August 11, 2003. Athens Georgia: Calvin Black, a local engineer who likes to describe himself as “a devout atheist”, blatantly ignored the possibility of supernatural phenomena—such as ghosts, guardian angels, or photo-sensitive demon warriors—when he casually viewed his family’s vacation photos in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Though Black, a 33-year-old father of one, clearly noticed unusual blobs of light on several of the pictures, his mind refused to imagine they were anything other than some scientifically-explainable interplay of basic elements, such as dust particles and light. Even though at least one of the blobs sort of vaguely resembled an angel-shaped figure and appeared near his three-year old son’s right elbow, Black didn’t for a moment think it might be the child’s guardian spirit captured on film. Momentary time-warp portals and miniature UFO’s were theories also not entertained by the level-headed father, as he finished perusing the newly-developed photographs. Sanely concentrating on the road in front of him, Black drove home without giving the pictures another thought.

A final opportunity to consider that, perhaps, his son possesses an ill-defined “Sixth Sense” that enables him to communicate with unsatisfied dead souls and shows itself only as hazy light blemishes on random photographs was passed up when the young father returned home. “Hey, what are these funny marks here?” his wife asked, as she eagerly checked the pictures for good ones to take to her job and show coworkers.

“Hmm. I dunno. Some kind of light thing,” Black commented without concern, looking in the refrigerator for a Diet Coke.

“This one kind of looks like a scoop of ice cream, or a half-melted Hershey’s kiss,” Mrs. Black added, her subconscious betraying the fact that she was hungry after a week of dieting.

“It’s just some dust reflecting the sun’s rays,” her husband said as he opened the soft drink and headed into the living room to read the newspaper. “Or maybe a smudge on the lens.”