours, I saw two cases of a possible connection between something I was thinking and some spooky thing I observed. 

The first event occurred in the middle of the night. While getting up to go the bathroom, and alone in a bathroom that was dark except for the tiny green light on a GFCI electrical outlet, I thought to myself about a type of observation pattern that may indicate heart trouble. "Get enough of those, and you'll go to the right destination," I thought to myself. The "right destination" I thought of was a heavenly destination of an afterlife.

Within about three seconds after thinking that thought, the light on the GFCI outlet turned off and then very quickly turned back on. 

I can't say that this was a very rare type of event. My post here records more than 70 times (since 2022) that the GFCI outlet light mysteriously turned off and then immediately turned back on, almost all occurring when the bathroom was dark at night. But the synchronicity here was striking. In this case the mysterious turning off and on of the light occurred within about three seconds after I had thought about life after death. How improbable is that?

There was another case of striking synchronicity later in the day. After showering, I thought of a dream I had last night about a planned meeting with my mother at 4:00.  My mother is deceased, but in the dream she was alive. At the very moment I was thinking of this dream, the tension bar holding up my shower curtain collapsed, with the curtain falling to the ground. I cannot recall the previous time such a rod had collapsed, and no such collapse had occurred for many months before today (it seems). 

Again we have some striking synchronicity between my thought and a spooky event, this time with a possible double death motif. When the tension rod collapsed, I was thinking of a meeting with my mother (something that might occur after death in an afterlife). And also there was a collapse of a curtain. In English "curtains" is a slang term for death (and when old people die, it often involves a collapse). 

I seem to sometimes get spooky events that coincide in a relevant way with something I am thinking or saying. For example, as recorded in my post here, just after audibly mentioning that it was my mother's 100th birthday, I was baffled to find a coin on top of a bedspread I had just laid out on a bed, without noticing any such coin.  My post here records a striking case of synchronicity, in which the flashlight on my iPhone (very hard to turn on accidentally) mysteriously turned on within a few  seconds after I mentally speculated about being protected by some supernatural power. My post here records the mysterious turning off of a circuit breaker when I lay in bed thinking of my late father (on a date that turned out to be my late father's birthday).  A case of a smoke alarm acting in a spooky manner coinciding with my thoughts of deceased parents is recorded here.  In my post here, I mention how a light mysteriously flickered at the very moment I was discussing what to do in the case of my death. Later in the same dinner conversation, I saw a different light mysteriously flicker when I mentioned the hypothetical event of my death. 

To a materialist, all such cases are meaningless coincidences. But to someone who is not a materialist, such cases may be regarded as potential evidence that some mysterious unseen power may interact in our world, a power that may be capable of reading our thoughts. 

I can suggest a principle: when you observe some spooky-seeming thing, write down somewhere exactly what happened, and also the exact date and time; and also write down what you were thinking or saying when the spooky thing happened. You may be able to note possibly meaningful or evidential cases of synchronicity. 

Postscript: When I went out for my walk around 3:45 PM, I was kind of suspecting somewhat that I might drop dead on the walk, at about 4:00 PM. After all, I had the dream today of meeting my mother at 4:00 PM, and the quickest way that could happen would be if I died at 4:00 PM today and then went to an afterlife to see her. And the dream had been strongly accentuated by the synchronicity described above. 

I did not die at 4:00 PM, but at what seemed like exactly that time there occurred an odd event of a type I strongly associate with my mother. I forgot to bring my cell phone, so I didn't know the exact time of the event. My best guess is that it occurred within 5 minutes of 4:00 PM. 

What happened was that while walking along, I found on the sidewalk right in my path what seemed like a string of purple flowers (shown below). I picked this up, thinking they were real flowers, and realizing only a few minutes later that they were artificial flowers. 

The association between my mother and purple flowers goes way back, many years. Purple was my mother's favorite color, and she often wore purple clothes. The last conversation I had with my late sister was one in which she stated something to the effect that purple flowers she had not planted had mysteriously shown up in my sister's garden after my mother died; and my sister interpreted this as some spiritual manifestation from my late mother. For four years I have witnessed (against all odds) a strange blooming of purple flowers in the concrete backyard of where I live, flowers not corresponding to any planted flowers or seeds.  You can see examples in my post here and my post here. One of the purple flowers I saw was an amaranth plant. Since ancient times, the amaranth has been a symbol of immortality. 

