About Us

We are all curious about "ghosts." What are they like? What do they want? Are they harmful or helpful? Where do they come from? What brought them into being? Do they exist? Its ok, we at Charleston Orbs had the same questions. We wanted to believe, but "show me the [photos]." The popular stance is "I'll believe it when I see it."

This is where we hope to help. We are not "professional ghost hunters." We are people like you who just want to know. We don't use expensive equipment. We tour the streets of Charleston, taking hundreds of pictures, hoping to see something.

Charleston Orbs is not a tour service, we are not affiliated with any groups. We are individuals that are curious. As such, though we enjoy company, we make no promises as to your success should you join us.

We try to have as much fun as possible and give a brief history as it may be known, of the areas we visit. However, there is much to know about Charleston, and Charleston Orbs is still learning.

All images are posted with permission, and were taken by persons who are part of Charleston Orbs or accompanied Charleston Orbs on a walk. The Charleston Orbs web site was designed and is maintained by CobbleStone Plaza, LLC.

Contact us with your questions or comments and we will do our best to assist you. In the interim, visit often. This page is still under construction, so changes are on-going.

Tips

Safety first! You’re out at night, possibly in dark areas. Take a friend. Watch for traffic. Not to mention you’re out ghost hunting, and let’s admit it, it’s eerie.

Choose a location that has some sort of tragic history; battlefield, graveyard, dungeon, et cetera. For new comers to your group should you start one, learn this history.

Take many photos! We take 3 – 4 pictures in rapid succession. This gives you comparison images that will substantiate (or debunk) the validity of the apparition-containing image.

If you feel the urge to take a picture, take it! An uncontrollable urge can be influenced by paranormal entities, your “sixth sense” so to speak. For more information, see mists.

Tenacity; keep at it. Visit “hot spots” frequently, “warm spots” with regularity, and always find new spots.

Patience is essential, especially when reviewing images. We have images that after 8 months we found things we had missed.

You need not invest large sums into equipment. Many high budget endeavors turn up nothing, yet we did this with less than $1500 total in equipment. Some of the best images were taken with a cell phone.

When you're out hunting, take many photos. We recommend 3 - 4 in rapid succession. This will give you plenty of images to work with, and greatly increase your chances of catching something on camera. Resist the urge to delete any images until you can review them on a computer. In many cases, we spotted nothing until we had returned and reviewed the images on a computer. Even then, we still used a photo editing program to adjust certain settings to "clean up" the image.

With all of these images, you'll want to remember that many if not most will have nothing in them. Be patient and don't delete any of them. One quality we've noticed is the subject posses an ephemeral quality. A disqualifier of ours is reappearance: if something appears in multiple images, it's probably not what you're hoping for. Also, look at the images from various angles. Have someone else review them with you. Adjust the brightness and contrast. We have revisited images that were many months old to discover we had missed something.

Evaluation of the images.

Just as you do not want to be hasty deleting an image, you don't want to be to quick giving legitimacy to one. A picture is worth.. So here are some comparisons, and please keep the laughter to a minimum.


These are NOT orbs. In fact, it is a light rain. Notice the near uniform color, the lack of variation from one to another, the sheer number present. The list goes on.


This is an orb. Note the varying colors, the structure of the sphere, the defined nucleus. Just below and left you'll notice a fainter orb. This is more typical of what we get. This helps to illustrate why you want to be patient reviewing images.


This is smoke, though there is an orb present.


This is a mist. One visible trait we have noticed is that when mist is present, light is absent. Nearly the entire image is darker. This and the previous one are from the same series. They were taken only seconds apart.