8 creepy ghost photos from history to the present day
CachHayNhat - There's something about a good ghost photo - especially historical ghost photos - that I find very eerie. They're just a little… uncomfortable to look at. Maybe it has something to do with the stories behind (because after all, a picture is worth a thousand words). Maybe it's your ability to know there's something around you that you can't see with the naked eye. Or maybe it's just the wrongness of the whole thing. But even knowing what we know about soul photography today, there's no denying that many ghost photos taken years, decades, or even centuries ago are still spooky to this day. now.
By “what we know about god photography today”, I mean the fact that photography's origins are shrouded in fraud. William H. Mumler is often credited with popularizing mental photography; after discovering a faint image of a girl appearing in a self-portrait he died in the early 1860s, jewelry engraver and amateur photographer leaned far too far into the spiritualist movement chief, claimed that he had the ability to ghost capture the dead in his photographs.
Of course, he didn't; Since Mumler and the other spirit photographers who followed him, including the proven con artist William Hope, have used a variety of in-camera editing techniques and other tricks to spoof. their ghostly images. (You'd be surprised at what you can do with double exposure.) Mumler was actually put on trial for fraud in 1869, and although he was acquitted due to lack of evidence, he did. could never regain his former solid reputation after that.
Of course, it's easier than ever to fake a ghost photo these days; all you need is a digital camera, some editing tools freely available on the internet and a few clicks to make it look as if a soul has been captured in a photograph. Photo. But even so, ghost photos - whether recent or old - still look spooky. Sometimes, just one look is enough to make you shiver. Here are some notable examples that, to be honest, I still don't really want to spend a lot of time looking at - even if I knew they might not be real.
1. The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
In the fall of 1936, Hubert C. Provand and Indre Shira went to Raynham Hall, the posh 17th-century Norfolk, England country house known as the Townshend family residence, to take pictures for the family. Country Life magazine. . The session started without incident – but while they were photographing the house's central staircase, something strange happened: Between the installations, Shira claimed to have spotted “a shape ethereal, masked face slowly descending the stairs.” Shira and Provand hastily snap another photo - and as they develop it, they find themselves with what looks like a ghost in their hands.
The "soul" in the picture is called the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. She is said to be the ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole, who married Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend around 1713 and died under mysterious circumstances - possibly from smallpox, but also possibly not - in 1726. She was discovered spectroscopically around Raynham Hall since around 1835, but became really famous after the photograph of Shira and Provand was published in the magazines Country Life and Life for the first time. in 1936 and 1937 respectively.
Could the photo be a hoax, or even just a gamble? It's correct. Could it be that we misidentified the Brown Lady? Of course. Is it possible that the Brown Lady doesn't exist at all? You then. But the photo has gone on to become one of the most famous spirit photographs of all time - and to be honest, it's still as spooky as it is real.
2. Amityville ghost boy
The former home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island has seen a lot in the decades since it was first built - much of it downright horrifying. That's where, in 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murdered his whole family; DeFeo was found guilty on November 21, 1975, and sentenced to six consecutive life sentences. It was the site where, in December 1975 and January 1976, the Lutz family claimed to have been terrorized by otherworldly evil forces. And that's where, in March 1976, the photo seen here was taken during an investigation of the house led by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.
You don't see it? Look closer. Look at the open doorway on the left, just above the dashboard. There was a boy's face there - a boy shrouded in darkness, but with bright white eyes.
The Warrens confirmed there were no boys in the house at the time the photo was taken. They believe the image depicts John Matthew DeFeo, then nine years old, at the hands of his older brother in 1974.
It is worth noting that both the story of the Lutz family and the many cases of the Warrens…let's call it controversial. Although Lutzes' experience is documented in Jay Anson's book The Amityville Horror and later depicted in a series of wildly successful horror films presented in reality, there is evidence to suggest that all may be fabricated ; meanwhile, the Warrens have been criticized many times for their methods. (At the mildest level, critics consider them to be "no different from very good storytellers." Ed died in 2006, Lorraine in April 2019.) So, maybe the Amityville ghost boy photo - sometimes referred to as the “demon boy” photo - also a hoax.
Of course, that doesn't make it any more creepy.
