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Jim Harold interviews experts on metaphysics in this PLUS ONLY podcast. For Jim's other PLUS shows, go to JimHaroldPlus.com

Jan 7, 2022

Dr. Christina Rawls joins us to talk about orb photography. A controversial subject, many are skeptical of the subject but Dr. Rawls says the phenomena is real!

You can find her book on the subject at Amazon: The Technological Age & the Orb Phenomenon

Thanks Dr. Rawls!

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Note: We cannot guarantee 100% accuracy with transcripts. They are a best effort. Thank you for your understanding.

SPEAKERS

Christina Rawls, Jim Harold

Jim Harold  

Fleeting glimpses of things seen through a veil, darkly. Do we understand the meaning of these visions? Of life? Why we are here and how little of our existence we truly understand? Tonight, we will talk about these things on the Other Side. Welcome to the other side. I'm Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. And I think we're going to have a fantastic show because we're going to talk about something, and I've kind of prepped my guest for this today, that I tend to lean towards skepticism. And that's kind of unusual for me, I'm very open to supernatural activity. But when someone shows me an orb photo, frankly, a lot of times my first thought is, "Oh, you know, that's light refraction. Those are dust particles," those kinds of things. So just putting my bias out there. But as a theme of the shows, we've been doing, well, now for almost 17 years. Unbelievable. I always want to keep an open mind, and I want to learn new things. And we've got a great guest to do that. She has her PhD in philosophy. She's been a philosophy professor for 15, 16 years. She is an author who has written books on the subject that we're going to talk about today, spirit photography, and orb photography, and what that means. And I'm so glad to welcome Dr. Christina Rawls to talk to us about it. And I believe you just have a book out now, The Technological Age and the Orb Phenomenon? Is that correct?

Christina Rawls  

Yes, it was just published at the end of December, finally. I'm so excited. Nice to be here.

Jim Harold  

Well, we're excited--good to have you. And I'm excited to have you on the show because again, I want to learn something. I want to learn why I've been thinking about this phenomenon in maybe the incorrect way. So Christina Rawls is our guest, Dr. Christina Rawls, we're so glad to have you with us. Welcome to the program. And tell us about orb photography. First of all, I guess I would ask with your erudite background, how did you get into this?

Christina Rawls  

So in 2007, around that time period, my mother sent me a photo, and that was back in the time where, you know, digital cameras were around but not as commonly used yet. And the photo--she developed film, she felt this need to take a picture. She didn't know why she felt the need to take that picture that moment. But she developed the film, sent me a photo and in it was a bright, round, orb light sitting in our--the recliner in her living room. Her grandchildren were playing in the living room at the time. But the thing about the bright, round light in the recliner was that it had a face on the inside with distinctly human features. And it had shoulders, and a neck, and almost looked like wearing a shirt coming down from the orb-- --while sitting in the recliner. And the more we looked at it, well, she couldn't believe it. The more we looked at it, it looked like the facial features of her father and also her grandmother, my great grandmother, a kind of combination of the two of them. But really, at first, just like her father, my grandfather, who had just passed--crossed over a few years prior. And we couldn't believe it. It was very distinctive. And although there are seven children in the family, she had a close bond with her father because she almost died as a child. And there he was sitting in the recliner. And the thing about it was the recliner was his favorite place in the whole world to sit. Not necessarily hers. But everyone knew that if you couldn't find him, he was probably in his recliner, somewhere in his, you know, in his living room, and there was an orb, round orb around a human head with shoulders and a neck that looked just like him sitting in the recliner. I didn't know what to do. I started taking photos around my own apartment in Pittsburgh, but I was studying to get the doctorate in philosophy, so I had other things to worry about. And then it exploded for me around 2011. And I just kept getting them on camera, on film, all--regular film, digital cameras, other people's cameras, colorful, sometimes translucent. Sometimes there's geometric patterns on the inside. Sometimes they're just exuding light from the edges. And they were quote unquote, for lack of a better term, wrecking the photos. Because there were hundreds of orbs, hundreds of photos and every time I was taking them, both inside and outside of my apartment in Bedford, Pennsylvania. With witnesses, so I couldn't--they couldn't be ignored is the, the way that I like to say it, around 2011. And it was just as of last year, in 2020, when I made the conscious decision to leave academia, for various reasons, that I wanted to write a book about it because I have repeatability. And I get them every time I take photos, or every time someone takes photos with me.

