They also tend to be rather illusive, and generally won't stick around to have their picture taken. Vortexes - These are streams of white, condensed, electromagnetic energy. They look like skinny white tornadoes, or long streams, and show up in photographs. They also look like camera straps and other bits of bad photography, so a great deal of caution must be exercised before pronouncing that the white thing in your picture is a vortex. Personally, I find that this is absolutely the most terrifying kind of ghost.
Ectoplasm shows up in pictures as swirls of white-hot, unformed electromagnetic energy.
In fact, it looks a lot like cigarette smoke, only this smoke frequently has a face amid the swirls. If you take a picture of ectoplasm in your house, my own best personal advice is for you to move. Poltergeists - Most experts do not seem to think that poltergeists are ghosts. Their opinion seems to be that poltergeists are the psychic discharges of a young person between the ages of ten and twenty. If there is a young person in your house who is very frustrated, and suddenly pots are flying through the air at your head, books are falling off the bookshelf, or your chair is spontaneously catching on fire, you may want to consider calling a psychiatrist as well as a psychic.