And yet the Amazing Randi still has a cool million for anyone who can prove paranormal events. Methinks his moola is safe.

At the New-Agey store, you also get a multi-page ol’ time (computer paper on sprockets with the edge perforations ) extensive print out about what the colors in your Aura mean, ala the astrology “readings” at the county fair.

If you are in Paris there is an Auro photography studio right around the corner from the Trinité Métro station.

Real or Not? Real or Not?? Come on Jess, you’re not helping the world by pretending this might be real. Shame on you.

Don’t tell her that it’s a fake banana until after she starts cold-reading its experiences on the plantation.

It’s so obvious when they do it, it’s really boring.

They were charging 20 Euros a pop. Madness. They’ve probably ploughed their life saving into it hoping it would a lucrative move….

Or maybe if I can get my hands on a LOMO LC-A. That would probably work too.

Flickr has some great examples of this. The National Media Museum put a bunch of William Hope’s stuff up a while back:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmediamuseum/sets/72157606849278823/

Absurdly fake by today’s standards, they were still good enough to fool the spiritualist movement at the time.

Aura revealing pictures was a part of the many services provided…

Please read the disclaimer that comes with the pic. You will find no claim for this capability whatsoever.

I was trained in using it, how to answer various questions and how to choose the color filter to overlay on the photo.

Everyone is delighted at how accurate it is, oddly enough.

I work as a copyeditor, and one of the books I’m editing tries to use Kirlian photography and aura cameras (plus a bunch of other wacky stuff) as scientific proof of the existence of the soul. I spend most of my energy trying to convince the author that she needs to use units when giving out-of-context measurements that don’t mean what she thinks they mean. Don’t get me started, I’ll rant all day.

I’ve seen two types of “aura” camera. One of them (seen in 1990?) employed an unmodified camera, and used a camera flash to project colored lights on a screen behind the subject. The colors weren’t visible during the flash. The other camera was the Coggins one you mention above.

Send away for the literature from Coggins’ company. They “aren’t” fake, since the camera just takes electrical measurements at many spots (acupuncture points) on your hand, then uses blurred lights inside the camera to produce an image of what auras might look like, if we had any way to detect them. The image you see on the film is blurry light bulbs. I don’t recall if there was a microprocessor as part of it, but there might have been.

If the particular photographer forgets to mention how the camera works, or implies that it images genuine auras, well, that’s not Coggin’s fault, eh?