Jim Harold  

Wow.

Christina Rawls  

And that's really interesting, because in science or social science, repeatability is key to the--the idea that you get similar results. Time after time, you can replicate it, that is certainly kind of the gold standard in terms of growth.  Correct.

Jim Harold  

Now, what do you say to people who say, "Look, you know, these are just dust fragments, this is just lens flare," even people--and we talked about this a little bit offline--even people who are in general open to the supernatural, and to the spiritual, and who may be believe in ghosts fully, and believe in an afterlife, but they kind of draw the line at orbs, what would--what would you say to them?

Christina Rawls  

It's a great question, happens a lot, I would say that we have to talk about the science first and foremost. And then I would go to the psi end of the spectrum. So first, the science. There is a seminal book that was written about 15 years ago by an experimental physicist who worked for NASA and his research partner who ran a University, Dr. Klaus Heinemann and Miceal Ledwith, called The Orb Project. They did, for example, clean room experiments--physics--clean room experiments. So it can't be dust particles. It is sometimes, and they show you photos on how to compare, the difference. But it can't be just dust particles and written off as that because they've done clean room experiments, and they still get orbs. There are also people who get orbs underwater. So it can't just be water particles. And they explain what the physics are in The Orb Project with lots and lots of photos, to be able to compare the difference. And basically, they have concluded, after many years of research and 100,000 photos plus of orbs, that it's about physics, and it's about a process known as fluorescence. And it involves fluorescence and ionization processes. And the flash from digital cameras, because it's made of photons, flashes go off in 1/1000 of a second, which is faster than the human eye can see things on average. 

Jim Harold  

Mhmm.

Christina Rawls  

And when the flash goes off, those photons bounce off the ionization process of the light that the orbs are generating themselves. So it's not refraction, reflection or absorption, the three prime processes of light reflection in physics, it's--the orbs are generating their own light, they have concluded, and the flash just helps with capturing that moment. And they have also concluded, with lots of research, that the orbs are traveling at--they lower to our color spectrum levels, our--our ability to be able to see them, in some ways because some people can see them with their own eyes. But they also travel apparently very fast, 600 to 900 miles per hour, and the flash of a camera is--there is what--the camera flash is sort of freezing the movement, and I have gotten orbs that are moving, and have--I've captured the light traces of the movement. But there are then also, if you don't want to do the science, and there's science on it, which like, you can't get any better than an experimental physicist who works for NASA--

Jim Harold  

Yeah, that's pretty impressive. 

Christina Rawls  

--doing the experiments.

Jim Harold  

That's pretty--

Christina Rawls  

Right. Exactly. And--but if you want to go to the psi route, I--you know, I am an evidential medium, and I left academia to pursue my mediumship full time. I have been at workshops, for example, with the Arthur Findlay College, I have helped bring through loved ones for sitters in healing messages. It's not about me, but there's been many testimonials now. And you can read about those experiences on my website or on the afterlife connect, those reviews, but if you want to go the psi route, there are people in the psi community, the science of psi, who also study it and experience it, such as Dr. Dean Radin--

 

Jim Harold  

Yes, I've interviewed him.

 

Christina Rawls  

--Correct. And he's a hero of mine, a favorite, but also Suzanne Giesemann. And Suzanne Giesemann was basically the highest ranking female, US Navy commander on 9/11. She was basically the fifth in charge. She was the assistant to the assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11. She's 20 years decorated. And she is an evidential medium, retired US Navy Commander. And here's what happened when she went into a zone, a trance, you know, her--her meditative state where she's channeling spirit guides, and somebody asked her, another orb medium, Virginia Hummel, because there's other orb photographers that have published books, like Nancy Meyers and Virginia Hummel. Amazing books with amazing photos. And this is what her guides said, when they channeled the guides and asked, "What is an orb?" The response was that an orb, quote, "is evidence of life," you know, "life after death, it carries the energy of life itself. Orbs are sentient beings, if you wish to call them beings, coalescing energy that can form and dissolve at will for your enjoyment. And for the lessons placed there by higher consciousness, but they are fully conscious and sentient themselves." How do you like that? The quote ends, "like the cells in your body, your cells are all conscious, they are orderly and have their own system." And that's what was channeled through Suzanne Giesemann. 

