Sally Gap Investigation (19/09/05)

Ziycon

Myself and 9 other people went on an investigation to a location in the sally gap mountains last night (19/09/05) we left the cars at approx. 22:00 and where spooked at around 22:13 by weird noise that started all around us and one of the lads took a photo with no falsh and image 1(link below) is what came out.

5 of the group went back in and nothin really happened except that the camera switched itself off twice. We later found out the camera battery seemed to be fine! More pics where taken and image 2 & 3 are the only ones that showed up strange things!

Any ideas?

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

P.S. All torches we took with us where red, so any red light you see in the images are ours!

rochey

I was there, I took the pictures and the light was not visible on the camera until after we got back to the cars. I will say the pictures have spooked me and I have spent the enitre day trying to find out if anything like this has been reported in the area before and there are no precedents!!!!

6th

Well i've just had a quick look and i wont comment just yet, with 9years of photography experience and the fact that i work with photographic manipulation full time ... i'll just wait till i take a closer look.

6th

6th

One quick question ... make and model of camera?

solas

hmmmmm.

funny squiggly thing.
is there a story behind the sally gap?

rochey

dublin6th wrote:

One quick question ... make and model of camera?

FujiFilm FinePix A350

rochey

solas wrote:

hmmmmm.

funny squiggly thing.
is there a story behind the sally gap?

As far as I know there isn't a story there, we are heading back up tonight to see if anything else happens or shows up with the camera

stormkeeper

solas wrote:

hmmmmm.

funny squiggly thing.
is there a story behind the sally gap?

I haven't heard of any stories myself, and I have no idea what to make of the squiggly thing... Also, the camera doesn't seem to be that suited for taking pictures in the dark, or maybe it's because it's an open area?

rochey

Kennett wrote:

I haven't heard of any stories myself, and I have no idea what to make of the squiggly thing... Also, the camera doesn't seem to be that suited for taking pictures in the dark, or maybe it's because it's an open area?

This is why we are asking for help on this as we haven't a clue what we are doin, we are pretty much only messing about on this, but if there is a chance that we have turned something up we would definatly like a bit of advice and also to hand over any further investigations to ppl who are more informed

stormkeeper

rochey wrote:

This is why we are asking for help on this as we haven't a clue what we are doin, we are pretty much only messing about on this, but if there is a chance that we have turned something up we would definatly like a bit of advice and also to hand over any further investigations to ppl who are more informed

Hmm... well, first of all, I'd always recommend you ask yourself the following questions before taking photos.

What were the conditions like in the general area?
Were they different to the area photgraphed?
Were there any insects, light sources or moisture in the air?

Also, a good idea to start doing is to take two shots a few seconds apart from each other so you can note any changes that might have occurred. Also, if you take pictures in the dark, you should perhaps have an infra-red yokey so you don't have pictures that are difficult to make out.

Anyone else care to add something?

Ziycon

- It was dry and calm out.
- No light sources except the red torches.

Where bring another different camera tonight and night vision goggles. We have film the whole thing on camcorder but yet have to go through it, its on night-mode that we recorded it too! I'll let you know if it turns up anything!

stormkeeper

Ziycon wrote:

- It was dry and calm out.
- No light sources except the red torches.

You might very-well have something there, though I'm sitting on the fence over it. The pictures were far too dark to discern anything from the background, other than the fact that the phenomenon seemed to be fairly close...

Where bring another different camera tonight and night vision goggles. We have film the whole thing on camcorder but yet have to go through it, its on night-mode that we recorded it too! I'll let you know if it turns up anything!

Sounds cool. Please, do let us know if something comes up.

Ziycon

Just finished going through the camcorder tape but nothing came up, i know its weird to say it but it was to dark on the camcorder!

Gillo

solas wrote:

hmmmmm.

funny squiggly thing.
is there a story behind the sally gap?

Yes there is, I remember reading something on the paranormal investigation in Ireland Thread here, heading from the Tallaght direction, if you go past straight through the Sally gap, you come to a forest on the left, if you take the first track down there there is a hut about 100 meters down on the left. (i read this over a year ago so sorry if its not quite accurate).