 

Mysterious Blue Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 25)

 Below is Part 25 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious blue orbs photographed indoors. 

he photo below shows a transparent orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York. 

I took the photo below at Grand Central Terminal in New York. 

My photo below shows two mysterious orbs that rather seem to be mingling with the crowd at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

My photo below shows a mysterious blue orb I photographed at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

The photo below shows a bright transparent blue orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

My photo below shows a transparent blue orb I photographed at Grand Central Terminal in New York. The orb seems to be behind a light. 

My photo below shows a mysterious blue orb that seems positioned near a baby stroller in Grand Central Terminal.  Let us interpret this as a sign of good fortune (or perhaps it's just orb curiosity).

Merry Mystery?

 Photo date: October 12, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

"String of Pearls" Orb Motion: A Retrospective (Part 5)

 What I call the "string of pearls" effect is an effect in which a photo seems to show multiple position states of an orb traveling very fast. Below is Part 5 of a retrospective of my photos showing such an effect.

We see below a mysterious speeding orb I photographed  in Grand Central Terminal. We see once again the "string of pearls" effect I have many times photographed, in which we seem to see multiple position states of an object speeding fast. In this case you can count at least 10 individual orb position states that the camera has captured.

I have taken hundreds of photos of speeding orbs at Grand Central Terminal..  The one I photographed below is among the most spectacular I have taken. We see a blue orb that is moving like natural things never move.  At the top we see an extremely sharp turn of about 45 degrees. The camera has captured about 12 position states of an object moving very fast, which results in the "string of pearls" effect I have photographed more than 50 times (as shown here).  

The photo below shows a speeding orb I photographed indoors. 

Below is one of the most astonishing photos I have taken of a speeding orb. The orb has made 4 sharp turns, three of which are right-angle turns. 

The photo below shows at its top a blue orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal, one that seems to be moving very fast. 

My photo below shows a moving orb changing direction at Grand Central Terminal in New York.  Looking closely, you can see what looks like three different position states of the moving orb, with a kind of translucent trail connecting them. 

The photo below shows an orb I photographed speeding near a window at Grand Central Terminal in New York. 

Anomalous Alarm

Today I heard a very loud alarm from my bathroom. At first I couldn't find the source, but soon I realized it was from a water leak detector I had at the floor of my bathroom, under the sink. The alarm was very loud, and could not be silenced. There was no water at all on the floor of the bathroom that could explain this event. I had bought the alarm less than a year ago. Right next to the alarm was another water leak alarm; and that alarm did not go off. The Amazon page describing the alarm that went off says it merely beeps when the battery is low.

Pressing the "Test" button on the alarm failed to silence it. I tried to get the back off, so I could take out the batteries. The back has very tiny screws that require a special screwdriver. I had quite a few tiny screwdrivers, but none of them could turn the screws on the back. Unable to pull out the batteries, I ended up burying the alarm in a bucket of sand in my tool shed. 

Below is the front and back of the water detector.  

 I recommend against buying this brand by Geevon, as its back is very hard to take off. Other water detectors of this size have a design allowing you to replace the alarm with a mere turn of the wrist. One such model is another model by Geevon, showing three water drops on its front. 

This is just the latest of very many cases I have experienced of lights or devices turning on or off mysteriously. You can read about almost all of them using the link here and pressing Older Posts when you come to the bottom of the page. 

Freaky Flicker

 Recently I was at a birthday dinner party attended by five people. I won't mention whose birthday it was because I have heard that for information security purposes, you should avoid mentioning someone's birthday. Before the event, I had the suspicion that something unusual might happen with the overhead lights on this evening. I had this suspicion because last Valentine's Day, I witnessed overhead lights mysteriously turn off and then turn back on. That incident was described in my post here. 

Just as I had suspected, something very unusual occurred with the overhead lights. The lights very noticeably flickered, dimming before going back to normal. It was a cool day, and this certainly was not a power dip caused by too many people using air conditioners. The overhead lights did not totally turn off, but seemed to briefly dim by perhaps 50% or more. The effect lasted only a second or two. 