 

Jim Harold  

Very interesting.

 

Christina Rawls  

So, they're real (laughs).

 

Jim Harold  

Now, let me ask you this, you know, when we think of just taking traditional photographs, we're like, "Oh, well, if you've got a great lens, and you've got a great camera," like one of these nice mirrorless cameras, or, for example, on the high end iPhones, the cameras are getting better and better. How much of this is the equipment? And--but how much of it is the person taking the the picture? In other words, what kind of equipment do you need to have--or should you have? And then how much of it depends on the person taking it? Because it would seem to me, if you're dealing in the spiritual realm, in some ways here at least, that the person would almost be a part of the camera in a sense.

 

Christina Rawls  

That is an amazing question, especially coming from a healthy skeptic (laughs). Because that's exactly right. There seems to be some sort of collaborative energies happening. For example, I told you--I--they happen around me, whether I'm taking the photo or not. If other people are taking the photo, they get bright light orbs all in their photographs, and I get them with repeatability. But there is explanations from the physicists about this. And in The Orb Project, they talk about what they think is happening, for example, why do cheap, digital cameras seem to work the best to get orbs? And that is true, cheap, digital cameras seem to work the best. People will, you know, immediately--maybe skeptics might immediately go, "See? See, cheap camera," but there is an physical, you know, physics explanation about this. And it's basically that the expensive digital cameras use a process where they eliminate the lower red light levels of your photographs because often at the red light level--low red infrared light level on the color spectrum--that will create some stuff, you know, at times that the professional photographers don't want in their--in their pictures or in their film. And so the really expensive cameras, which you know, I cannot afford anyway, but you know, a $10,000 camera, it will purposefully make it so that that level of light that, for example, comes from your--if you pointed your remote control at the TV and took a picture, you would see in some respects a difference between the light that comes from your remote control, that red light, that infrared light, in a cheap digital camera versus an expensive one. And expensive cameras get rid of that level of red light. But the orbs seem to be able to show themselves better on the level of infrared red light in the color spectrum more often. And so a cheap digital camera works the best. But I have seen them on regular film and I've gotten them on regular film. I've seen them in moving--as moving images, you know, as a, you know, somebody taking video, I've seen orbs flying. And I'm not talking dust particles because--I always find the dust particle objection really interesting. If you ever look at a sliver of sunlight coming through your window, there's a trillion dust particles, like a trillion in just a sliver of sunlight. So to say that this huge, shining, bright, white light orb with--with, you know, light obviously coming off its edges that's as, you know, as big as a basketball in front of your tree outside your window at night, you know, obscuring the tree branches, is a dust particle seems odd to me. Because, you know, and especially if you start to see reflections. Sometimes I get or photos in the house, and you can see the reflection of the orb in the window, and you can see it at the physics angle it would be also if it were an object floating in the room, which I believe it is. And then you get the whole faces part of it. There are many orb photographers and orb mediums who get human faces, not just geometrical patterns, but human faces distinctly. We're not talking about amorphous features. We're talking distinct features that can be overlaid with a photograph of the person who has died and it's exact. And Virginia Hummel and Nancy Meyers are two orb photographers who have gotten their children who have died, sadly they died in their 20s--

 

Jim Harold  

Right. Aww.

 

Christina Rawls  

--both of them have sons who--I know, it's--but they have gotten their children, their faces, in orbs and their exact features inside the orb after they passed.

 

Jim Harold  

Wow. Wow.

 

Christina Rawls  

And there are books on this. So when people get understandably skeptical, because they know that cameras do weird things, mess up, capture, you know, there's all kinds of problems with cameras. I just ask them to go honestly look at the photographs of Virginia Hummel, Nancy Meyers, read The Orb Project, and then sit with me and take pictures (laughs).

