Mystics and spiritualists have often claimed they can see a glow of mysterious light surrounding living creatures.

Now, scientists have discovered that there may be some truth to their claims.

Researchers from the University of Calgary in Canada have found that living things produce a faint ghostly glow.

And their new study proves that this light is snuffed out the moment we die.

This isn’t a mystical force or evidence for the human soul, but rather a physical phenomenon called ultraweak photon emission, the team said. 

As the cells in living creatures produce energy, the chemical processes involved release a tiny amount of light in the form of photons, the particles that make up light.

While the existence of this glow has been controversial, scientists using ultra-sensitive cameras claim to have provided ‘very clear’ evidence for the existence of ‘biophotons’.

Lead author Dr Daniel Oblak, told the New Scientist: ‘This really shows that this is not just an imperfection or caused by other biological processes. It’s really something that comes from all living things.’

Scientists have discovered a mysterious glow which is emitted by all living creatures and vanishes when we die (stock image)

One thing that all living creatures have in common is that they need to create energy to stay alive.

In the cells of every organism, there are structures called mitochondria where sugars are ‘burned’ with oxygen in a process called ‘oxidative metabolism’.

During these reactions, molecules gain and lose energy, letting off a few photons.

Even though many scientists believed this light must exist, it has proven extremely hard to detect.

Because the light emitted by living cells is so faint, it is hard to distinguish from other natural sources of light, such as the radiation emitted by warm objects.

However, using specialised cameras able to detect individual photons, Dr Oblak and his colleagues have now isolated this light and shown what happens to it after an animal dies.

Mice were placed in dark, temperature-controlled boxes where digital cameras produced two images with an hour-long exposure.

One was taken while the mouse was alive, and the other after it had died.

Using cameras that can detect individual photos, researchers took long-exposure photographs of mice before and after their death (pictured)

While living, the mice produce extremely faint light through a process called ultraweak photon emissions. After the mouse is dead (left), this light is no longer produced, and the glow vanishes 

In the first image, the cameras show photons rising from all over the mouse’s body with ‘hotspots’ over its organs, head, and paws.

In the second image, after the mouse has died, almost all of the photon emission has disappeared beyond a few lingering traces above the former hotspots.

In their paper, published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, the researchers write: ‘While the live mice emit robust UPE [ultraweak photon emission], likely indicative of ongoing biological processes and cellular activity, the dead mice’s UPE emission is nearly extinguished.

‘This shows in a very clear way that UPE is associated with being alive.’

Dr Oblak adds: ‘The fact that ultraweak photon emission is a real thing is undeniable at this point.’

Additionally, the researchers used their cameras to study the glow emitted from leaves.

They discovered that the leaves continued to glow after being cut from the tree and that the glow became brighter when injuries activated the plant’s repair systems.

Creating stress by adding chemicals such as the numbing drug benzocaine to the plant’s surface also produced a similar increase in light.

Ultraweak photon emissions are produced when mitochondria in our cells (artist’s impression) create energy through a series of chemical reactions. As a byproduct, a small number of photons are produced 

The researchers found that leaves taken from plants glowed more as they became hotter, and the speed of ‘metabolic’, energy-producing, reactions increased 

This provides additional evidence that the ultraweak photon emissions are associated with the biological processes of life.

However, this glow is not necessarily linked to being alive in the way we might commonly understand it.

Death in a medical setting is typically meant to mean the cessation of activity in key areas such as breathing, heartbeat, or brain activity.

But the glow of living things isn’t necessarily connected to any of the normal signs we would use to determine if someone is alive. 

Dr Michal Cifra, a biologist from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague who was not involved in the study, told MailOnline that it is really related to the life of individual tissues.

Dr Cifra says that the light vanishing after death is due to ‘the ceased oxygen supply to the tissues.

No oxygen means no oxidative metabolism, which in turn means no light is produced.

However, if the blood has been kept artificially circulating in a brain-dead animal or even in a single organ, that living glow would still be produced by the cells.

Plants that were injured or treated with chemicals glowed more brightly in those regions. This suggests ultraweak photon emissions could be used in medical diagnostics to look for damaged tissues in people 

This feature of ultraweak photon emissions means it could have valuable uses in medical examinations.

Since the amount of light produced is affected by the body’s healing responses, it can reveal where there are areas of damaged tissues.  

By looking at which tissues are producing too much or too little light, doctors could monitor someone’s health in a non-invasive way.

Some researchers have even suggested that ultraweak photon emissions could be used to monitor the progress of diseases such as Alzheimer’s.  

In the future, the researchers suggest it could even be used to monitor the health of entire ecosystems like forests by looking at the glow at night.