This photograph was taken by local resident Tony O'Rahilly on 19 November, 1995, as Wem
Town Hall, Shropshire, England, burned to the ground. When
O'Rahilly took the photo, neither he, nor other onlookers, saw the
little girl in the doorway. The picture was taken with a 200mm lens from across the road because O'Rahilly and other onlookers were prevented by police and fire personnel from approaching the burning structure.
After the image was developed, O'Rahilly submitted it to the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena. They, in turn, sent the picture and the negative to photographic expert Dr. Vernon Harrison, former president of the Royal Photographic Society. Dr. Harrison analyzed the print and negative and reported that he was satisfied that the picture is genuine. "The negative is a straight forward piece of black-&-white work and shows no sign of having been tampered with," said Harrison.
A fire ravaged the town hall once before, in 1677. The historical record indicates that the 1677 fire was caused by a young girl, Jane Churm, who was careless with a candle. In later years, Churm's ghost was reputed to haunt the town hall.
Skeptics, including Dr. Harrison, have claimed the child is nothing more than the convenient
arrangement of smoke, flame, light, and shadow at the moment of
exposure. But what are the odds of smoke, flame, light, and shadow randomly forming the shape of a girl in the doorway of a building allegedly haunted by a girl, at the very moment a photographer took this picture? The odds must be at least ten billion to one-- as high as the odds of having captured a real ghost on film.
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This photograph of the Rev. Charles Cook was taken by spirit photographer Ed Wyllie in 1901. Wyllie, who was a respected Los Angeles-area photographer, claimed that shapes and faces had begun to appear in his pictures. Unlike William Mumler, the Crewe Circle, and other spirit photographers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, Wyllie was never accused of fraud. However, at least one of Wyllie's spirit photos shows marked evidence of retouching.
Rev. Cook was a skeptic who was out to test Wyllie. Cook testified that the photo above was developed while he was present. Cook reported that Wyllie had no opportunity to introduce a fake spirit extra onto the negative and that Wyllie did not know of Cook's personal history. Upon seeing the photo, the reverend claimed to recognize the female spirit as Flora Louden, a college classmate in 1866 who had died in Ohio in 1873. The flower, the cross, and the heart held private meaning for Cook and Louden.
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The Lincoln Story
Mary Todd Lincoln believed in spirit communication and held regular seances in the White House. After the death of her son Willie in 1862, Mary frequented mediums and clairvoyants to contact the boy and his brother Eddie, who died in 1850 at the age of three. Her husband, the president, was a deeply spiritual man who read Spiritualist books and attended at least one of the White House seances in 1863.
In October of that year, Mary wrote to her sister that "Willie lives." He came, she said, to her bedroom every night and smiled at her. "Little Eddie is sometimes with him, and twice he has come with our brother, Alex."
After Lincoln's assassination, Mary attempted to stay in contact with her husband through private readings and seances. Whether she achieved genuine communication with the late president will never be known. Mary also visited the studio of William Mumler, a Boston engraver who claimed to photograph the dead. This photo (right) of Mary with the ghostly Lincoln was the result of her sitting with Mumler.
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BootHill Story
Terry Ike Clanton of the Notorious Clanton Gang took the photograph below in Boothill Cemetery, which overlooks Tombstone, Arizona. Boothill, plotted in 1878, was used as the town's cemetery until 1884, with sporadic burials thereafter. Some 300 of the Tombstone's rowdy and adventurous population rest in the dust-dry soil of Boothill, including brothers Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton, the three fatalities of the October 1881 confrontation between cattle-thieving cowboys and Deputy U.S. Marshall Virgil Earp, his deputized brothers Wyatt and Morgan, their tubercular cardshark soulmate, Henry "Doc" Holiday.
In Clanton's own words: "I personally shot this photograph of my friend in Boothill Graveyard...We had [the film] developed at Thrifty Drug Store and I know no one tampered with it! The picture was shot in black & white, because my friend wanted old west looking pictures of himself dressed up in my 1880 period clothes. All I can say is I know there was no other person in this photograph when I shot it...."
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This infrared photograph was taken by Jude Huff-Felz during a daylight parapsychological investigation by the Ghost Research Society in Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, on August 10, 1991. The picture was snapped in an area where the investigators' instruments registered odd fluctuations. The photo shows a woman with long hair and bangs sitting in a relaxed position on a tombstone. She appears to wear a light-colored dress that reaches her ankles.