 

Jim Harold  

(Laughs)

 

Christina Rawls  

You'll see for yourself. So there are--there are scientific explanations as to why cheap digital cameras and flash--and why the flash works to freeze such a process. In fact, in The Orb Project, Dr. Klaus Heinemann and Miceal Ledwith write that "the advantage of a flash" quote "is that it can freeze a picture of a rapidly moving object. It gives an image of how it was in that precise millisecond of a flash without blurring. Even though the shutter speed--that is the length of time the aperture remains open during the taking of a photograph--might not in itself be rapid enough to freeze the motion of the object." And again, you've got the ionization and the fluorescence process. If the orbs are generating some form of light of their own, then--and if there's an ionization process going on, which is well known in physics, then the scientists have concluded here in The Orb Project that the flash is using--the photons of the flash are bouncing off the ionization process and interacting with the ionization process of the light that the orbs are generating themselves. And therefore, that interaction, is how the flash can actually--and the camera can actually capture the orb light because of fluorescence.

 

Jim Harold  

Now, and you kind of talked about this a little bit in your answer, when you talked about the folks who lost those, those--well, I call them kids at my age, I call them kids in their 20s. 

 

Christina Rawls  

Yeah. 

 

Jim Harold  

But if someone has lost somebody meaningful in their life--and I think once you hit a certain age, almost everyone has.

 

Christina Rawls  

Yeah.

 

Jim Harold  

Is this a viable way to try to get some kind of communication with them? And how would a neophyte go about that?

 

Christina Rawls  

I believe absolutely. I believe there's evidence for it. There are books written on it. And it's happening to many orb photographers and orb mediums. It seems, and I'm just gonna say how it is. It seems that they respond to requests. And I'm now starting to take photographs where I can--and this can be tested, where you can make a request, for example, "please go sit on the couch," and then take photographs. And there will be orbs on the couch. "Please go sit over here, stand over there by this," you know, "by the mantel," and then there will be orbs right then and there as you ask. It seems like if you, as we say in the psi world, raise your vibration, and it's coming from the heart, and you say, "can we try to get these photographs," and I know it sounds weird, but music helps (laughs). Music also helps in many other, you know, the--all of human history. But you get, you get, you can ask them to show themselves. Sometimes they'll show faces. Sometimes they'll show geometric patterns, very, very intricate and distinct geometric patterns, almost like fingerprints. And sometimes they'll just, you know, radiate different colors of light. There are some other orb mediums who believe that the colors mean something and have categorized the colors. But as we know, in the psi world, red light, good intentions coming from the heart, requests, meditation, and in my case, sometimes music, these things seem to generate them more frequently. For example, there are a couple of photographs on my website, orbmagic--and that's drchris1111.com. But there's some examples of photographs, there, where, in one case, spontaneously--and I didn't know this was going to happen--we were doing an orb demonstration in Ohio with the current way. And I was taking pictures and having everybody else take pictures. And there were different kinds of cameras, and some were mine and somewhere other people's phones and cameras. And I had--all of a sudden, I was standing there taking pictures, and everybody in the group said, "Let's see if they can--if we can get them to go to Christina." And spontaneously, everyone there said--there were people both online on Zoom, and then in person safely--this was last August--they said, "Go to Christina," and everybody started laughing and giggling. And the vibration was really high, meaning everybody felt fun. And there was laughter, and "go to Christina," they said, and they took pictures. And the photograph you'll see on my website is a picture of what happened when they said that. There's orbs all around me, I felt the need to put my arm up, and there's an orb in my hand. And we didn't see that till a few minutes later, when we looked at all the photos with everyone online, because we looked at all the photos we took immediately. And we saw that photo. And what's so fun about it also is that there's a synchronicity. It was August 17. So it was 8/17. And the photo happened spontaneously at 8:17pm.

 

Jim Harold  

(Laughs) That's pretty neat. That's pretty neat. Um, now, are there certain places like certain rooms of a house that they're more likely to show up? Certain times of the day that are more conducive? What have you found?

 

Christina Rawls  

Well, I've read about and found that they like--you can--they like to show up, and you can get them on film more easily and in photographs during really amazing special occasions, like weddings, birthday parties, or spiritual events, which makes sense to me. And also, they're easier to see obviously at night because they are generating their own light. I get them in the daytime, but every, you know, other orb photographers also get them day or night. But they are easier to see if you have some sort of black background or it's darker, for obvious reasons. And they're all different colors. And like I said, sometimes they have faces inside. And so the best conditions or places would be when you're feeling happy, loving, and there's a group where you can have lots of witnesses. And there's many cameras, especially cheap digital cameras, and, you know, special occasions, happy, loving, beautiful special occasions, weddings, you know, birthday parties, funerals even because, you know, for example, down in New Orleans, funerals are a--kind of a celebratory event, you know, you have a parade when somebody dies in--in their honor often. And--but those kinds of events. It seems they--they show up more often, but you can get them, some people get them any day, every day. I get them every day.

