Aura Photography: A Candid Shot - Brief Article

At psychic fairs and other popular venues, aura photographic portraits are all the rage. But are they really what they are claimed to be?

According to belief that has persisted since ancient times, the aura is a radiance from the "energy field" that supposedly emanates from and surrounds all living things. It is perceived nor by ordinary vision but by clairvoyance. Although "no evidence has been found to prove its existence" (Guiley 1991), the concept has thrived as pseudoscience. For example, in his 1911 book, The Human Atmosphere, Dr. Walter J. Kilner claimed he could not only see the aura and use it for medical diagnoses, but he also accepted the validity of nonexistent "N-rays" and clairvoyance. The British Medical Journal rightly scoffed.

Today self-professed "medical intuitives" like Caroline Myss (1997) claim to describe the nature of people's physical diseases by reading their "energy field." Thus Myss "can make recommendations for treating their condition on both a physical and spiritual level." She calls this supposedly auric process "energy medicine," but offers no scientific evidence to substantiate her alleged powers. (New Age magazine stated Myss no longer gives readings, and quoted me as terming the practice "offensive and dangerous" [Koontz 2000, 66, 102].)

The human body does, in fact, give off certain radiations, including weak electromagnetic emanations (from the electrical activity of the nerves), chemical emissions (some of which may be detected, for instance, as body odor), sonic waves (from the physical actions within the body), etc. Paranormalists sometimes equate these radiations with the aura (Permurt 1988, 57-58), but they do not represent a single, unified phenomenon, nor have they been shown to have the mystical properties attributed to auras.

If psychics could actually see the purported energy fields, one wonders why, as Guiley (1991) observes, their composition "is the subject of conflicting opinions." She states: "No two clairvoyants see exactly the same aura. Some say they see the entire aura, divided into different layers or bodies, while others say they see only parts of the aura." In fact, tests of psychics' abilities to see the alleged radiant emanations have repeatedly met with failure. One test, for example, involved placing either one or two persons in a completely dark room and asking the alleged psychic to state how many auras she saw. Only chance results were obtained (Lofrin 1990). James Randi conducted another test for a television special, offering $100,000 for successful results. The psychic challenger selected ten people she maintained had clearly visible auras, and agreed that the auras would extend above the screens behind which--unseen by her--the people were to stand. Unfortunately, in choosing which screens supposedly had p eople behind them, the psychic got only four out of ten correct guesses--less than the five that chance allowed (Steiner 1989).

Once at a psychic workshop I volunteered as the subject whose aura others were instructed to visualize. I stood in front of a blank wall while the instructor noted how my energy field expanded and contracted as I inhaled and exhaled. Actually, I held my breath for long periods, while raising and lowering my chest and shoulders to simulate breathing. Such is the power of suggestion that some imaginative initiates "saw" the alleged effect despite the negating conditions.

In addition to purportedly seeing the aura, some mystics claim they can actually detect it by such means as dowsing. For example, while inspecting a crop circle near Silbury Hill in southern England, I had my auric field checked by a local dowser who had used his divining rod to convince himself the circle was genuine, produced by earth spirits. Although my aura supposedly measured only a few inches, after I had compliantly meditated for a few moments it expanded to several feet--or so the rhabdomancer claimed (Nickell 1995).

Not surprisingly, there have been various attempts to photograph the aura. For example, in the 1890s a French army officer tried to record alleged psychic force fields on photographic plates but with reportedly poor results (Permutt 1988, 89). Claims that the aura has been successfully photographed are typically based on a misunderstanding of the simple scientific principles involved. For instance, while infrared photography can produce images of people with aura-like bands of radiance around them, these are actually only emanations of body temperature (Nickell 1994; Permutt 1988, 123).

More serious claims that the aura could be demonstrated scientifically through Kirlian photography were publicized in the 1970s. In this non-camera technique a high-voltage, high-frequency electrical discharge is applied across a grounded object. The "air glow" or "aura" that is yielded can be recorded directly onto a photographic plate, film, or paper. Such Kirlian images (named for the Russian inventor of the process, Semyon Kirlian) show fuzzy glows around fingers, leaves, and other objects (Ostrander and Schroeder 1971).