Bachelor's Grove Cemetery was established in 1864. It was reportedly used as a dump site for gansters' murder victims and was eventually abandoned in the mid-1960s. The burial ground is small, with a single entrance and a scummed-over pond. The cemetery is surrounded by chainlink fencing and only a few monuments remain untoppled or unstolen by vandals. Many ghost stories are attached to the old cemetary, although most have the histrionic qualities of tall tales.
The Ghost Research Society, headquartered in Oaklawn, Illinois, was formed as a clearing house for reports of ghosts, hauntings, poltergeist and life after death encounters. The society members actively research and investigate reports from private individuals and businesses. The society also analyzes alleged spirit photographs, video and audio tapes submitted by outsiders or society members. The society publishes several journals, including the National Register of Haunted Locations, the Greater Chicagoland Psychic Directory, and the Ghost Trackers Newsletter.
If the Bachelor's Grove photo is a hoax, it was perpetrated in daylight, without the notice of witnesses or with their complicity. The Ghost Research Society enjoys an excellent reputation in the parnormal community. The group's leader, Dale Kaczmarek, is a seasoned and respected parapsychologist. It seems unlikely that the society would risk its credibility to participate in a hoax. However, some critics point out that the woman appears to cast a shadow consistant with those of other solid objects in the photo. Obviously, there is no conclusive answer to whether a ghost can cast a shadow, but inarguably real people do. Additional doubt arises in my own mind from the lack of online information about this photo. The image itself appears frequently, yet it is always accompanied by the same barebones facts. Even the Ghost Research Society Web site fails to go into detail on what must surely be its greatest evidence of the paranormal. However, while this lack of information is odd, it cannot be taken as evidence of a fraud.
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A daylight investigation claimed to yield an amazing paranormal image. |
This photo was taken in the late 1990s on Cocklawburn Beach, near Berwick-upon-Tweed on the border between England and Scotland. According to the photographer, it was a cold, bright, sunny Sunday morning, and the beach was deserted, aside from a woman in pink and her labrador dog. When the picture was developed, standing on a seam of rock not far from the woman in pink is a row of people-- three adults and two children. Four of them face the camera, posed like fence poles, while one appears to be looking sideways at the others. One of the children is holding the hand of an adult. They appear to be dressed like regular seaside people on a cold day. Other photos of the beach show that there are no posts or pillars which could be mistaken for the figures in the picture.
Research done by the photographer revealed that in 1995 a small boy was killed on Cocklawburn Beach when a tunnel he was digging in the dunes collapsed and suffocated him. In 1999, other human remains were discovered in that same area of the beach. They were of a male and were approximately 100 years old. Perhaps the dead of Cocklawburn Beach were merely saying hello on that cold Sunday morn.
By encountering this photo, we encounter a conundrum. The Cocklawburn photograph is one of many on this site that exhibit no fakery and that show unquestionable human images. But are those images supernatural? We must rely on the testimony of the photographer that the stiffly posed troop was not visible on Cocklawburn Beach. Nevertheless, I find this preferable to indistinct images that are open to interpretation. The human mind is hardwired to seek out faces or forms in every randomly patterned surface, yet this photo and others like it make it clear that something was there. It was either visible or it was not, but it was real in a physical or a netherwordly sense.
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Close-up of the Cocklawburn ghosts. |
| This photo was reportedly taken in Marblehead, Massachusetts, during a seance in a house where a mother murdered her children and then committed suicide. The seance, coordinated by psychic researcher John Spence, was held in the house after a new resident complained of a ghostly presence and felt influenced to harm her own children. In the photograph there appears to be the semi-headless shape of a woman in a dark dress with a large white bow, as well as and the dark, faint shapes of several children. There is also quite a bit of light streaking, which is usually associated with a double exposure. Other phenomenon reportedly took place at the seance, including a rug folding itself into the letter W, cold spots, the formation of visible energy orbs and rays of neon blue light, and the odors of ozone and a cloying sweet decay. After the seance, the residents moved out and the house remained vacant for several years. |
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Ghost Baby
This picture was taken by Donna Wyatt of Barbourville, Kentucky, at Copper Ridge Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the mid-1990s. She visited the church after seeing a story about it on the television program, Unsolved Mysteries. The TV segment described crosses that had appeared in a church window and ghostly appearances by the deceased grandson of the pastor. When Wyatt took a photo of her son on the steps of the church, the photo also apparently captured what looks like a small child coming through the grass at the far left of the image. Until the negative of this photo is analyzed by an expert, it is impossible to be sure it is not a developing error or other prosaic camera problem. |
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This picture of a ghostly trio from Down Under is one of the most unique ghost images I have ever encountered. Here is the story in the photographer's own words:
"Years ago, my brother and his wife and kids moved into a hotel in Gawler, South Australia, a small town north of Adelaide. After carrying out renovations on the building that was built in 1836, strange things started to happen, people started to hear strange things and see the apparition of a small girl and an older man. Being a skeptic, I didn't believe it until my brother started to see things as well. All the stories from different people were the same so I got interested, and being a photographer (weddings, etc.) I thought I would have a go at getting something on film. A friend and I stayed in the hotel all night in the section that used to be the Gawler morgue last century before it was turned into a hotel. It was very eerie and I could feel the presence of the spirits or what ever you call them. It was so strong a feeling that it is hard to describe.