 

Jim Harold  

Very cool. Indeed. Before we go, I would love to share another experience, one of your personal favorite experiences with orbs

 

Christina Rawls  

Sure, um, let's see. Well, I like--there's many, there's a couple. But I think one of my favorites is when other people--recently like last August with the current way in Ohio, when there's a group of people around, just openly talking about it, like that happened last August, and then take spontaneous pictures. So that's one of my favorites from last August. A very happy time in my life also. But I had in--in 2011, they just exploded for me for over a several month period of time where I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos. And then more recently, a couple weeks ago, my grandmother crossed over. And I started taking pictures that night, those couple of days around when she crossed over. And I got these two orbs--she was married for--to my grandfather for her entire life. And I got these two orbs floating together in the photographs right around the time that she crossed over, right after. And they wouldn't leave each other these two orbs. So I got a few photographs where, here I was, honoring her in my own way, and had made a little campfire and, and there, there are these two orbs that evening just, they--floating next to each other all over my backyard (laughs).

 

Jim Harold  

That is so neat, that is so neat. That's--that's a great, it's a great experience. And I think, you know, even if they're, you know--I think everybody dreams of this thing where you can actually talk with, and so forth and have some thing or entity or a ghost talk back to you, particularly with loved ones. You know, that would be a great thing. But still, for people who have experienced this, I've got to believe it's a great comfort.

 

Christina Rawls  

Well, yeah, and that's the thing, is that it's it, of course, is a great comfort. And you know, I used to be a counselor and skeptical psychologists might say, well, that's really what it's all about is psychologically comforted. But, you know, it is a great comfort when--and especially when you start seeing your loved ones faces with detail inside that you can compare to photographs, and it's--or when you see this bright light fly across the room, some people do see them with their bare eyes. And you see this bright light fly across the room, you know, and then you can capture it on film or ask it to come back. You know, I'm not alone in this. It's not as rare as you might think. And there's now a lot of--I often tell people go back and look at your photos, your old photos, because it doesn't even have to be a modern digital camera phenomenon, though that seems to make it easier to record. And the newer iPhones are getting a lot of orbs, which I find really fascinating, on just an iPhone photograph. But you go back to your old pictures, almost everybody, I say go back and find old photographs, and look for that bright little floating light in the photograph, maybe hundreds of them that you didn't pay attention to in the background, maybe 10 of them in the background for--that you didn't see or notice. And almost everybody always finds, not a stray reflection, not a dust particle, but some sort of bright, light, round orb-looking object in the photograph that they just didn't pay attention to before. And they find it and they can't explain it. So it is a great comfort. But it's a real phenomena, modern phenomena that--and modern experience that can be documented by scientists, has been documented by scientists, and has repeatability with some mediums and some orb mediums and orb photographers. So I'm ready for to be tested. And I will be tested actually, in this year 2022 by some scientists, so I'm looking forward to it.

 

Jim Harold  

Very cool indeed. Please keep us updated on that. 

 

Christina Rawls  

Yeah.

 

Jim Harold  

And in the interim, please tell everybody where they can find the book, The Technological Age and the Orb Phenomenon and where they can find your website and everything you do.

 

Christina Rawls  

Thank you for that. You can find the book on every major book distributor, ebook and physical paperback copy. Although I will say the ebook has the better quality photos. Very, very, very affordable. So you know places like Amazon, Barnes and Noble. You can find it everywhere. And the second book, May the Orbs be With You, will be published in a few months. And I'm at--orbmagic is my business. It's officially a business registered with Ohio and the US government, and it can be found at drchris1111.com. So drchris1111.com. Thank you for that.

 

Jim Harold  

Well, thank you, Dr. Christina Rawls, for joining us today and talking about orbs. It was fascinating.

 

Christina Rawls  

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Jim Harold  

And thank you for tuning into the Other Side. We appreciate it. And we hope that you are thus far having a happy new year. We hope you have a great 2022. Thank you for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time. Have a great week everybody. Bye bye.