Ghost Photo Gallery

[exo_doc]

Some photos on here I've never seen before. A few of them look really fake to me, but other ones on here are pretty good. Check it out:

Creepy, Ghostly Photos Vol. 4 - Mandatory

 

[starise]

Some of those are pretty good exo_doc.

 

[Polterwurst]

Here's a vid I found quite interesting in which the late Maurice Grosse (who investigated the Enfield Poltergeist for the SPR) presented a few photos he thought were genuinely unexplainable. This was before digital photography.

Of course, most of them can be explained by double exposure and it's striking how many of the "ghosts" in these pictures clearly were people photos themselves (taken long before) that "somehow" ended up in the new photo. The witnesses of course say that they are not double exposues and that the fotos just turned up without anyone tampering with them, and Mr. Grosse obviously saw no reason to doubt their testimony.

 

[Polterwurst]

The one with the subway electric chair and the floating woman at the end look like darkroom manipulation with superimposed imagery.

Which would of course mean that the people who sent Mr Grosse these were trying to fool him with quite elaborate hoaxes that had a slight chance of being published in some book not many people would read or a TV programme like this. Adding the Enfield poltergeist case, where the kids definetly were trying to hoax at least some events, that would make him seem really gullible. On the other hand, he did say more than once that they sometimes did catch the kids in flagrante delicto and that it was usually no problem to tell that from the genuine stuff. So I guess he was on the lookout for hoaxers with the fotos, too.

But, the first one with the large headed woman that appears in the first 'ghost' photo is genuinely intriguing as the darkroom requirements for this are beyond me. At first I thought she was a cutout that had been inserted into the frame in the darkroom and the neg had been cut around the glasses, but the glasses in front of her have parallax distortion of her shirt in the glasses which means she, or her image, must have been physically present at the time the image was taken. The only thing that makes sense here is that there was an actual large cut out image placed behind the table and between the two women. Perhaps having a large printed image present at the time of shutter release would also account for the size differential and the blurriness of her specifc image.

Thanks for the expert opinion. I hadn't even been thinking about parallax distortion. So I guess, even if one would accept for a second the admittedly slight possibility that Ted Serios wasn't a hoaxer and that images in one's consciousness (in this case a hypothetical discarnate one) can turn up on fotographic film, that still couldn't be the explanation here, because that would probably not seem to be with the people at the table, but rather superimposed, like the one with the singers, as it is not a real image but only a thought construct or whatever one might call that. There goes my parapsychological speculation...

I guess it's not impossible that one of these persons made a cutout of an enlarged photo, to have the woman, who normally would have been with that group in that picture. Unfortunately, he doesn't say if she belonged to someone on there, was deceased or just absent or actually an unknown person. Allegedly the third photograph was taken directly after the second one, which would mean that one of the guys would have had to stand the hypothetical cutout up at the right moment and afterwards someone did a really good retouching job of blurring out the edges. Ah well, everything's explainable.

 

[FilmguyLee]

Can't be 100% certain, but I THINK the picture of a guy in an electric chair may be a movie poster, and the image is either outside on the wall, or in the carriage and simply reflected back.

I thought at first that the image was from the Wes Craven film 'Shocker', but it's not that one as it was an orange jump suit in that poster.

As for the rest - I'm no photography expert, but not one image there convinces me of anything paranormal...

 

[Polterwurst]

Can't be 100% certain, but I THINK the picture of a guy in an electric chair may be a movie poster, and the image is either outside on the wall, or in the carriage and simply reflected back.

According to Mr Grosse, the wall behind the boy is within the tunnels, where there are no posters. He says it in the vid.

I thought at first that the image was from the Wes Craven film 'Shocker', but it's not that one as it was an orange jump suit in that poster.