"This photo was taken on 200iso speed Kodak TMax film B&W. I also tried infrared film without much success. After developing the film I had a quick look at it and didn't think I had captured anything until a week or so later when I was doing some testing in the dark room and I noticed a negative which looked different than the rest.
Enhanced version
"I made a copy and could not believe it. I then took a copy to every photo expert I could find and they all said it was unexplainable. After the initial carry on about it, we decided to throw them in a drawer and forget about it until the local Gawler paper, The Bunyip, contacted me four or five years later in March 1998. The South Australian Advertiser (South Australia's main newspaper) also ran a story on the photo.... Then in April of the same year 'A Current Affair' (TV Program) did an interview with me at the Old Spot Hotel which aired on Channel 9 in April, 1998, around Australia."
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This photo was taken a pub in the Rhine Valley, Germany, in the mid-1990s, during a school trip. According to stuart.burnside@uk.dreamcast.com, the picture was taken by his friend Debbie. When she had the photos developed, these two strange figures were discovered. "At first we thought it was a weird statue," Stuart says, "but Debbie doesn't remember it being there and it is not in any of the other photos (taken in the same location that evening)."
The two figures seem extremely out of place. If they were physical objects, they were surely toppled by the young man directly behind them. While the smaller figure might be a bust, the other figure is harder to tell; it may be casting a slight shadow on the boy's shirt, and it appears one-dimensional. In fact, it is reminiscent of the famous Cottingley Faeries photos. It's possible that it might be a paper figure on a stick, but the placement of both figures in the overall composition of an action-oriented photo is very odd.... Lacking expert photo analysis, this one goes down as a spooky oddity.
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This picture was reportedly taken with infrared film during an investigation at the Sunnyvale, California, Toys 'R' Us store. The man leaning against the wall was not visible and did not appear in photos taken at the same time with normal film. A June 1991 Adweek article tells the tale:
"The children have left, and the din has subsided. Another hard day's shopping is history at the Sunnyvale, California, branch of Toys 'R' Us. Yet there might be activity inside the vast, silent emporium this midnight, none of which has to do with the straightforward business of retailing.
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Inside, it is said, toys topple from the their shelves. A skateboard rolls down an aisle, clanking aimlessly into a wall. But nobody is in this Toys `R' Us this midnight. Or anyway, nobody alive. In the heart of high-tech Silicon Valley, could there really be such a thing as a haunted retail outlet? "I'm a skeptical person," says Toys `R' Us assistant store director Jeff Linden. 'But something's definitely happening here.'"
In the past few years, store management has tried to get to the bottom of several curious developments. Linden recounts stories of objects flying 20 feet through the air and hitting employees. Shelves left neat in a locked store have been found in disarray the next morning. And then there was the talking doll that cried "mama" over and over-- but would only do so when put in a locked box...But that doesn't mean that store workers laugh off the matter. "Some of our employees are spooked," Linden says. "They won't go into certain parts of the store alone." He hastens to add that the "ghost" hasn't affected day-to-day store operations in any tangible way. Yet the incidents were taken seriously enough that management let a local psychic [Sylvia Brown] visit the store."
It was this investigation that yielded the infrared photograph and information about the identity of the ghost, which has not been verified by historic records.
Above information received from http://www.geocities.com/area51/shadowlands/5318/ghost.htm
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