Appearently the area is haunted, it really freaked out the poster.

Sorry but you'll have to read through the thread to find the info, I am on 56k here so not a chance of me reading it to find the post.

I've only viewed the first post, but is looks like someone was swining a torch randomlly very fast.

rochey

gillo wrote:

Yes there is, I remember reading something on the paranormal investigation in Ireland Thread here, heading from the Tallaght direction, if you go past straight through the Sally gap, you come to a forest on the left, if you take the first track down there there is a hut about 100 meters down on the left. (i read this over a year ago so sorry if its not quite accurate).

Appearently the area is haunted, it really freaked out the poster.

Sorry but you'll have to read through the thread to find the info, I am on 56k here so not a chance of me reading it to find the post.

I've only viewed the first post, but is looks like someone was swining a torch randomlly very fast.

All tourchs used last night were cover with red plastic, and we were the only signs of life

stormkeeper

Ziycon wrote:

Just finished going through the camcorder tape but nothing came up, i know its weird to say it but it was to dark on the camcorder!

I had a feeling. Did you use a flash at all?

Zillah

Hmm. Three points.

One, they do look like squiggles drawn in paint.
Two, they are, however, extremely bright.
Three, they appear to be radiant. Image one in particular looks like its high up in the sky, and is lighting the clouds around it. Image two has a birght "aura" of sorts, while three seems to have very little radiance by comparison.

Ziycon

Went back last night (20/09/05) on the second camera we brought which i took the photos, there is one photo of another white line, one with a red dash and another photo which is very weird, its of a cicular light with like a line in the center of it, i'll put the phots up later for yous to look at cause in in college.

I can asure you that none of the images from both nights where torches or any other type of natural lights as the area we where in is pitch dark, the first night it was overclouded!

The place your talking about in Sally Gap in the post above with the directions to the forest on the left, thats where we were!

Ziycon

Sorry forgot to say we also got something else on the other camera that was there both nights and we might have something on the camcorder from the second night, have to have a better look at the camcorder footage when in home from college.

I was look round the net and i came across a thing that some people call 'Streaming Ghost Energy', it looks very similar to what we have on the photos.

Heres the link i was talking about, scroll down to 'Streaming Ghost Enegry':

http://www.ghoststudy.com/types.html

Saruman

To me it looks like (assuming its not edited) that the camera was set to long exposure and simply put its a light source, star (bright) or moon or something and the camera moved slightly.. explained more so if you had it on any form of zoom as only a fraction of movement would cause it.

In all 3 images if you increase the gamma you can clearly see the light source is reflected by the clouds (which you cant see normally)

So it looks like the camera picked up very little light and picked out the one light source in the sky, moon or bright star... im thinking moon since the light reflects off the clouds. and the camera shook a fraction and because of a slightly longer exposure you have a streak.

If it was not set to high exposure but was set to auto then same thing.. automatically would be hight exposure with little light.

Oh also note how the width of the streak is absolutly the same everywhere.. another indication that it is a single light source that streaked.. thats very different from the "Streaming ghost energy" which gets wider as it goes along.

Oh on the first pic if you increase the gamma again at the bottom of the pic there is a load of RED light.. dont know what that is.. cant explain that one off hand. Could be a person even.

stevenmu

Saruman wrote:

To me it looks like (assuming its not edited) that the camera was set to long exposure and simply put its a light source, star (bright) or moon or something and the camera moved slightly.. explained more so if you had it on any form of zoom as only a fraction of movement would cause it.

In all 3 images if you increase the gamma you can clearly see the light source is reflected by the clouds (which you cant see normally)

So it looks like the camera picked up very little light and picked out the one light source in the sky, moon or bright star... im thinking moon since the light reflects off the clouds. and the camera shook a fraction and because of a slightly longer exposure you have a streak.

If it was not set to hight exposure but was set to auto then same thing.. automatically would be hight exposure with little light.

In Image 1 there's a star visible static in the background, I think that's what it is anyway. It's over to the right from the rightmost part of the light streak.