3. The girl in the fire
In 1995, the town of Wem in Shropshire, England lost its town hall, which was built in 1905, to a raging fire. But when photography enthusiast Tony O'Rahilly developed a photo he had taken of town hall while it burned, he saw something downright spooky: A picture of a girl with a melancholy face peeking out from the doorway of the flaming building.
It is believed that the girl in the photograph is Jane Churm who, in 1677 at the age of 14, accidentally dropped a candle, thereby starting the most devastating fire Wem had ever seen. According to Wem Town Council, the fire destroyed almost all the wooden buildings in Wem and even melted the church bells. The Great Fire of Wem, as it became known, caused more destruction than the town had seen during the War of the Roses. Who else will appear in the image of the fire that consumed Wem's Town Hall more than 300 years later except Jane?
Despite the fact that O'Rahilly insisted the photo was real up until the day of his death (he died in 2005), the photo was nevertheless made public in 2010: A Shropshire Star reader received discovered that there was a striking resemblance between a photograph of a girl visible in a postcard from 1922 that the newspaper had recently reproduced at the time and the image of the girl in the photograph. O'Rahilly's photo. Subsequent analysis confirmed not only that it was possible that the ghostly photograph at Wem Town Hall was the result of photo manipulation, but also that the girl seen in the fiery door was, in fact , is the girl in the 1922 postcard.
Still, it's an extremely disturbing image.
4. The Ghost of Goddard's Squad
Air Marshal Victor Goddard is known as much for his illustrious career in the Royal Air Force as for his interest in the paranormal. He claims, for example, to have experienced a clairvoyant episode in 1935 - or possibly a time slip - in which he is said to have seen the then unused Drem airfield because it would appeared later in 1939, after the airport was put back into service. In 1975, he published a book, Flight Towards Reality, discussing this supposed time slip, as well as his broader view of paranormal phenomena.
In the book, he also describes the photograph seen here - hence why it is often referred to as the "Goddard's Team" photograph. Depicting a large group of wait staff, the photograph that Blake Smith of Skeptic Magazine reports was taken in November 1918 (not 1919, as is commonly believed) at a training facility then called HMS Daedalus and now known as RNAS Lee-on-Solent, also hides something of a mystery: Hidden behind the fourth pilot from the left is a ghostly image of an additional face, which Goddard wrote. was identified by the crew members photographed as an aviation mechanic named Freddy Jackson. “Without his cap and smiling, his face was partially hidden by someone else, his expression saying, 'God, I - I almost failed! … They did not wait, or leave a place for me, losers! '," Goddard wrote.
There was only one problem: Jackson was dead. As Goddard described it, “Freddy Jackson, right at that spot - the Squadron runway [where the photo was taken] - three days ago, carelessly stepped into the spinning propeller of an airplane. He was kicked to death instantly. ”
As Blake Smith discovered in 2015 thanks to a tip from a reader, there is indeed a Jackson Freddy in the RAF that kind of story lines up with the one that Goddard describes. We even have records of his death: According to file 671581, registration number 591269, George Frederick Jackson of the RAF Aircraft Repair Division died on 13 April 1918 in a Sheffield hospital .
There are, of course, some stark differences between George Frederick Jackson's story and Goddard's - Sheffield is a few hundred miles from Lee-on-Solent; date of death is seven months before the date of photograph, not three days; and this Jackson died at the hospital, not on the runway - but the similarities are still uncanny. The jury is still out on whether this is real or not.
5. God of Tulips Stairs
It's no secret that many royal residences in the UK are said to be haunted - and the Queen's House at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is no exception.
Commissioned by Anne of Denmark in 1616 and designed by Inigo Jones, the building was actually completed until 1636; However, it served as a residence for members of the Royal Family until 1805. At that point, it became the home of the Royal Navy refugee charity before finally being taken over. by the National Maritime Museum in 1934. Straight into the center of the building is the Tulip Staircase - a beautiful and unique staircase, featuring a "geometric, centrally unsupported staircase". first built in the UK,” according to travel website Full Suitcase.
But it's not just a wonder of technology and design; it is also the site of one of the most iconic ghost photographs in history.