This post was written just after observing the effect described above, but auto-scheduled for publication at a later date. 

Below is a mysterious orb I photographed indoors today.

Mysterious Blue Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 24)

Below is Part 24 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious blue orbs photographed indoors. 

My photo below shows an entrance of Grand Central Terminal in New York. The strange blue orb floating about is highly transparent.

The photo below shows a mysterious blue orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal. We can rather seem to faintly see an eerie face tilted to the left, a face including two big eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

The photo below shows a blue orb I photographed near a window at the top of Grand Central Terminal. The orb seems to be doing some odd pulsation.  See here for 5 other photos of pulsating orbs.

The photo below shows two mysterious blue orbs that I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

I took the two photos below about 40 seconds apart at Grand Central Terminal in New York. They both show a mysterious blue orb at the same sign.  There were about 8 intervening photos that showed no such orb in front of the sign.  See here for similar cases of orbs reappearing at the same spot.

In my photo below we see two orbs next to a temporary advertising sign in Grand Central Terminal. It looks as if one of the orbs is inside the other.

I took the photos below at Grand Central Terminal in New York on January 9, 2017 and January 11, 2017. They both show the same little spot in the station.  In both we see a mysterious blue orb underneath the red light. Are blue orbs attracted to red lights?

Synchronicity When the Light Mysteriously Turned On

I just returned from a trip to the local library. I followed my usual habit of borrowing almost entirely books written by people who teach things I disbelieve in and who mostly have viewpoints the opposite of mine. This is a big difference between the reading habits of myself and the typical materialist or scientist, who seems to limit himself to studying things written by people with the same worldview as himself.  I typically spend at least an hour a day reading articles or papers by those with viewpoints the opposite of my own. 

When I returned back to my living quarters, I put on a hook a plastic baseball hat/helmet like the ones that baseball first base coaches wear to protect their heads from foul balls. Doing that, I remembered the interesting incident described here, in which such a hat/helmet mysteriously fell off of a hook that should have held it very securely. 

I had interpreted the event as some possible spiritual manifestation that symbolized protection, as such a hat/helmet is used for head protection. Remembering the event, I thought to myself, "He's got me covered," using an English phrase that refers to protection. I was thinking of some mysterious power that might be acting as a force of protection. In the thought, my use of "he" was vague. I was engaging in cheerful speculation, merely in my own mind. 

Within five seconds after thinking such a thought, I noticed something very strange. I was holding my iPhone, and I was very surprised to see that the flashlight at the back of my iPhone was now on. I never use that flashlight; I did not intentionally turn it on, and did not previously know how to turn it on. I had to query my phone for information on how to turn off that flashlight on the back of my iPhone. 

There is on my iPhone no physical button that turns on the phone's flashlight. And there is on my iPhone startup screen no icon that turns on the phone's flashlight. My iPhone's startup screen look like this:

According to an Apple page, you can supposedly turn on the flashlight by clicking on one of the icons on the bottom row, and audibly asking "Siri" to turn on the flashlight. I did not do that to turn on the flashlight, and did not know until after this event that you could do that. The same page says that you can turn on the flashlight by doing these steps:

"1. Swipe down from the upper-right corner to open Control Center on your iPhone ..

2. Tap the Flashlight button."

I did not know that you could do this. When I tried it, it worked to turn on the flashlight. The required direction of the finger swipe is shown by the red arrow below:

The method above requires a special combination of two finger actions, each acting very precisely in a specific way. It seems all but impossible that any accidental movements of an iPhone would ever produce the combination of these two effects to turn on the flashlight. 

I've had this phone for years, and have long taken it with me on my daily walks. I can't recall ever finding before today the flashlight of the phone turned on mysteriously. 

The light mysteriously turning on seemingly within a few seconds after my thought of "he's got me covered" (referring to some mysterious protective power) is a striking example of synchronicity, and possible evidence that my upbeat speculative thought was correct. 

Postscript: My wife has used the iPhone for years. I asked her whether she had ever seen the flashlight on the iPhone accidentally turn on. She said no.