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I was re-re-rewatching a favorite movie, The Thing (1982) the other night, and noticed a familar optical phenomenon in one scene. Watch this 9-second clip, and notice the two apparent UFOs flying above the base:
What you’re seeing are not actual things in the sky; they are internal camera reflections called ghosts. Ghosts are a type of lens flare that can appear whenever there is an extremely bright point of light in the frame. The ghost will appear exactly opposite the center of the frame. Watch the video again, and you’ll see that the UFOs’ positions precisely mirror the two roof-mounted lights on the Skidozer driving around in the foreground. (The midpoint between these lights and their ghosts is a bit off-center because the image has been cropped; in the original film straight from the camera, that midpoint was dead center.)
Paranormal TV shows like The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch love ghosts, because they give the impression to naive viewers (and naive show hosts) that something anomalous was captured on film. They notably used this in Season 4, Episode 3 when they launched a rocket at night. Watch this clip (slomo as it aired, and slowed down further by me):
The flash of the rocket’s ignition is clearly reflected near the top of the frame — the reflected blob of light even has gaps in it where the actual flash below is blocked by people standing in front of it. There is also a bright light mounted on some sort of vehicle at the bottom right, and though it’s faint, you can see the ghost of that light in the top left corner, again exactly opposite the center of frame from the actual light.
Here, I’ve clipped the top half of the image, mirrored & reversed it, and light blasted it. You can now easily see that it’s a ghost of the entire scene on the ground. You can clearly see the guys on the left crouching in front of the flash, and the other guys on the right standing in front of it. You can see the ghost of the vehicle’s spotlight in exactly the same position, and also a secondary internal reflection of it over on the left:
In the show, the performers (I refuse to use the term “experts” or “researchers”) said it appeared to be an object that materialized in the sky above their rocket. Whether they were just performing, or are honestly that naive about optics, I am sure I do not know. But I can guarantee that HISTORY’s camera crew and editors had a hell of a laugh out of it.
They show this clip a lot more in the episode, but this one brief shot is the only time they show it full frame. When the rocket ascends just left of center, its ghost is clearly visible descending from the blob just right of center. It’s quite an exquisite illustration of a ghost, but it may have been too obvious to the audience and so they broadcast the shot zoomed or framed differently so you couldn’t ever see all of it.
Score up one more point for the value of having basic science literacy, and one more bit of evidence that these TV shows prey on the audience’s lack of it.
What is really aggravating is depth of defense this show puts on this silliness. They will publicly attack those who point out the BS.
However, the reflection above the building is nice and positioned as you said it would be.