The photo was taken by a retired Canadian homage and his wife when they visited the Queen's House in 1966. The Tulip Staircase is a popular photograph, due to its stunning looks, so , naturally, the couple took it during their visit. They found nothing wrong at the time - but when they developed the photo after they returned home, they saw… it. An obscure figure was climbing up the stairs. Can chase one to two additional metrics.
No one knows who the characters might be or how they ended up in the photo, but overall the experts who examined the photo agree that the photo is not a hoax. Of course, we don't know exactly what it is either - whether it actually captures a soul, or is it just a photographic anomaly - but honestly, that just makes the whole thing worse. Things got spookier.
6. New monk
The Church of Christ the Comforter at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire is young, relatively speaking; it was built in the 1870s. Its history is still rather strange, however: It was built using a ransom that was originally raised to ensure the safe return of Frederick Vyner, who kidnapped in 1870 at the age of 23 and killed before a ransom could be offered. His mother, Lady Mary Vyner, used the money to build this church as a memorial to her son.
The church was less than a century old when Pastor Kenneth F. Lord took this picture of the altar in 1963 - and as he developed it, the altar was no longer as empty as it was when he took the photo: -side The hand of the photograph was an unusually tall figure wearing a dark robe. The ghost's face looked particularly eerie, almost appearing as if it were melting; however, it can also be covered by a mask or piece of cloth. It's not, you know, less creepy - it's just scary in a different way.
In any case, the character's robed appearance leads some to assume it's the spirit of a monk; As a result, the subject of the photograph is known largely as Monk Newby, although it may also be referred to as The Ghost of Newby Cathedral. The experts who examined the photo often contradict each other; some claim no evidence of tampering, while others claim the good old fashioned double exposure image. Whether it's fake, an accident, or really real, it's hard to get that melting face out of your head once you've seen it.
7. Hidden soul
This photo was taken by William Hope in 1920 - which means we already know one very specific thing about it: It's a total hoax. Hope was born around the time William H. Mumler was just starting his lucrative ghost photography hoax business, but his career path is already a reflection of the "founder" of chimpanzee photography. spirit: He specializes in a business other than photography (in this case carpentry) ), claims to have become interested in soul photography after finding a supposed "spirit" in a photograph which he photographed (this time by a friend, not his own), plunged into his trade during a time of great grief (soon after World War I), and was eventually revealed to be a scam. Hope was not put on trial, but his trade tricks were exposed in a feature in Scientific American in 1922. Despite this, he continued to create fake ghost photographs of himself until upon his death in 1933.
But although it is well known that Hope's image is as fake as Mumler's, Hope somehow also strikes me as significantly more eerier than Mumler's. While the "spirits" in Mumler's image look like the faint impressions of ordinary people (which, to be fair, exactly what they used to be), the "souls" in the image do. Hope's looks much more tragic. They're sad, serious, and - to be honest - look like they're in a lot of emotional pain. The image seen here, often described as “an old couple with a young female soul”, truly amazes me; "young female spirit" looks downright evil.
8. Corroboree Rock Observer
The rock formation near Alice Springs, Australia called Corroboree Rock is made of dolomite; Formed more than 800 million years ago, this place is considered the sacred site of the Arrernte Aboriginal people. With so much history behind it - and the importance assigned to it - perhaps one would expect that it would have...something following it.
That's what spirits are called: Viewers of Corroboree Rock. No one really knows exactly who or what it is, but a photo we have of it - the one seen here - dates from the 1950s. In 1956 or 1959 (reports vary) , a Presbyterian minister from Adelaide took the picture during a visit to the rock mass, and it has been baffling people ever since. According to the Minister, Pastor RS Blance, no one was around when the photo was taken; however, as he evolved it, the ghostly silhouette now seen in the image appeared. It is not known whether the photo is a hoax, the result of something unpleasant that happened when the photo was taken, or is actually real - and opinions about it also vary. as much as about the existence of ghosts.
That's the thing with ghost photos, though; whether they're fake or real, they always - always - look spooky. I wouldn't go too far to say that the camera never lies… but it probably tells us more about the things that scare us than you might think.
So: Next time you find yourself somewhere with history, why not pull out your phone and snap a quick picture or two? You never know what you might find in an image when you come back to see it later.