Ziycon

I understand what your saying and where your coming from but none of the photos where taken off the sky, the camera was facing into a forest which was right at the side of the road, we thought it was the moon and tested it but the picture didnt come out anywhere near as sharp or bright!

Saruman

Ziycon wrote:

I understand what your saying and where your coming from but none of the photos where taken off the sky, the camera was facing into a forest which was right at the side of the road, we thought it was the moon and tested it but the picture didnt come out anywhere near as sharp or bright!

What does that matter? Unless you were so close to it all you could see in the image were trees then you had to have got sky in the pic.. Thats clear as we can see clouds in the pics.

did you turn up the gamma in an image program yourself? If not why not and go do it now

Shows you a lot more than you are seeing.

Saruman

Just looked at all the pics.. the 3rd one is fantastic!!! I can clearly see 2 objects in the bottom left. Either trees or people. I can see the dark shadow background, probably forest canopy (visible in all images) and i can see the sky with clouds and streaky thing

miju

id be in agreement with saruman on this

Saruman

There is usually a reasonable explanation for stuff that happens. Orbs are pointless if a flash or ANY light surce is used as its just reflected dust that anyone can recreate by flinging dust in the air and taking a flash photo. I know i did it after my first ghost hunt.

When i was in charleville a teddy was set up were Harriot was thought to have been playing with hers before she fell to her death. It was left there to see if she would move it or something.. Later when checked it was moved slightly. As in no longer sitting up and not in same spot. The believers took that as proof. Later though we were there again and Marklar, the dog went over and moved it while sniffing it. Only i could see this through my camcorder with night vision.. I have it all on camera. Simple explanation.

Oh by the way i have that hunt transferred to DVD, anyone who was there and remembers finny.. well my video is almost likea documentary with me following him around.. very funny.. especially the fake possession

Zillah

EDIT: Oh nevermind...

6th

First off i have to state that the following is only my opinion and is based only on the photographs. Its not a judgement of the people involved with the photographs and i am not making any statement based on any possible intention of the people involved.

Ok i've looked and i've looked again ... then i looked somemore.

from what i can see it is not of the sky but what appears to be clouds in the picture once tweeked is the ground and as was pointed out already the camera is on a long exposure. In my opinion there is nothing paranormal about these pictures at all.

One question though which i think people should ask before making a judgment on these pics is:
Why, if you had no reason to believe that there was any paranormal connection to this area, would you go there in the middle of the night on an "investigation"?

Its like me going to any random place taking pictures and getting results ... a bit more than lucky in my opinion.

6th

6th

would love to know what you had to say Zillah .... seeing as you are a resident sceptic! (stilll up for this weekend by the way?)

OMcGovern

Since no tripod was mentioned ( not a reference to "War of the Worlds" ),
it was obviously a handheld photo.

I don't think you could reproduce those results with a long exposed photo and a waving a torch around in the dark. Mainly because the width of the light source seems to remain constantly circular. It's more likely that the camera was moving.

With no point of reference other than the light source itself, there's no scale or positional information. Could've just been a photo of a motorbike headlight or other innocent light source, while the cameraman stumbled on uneven ground....

Also, in daylight, I've seen the Irish army up in Sally Gap training.
They could've been on night manovuers.... thought you were another squad trying to link up... so they signalled you with a torch.

So... I'm unconvinced that the aliens are coming..... although it will make me think twice about "running for the hills" if they do come :-)

regards,
Owen

Ziycon

The reason we went to that location is because that is what i interpeted the directions from a story in the paranormal ireland thread as to a hauting and an incident in the Sally Gap forest!

The photos taken on the first night where taken with the moon behind us!

Believe what you want people, im being honest about what was taken, im not saying that there isn't a reational explaination, it was just weird that we got stuff on both nights with to different cameras at ruffly the same location of the wooded area.