As Mr Grosse says, the image shows the execution of Bruno Hauptmann (who was convicted of murdering the Lindbergh baby), as it is depicted in Mme Tussaud's wax museum (which is, as I remember, not too far away from where the subway was passing). What's in the picture, but not in the wax museum, are the sparks emanating from the wrists.

So yes, it's very likely to be a poster, but not of a movie, but of Mme Tussauds. Maybe the photographer had taken a picture of such a poster at Mme Tussaud's. Strangely enough, it doesn't seem to be superimposed but looks like its behind the window.

 

[FilmguyLee]

Ok, my mistake on that part - I missed him saying that upon first viewing. Just saw it again.

Apart from this video, is there any other information about this picture anywhere else, does anybody know?

I'm curious to know how extensively the photo was examined.

I STILL don't believe it's a genuine paranormal photograph, but it'd be interesting to find out exactly how that happened (again, I'm not a photographic expert).

 

[Polterwurst]

My "parapsychological speculation" on this one was that maybe the boy had been to Mme Tussauds shortly before and the poster or maybe the wax display itself impressed him so much that he somehow psychically "imprinted" it on the photograph. But I guess it's a question of Occam's razor. Might as well be that the camera was out of film and two pictures were taken on the same frame (which if i remember right could happen with older, pre-digital cameras, when the film was at an end).

But then, why would anyone take a photo of only the lower part of a poster? If there was something in front of the poster, maybe a person who have been the actual focus of the original foto, he or she has been totally obliterated by the superimposed one. I would think that there should be more of the original one to see.

Can't be 100% certain, but I THINK the picture of a guy in an electric chair may be a movie poster, and the image is either outside on the wall, or in the carriage and simply reflected back.

Of course, we only have the word of the investigator that there could have been no poster on the wall outside. Mr Grosse might have been mistaken. He also says it seems to be right up on the glass and I don't see why that should be a fact either (of course, we are not looking at the originals here).

The theory that the poster was inside and reflected in the glass has one flaw IMO: why isn't the photographer reflected, too? Why is nothing else reflected?

So I guess, it's either darkroom manipulation, as Burnt State proposed, or genuinely unexplainable. To quote Burnt State, only the guys in the fotos (and the photographer) know the answer.

 

[FilmguyLee]

I actually have three (alleged) pictures of a ghost my Gran took a few years back. I don't believe for a second it is anything supernatural, but you can see a face of an old man who was meant to have passed away in the place it was took - although that's obviously a trick of the stone walls.

(And my Gran was very Irish, and very religious, so of course, as far as she was concerned, it was a ghost)

If I ever find them out and can get time, I'll scan them in this thread, just for the heck of it.

 

[LeBombette]

Here's a vid I found quite interesting in which the late Maurice Grosse (who investigated the Enfield Poltergeist for the SPR) presented a few photos he thought were genuinely unexplainable. This was before digital photography.

Of course, most of them can be explained by double exposure and it's striking how many of the "ghosts" in these pictures clearly were people photos themselves (taken long before) that "somehow" ended up in the new photo. The witnesses of course say that they are not double exposues and that the fotos just turned up without anyone tampering with them, and Mr. Grosse obviously saw no reason to doubt their testimony.

I think this is super interesting just for the simple fact these are very weird. If you were setting about to fake a ghost photo none of these seem to be the route one would take if you actually wanted your ghost photo to be "believable". None of these images mesh with our preconceived notions of what ghosts might look like on film.
I don't really think these are "ghosts", but I am intrigued by the idea that these are some sort of mental image being transferred from the mind of the person being photographed to the film. However, as you say it would be helpful if we knew more about the lady at the table...did anyone of the group know her, etc., etc.. Also, it seems strange that the picture of the married couple that appears as the "ghost image" is not the image the daughter had of her parents. Whatever the case, I doubt these are hoaxes...maybe some weird anomaly with the film or something more paranormal...but, oddly enough they seem too "weird" to be deliberate hoaxes. Thanks for posting this video!

 

[Peterg42]

Nice picture...