Here are the photos from the second night, taken by a different camera to the first night (Konica KD-20M):

Image 4
Image 5
Image 6
Image 7

Ziycon

Image 8

In the bottom right there is a red line which also appears in the image above with the white line in it.

solas

maybe when "our own" paranormal team get back from charleville they can check it out. Always good to have a second opinion.

miju

i do belive in ghosts an all but that looks to me like a 100 photos i've taken in very low conditions without flash

altough 7 looks weird and picture 5 looks like a half a face

Ziycon

Just after having a look at the camcorder tape from the second night, there seems to be a few different parts of the recording that have bright dots moving, i want to get a second opinion on them before i say anything!

Zillah

dublin6th wrote:

would love to know what you had to say Zillah .... seeing as you are a resident sceptic! (stilll up for this weekend by the way?)

Officially my sceptic opinion is "I don't know", unofficially it really looks like a light source exposed for too long with a unsteady hand. I havn't taken the time to tweak the images yet but I might take a look.

Yes Im still on for this weekend. Speaking of which, I'll give you a call later this week, we can sort stuff out. You're in Tallaght aren't you? Im in IT Tallaght so we could meet up for lunch or a pint or something to break the ice before we go if you like.

Oryx

I have to say Im leaning towards a natural explanation. Mozzies near the lens, unnoticed light sources, that sort of thing. As with all puzzles you have to rule out the simplest things first. I think a control experiment taking similar shots in similar conditions but NOT where you were could help?

stormkeeper

I'll have to be sceptical (unusual for me!) and say I'm not fully convinced that this is paranormal. Something about it doesn't fit with me at the moment. Granted, the pictures had the initial "Jaysus, what the hell is that?" reaction, but there has to be some reasonable explanation for it. If it does turn out to be paranormal, I'll admit i was wrong, but at the moment, I feel that although the pictures look impressive, it could have just been something else.

Has there been any paranormal activity previously associated with the area at all, or has anyone reported experiencing or seeing strange things? It's important to have some knowledge of the area before doing an investigation. Granted, there's been no actual research on Charleville Castle from the now-resident group here, but I've been around the castle long enough to know about it somewhat intimately, so I can fill people in about the place, but I will mention that it's very important to have some research of an area before investigation.

If the area is regarded as haunted by locals, but there's nothing online or in the library that mentions it, or there's very little to go on, make sure to note this, then note down any activity, unexplainable or not, and go back to the tomes to check what non-paranormal stuff, if any, goes on there and then cross reference your experiences to eliminate "natural explanations", then check out the stuff that seemingly doesn't have any natural reasons behind it.

Hmm... yet again i rant, lol. Oh yeah guys, if I tend to go on a tangent or go on too much, lemme know and I'll stop it fastish.

Ziycon

stevenmu wrote:

In Image 1 there's a star visible static in the background, I think that's what it is anyway. It's over to the right from the rightmost part of the light streak.

Ok, but if there is a static 'star' in the picture then how is the line all over the place, surely the 'star' would have been in the same form as the anomily????

Zillah

That isn't a star.

Its mars If you zoom in with the contrast up you can see that the dot has a red highlight to it. That makes it most likely mars.

Now, with image two the same redish dot appears directly below the streak of light, which means that the second image was taken of a white streak in a distinctly different position than in the first image.

If these images were taken from the same position it is impossible that they are both from the same static light source, such as the moon.

This raises an odd conundrum. The streak quite clearly lights up the near by clouds.

Once again we can resort to our little red mars in the sky. In image three it is to the left of the streak. If these images are numbered in chronological order then the streak is moving to the right in relation to mars.

The only thing I can say about image four is that it appears to have a distinct aura that shows up when you up the contrast. Mars is absent from this image.

Five is interesting. Mars is absent once again. However, in the lower centre is a bluish white dot, which could be a star. But, directly below the red haze is a pure white dot...which is odd. Even on +200% contrast the colour doesn't bleed at all.

Image six appears to be taken from the same place as five. Both the bluish white dot, and the pure white dot are in the same location. Notice that there is a second more pale streak above the obvious one.

Image seven is the same. Under contrast it clearly shows the same markers, one bluish dot, one white one. But this time there is no red streak, but there is a white blob that was not there previously. Note however, that it is in the same location as the squiggle in image five. That seems to be that they may both be the moon peeping out between the clouds.

Image eight provides nothing useful.

All in all im curious. The first three images in particular peek my interest. If they were all taken from the same position, using mars as a place marker then it would suggest that what was causing the streaks was moving.

Conclusion: Inconclusive

Zillah

To better demonstrate mars, I have created a little composite image. It has one piece from each images one two and three. Each was set to +70% contrast. On the left is one, on the right is three. Zoom in a bit and you can see that in number one mars (the reddish dot) is far to the right. In two it is below, and in three it is off a bit to the left.

(I also shrunk it a little. Its about 400k.)

stormkeeper

That's so funky... lol

Zillah

Kennett wrote:

That's so funky... lol

Thats your response!?

Hal1

Hey,

I was camping around that area a few years ago with some mates, I cant remember the name of the exact area of sally's gap which we where camping in but its close to manor kilbride afaik. Anyways there was a dirt track leading up to this place with a barrier accros the track i'd say you could drive a car up there tbh, it was surround by the forest but it eventually opened up into a wide open space there was also a river and some old ruins of a house. I remember a cave in that area too. Anyway about a mile or so from that spot there was this place called 'camp david' where a tourist was bruitally murdered a few years previous. Does anyone remember hearing anything about this? It was about 8 years ago when we where up there I must dig out a map of the area I think the name is starts with 'clough' not sure.

Hal1

That pic last posted looks like a car with its headlights on, I know its not though, the image is very bright was it possible that maybe its a reflection of a second camera flash, was there more than one person with a camera?

Newshound

I read that post from last year too.
I know the area well.
It is rumoured to be haunted alright.The police believe that there are bodies of several women who have dissapeared over the years buried there.
They have searched that area a few times and come up with nothing.

stevenmu

Ziycon wrote:

Ok, but if there is a static 'star' in the picture then how is the line all over the place, surely the 'star' would have been in the same form as the anomily????

That was actually the point I was trying to make I was in a bit of a rush posting so I didn't really make it clear, the fact that the star/mars and bits of background are visibly static in the image kinda rules out camera shake of a static light source.

Does the 'anomoly' look similar to the naked eye as it does in the photos or is it visible in the photos only ?

Ziycon

The anomily only shows up on the digital cameras and the camcorder, no one has reported seeing anything with the naked eye. The only werid thing we got was a sharp change in temperature on the way back down the track. Also all the activity on the cameras and camcorder all happened around the same area from what i can make out.

Ziycon

Hal1 wrote:

Hey,

I was camping around that area a few years ago with some mates, I cant remember the name of the exact area of sally's gap which we where camping in but its close to manor kilbride afaik. Anyways there was a dirt track leading up to this place with a barrier accros the track i'd say you could drive a car up there tbh, it was surround by the forest but it eventually opened up into a wide open space there was also a river and some old ruins of a house. I remember a cave in that area too. Anyway about a mile or so from that spot there was this place called 'camp david' where a tourist was bruitally murdered a few years previous. Does anyone remember hearing anything about this? It was about 8 years ago when we where up there I must dig out a map of the area I think the name is starts with 'clough' not sure.

Where we were sounds very like what your discribing, its in a layby about 10 minutes drive from the Sally Gap cross roads, there is a layby on the left and about 15-20 metres from the edge of the road there is a small barrier across the road, the trees are now cut down on the left and right of the track for about 10 metres up the track and then after that the trees are on your left only for about another 40-50 metres, there is a stream futher up on the right just off the track and a small cave not far from the stream on the right, about another 15 minutes walk past the stream and cave there track opens up into just a wide open area with very little trees on either side of the track, then the track starts to get very bad, with big pubbles and very over grown, this is where we stopped and turned around.

Ziycon

http://www.rte.ie/news/1999/0714/murder.html

Here is a link i found, not sure if its related. As far as i can see its ruffly the same area!

Zillah

That story is so sad. They found her mitten that still had 60P bus change in it, and the christmas presents she had been buying. God thats awful.