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They say seeing is believing. And while in this day of digital image
manipulation that might not be as true as it once was, these photographs are
considered by many to be the real deal – photographic evidence of ghosts.
The Brown Lady
This portrait of “The Brown Lady” ghost is arguably the most famous and
well-regarded ghost photograph ever taken. The ghost is thought to be that of
Lady Dorothy Townshend, wife of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount of Raynham,
residents of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England in the early 1700s. It was rumored
that Dorothy, before her marriage to Charles, had been the mistress of Lord
Wharton. Charles suspected Dorothy of infidelity. Although according to legal
records she died and was buried in 1726, it was suspected that the funeral was a
sham and that Charles had locked his wife away in a remote corner of the house
until her death many years later.
Dorothy’s ghost is said to haunt the oak staircase and other areas of Raynham
Hall. In the early 1800s, King George IV, while staying at Raynham, saw the
figure of a woman in a brown dress standing beside his bed. She was seen again
standing in the hall in 1835 by Colonel Loftus, who was visiting for the
Christmas holidays. He saw her again a week later and described her as wearing a
brown satin dress, her skin glowing with a pale luminescence. It also seemed to
him that her eyes had been gouged out. A few years later, Captain Frederick
Marryat and two friends saw “the Brown Lady” gliding along an upstairs hallway,
carrying a lantern. As she passed, Marryat said, she grinned at the men in a
“diabolical manner.” Marryat fired a pistol at the apparition, but the bullet
simply passed through.
This famous photo was taken in September, 1936 by Captain Provand and Indre
Shira, two photographers who were assigned to photograph Raynham Hall for
Country Life magazine. This is what happened, according to Shira:
“Captain Provand took one photograph while I flashed the light. He was focusing
for another exposure; I was standing by his side just behind the camera with the
flashlight pistol in my hand, looking directly up the staircase. All at once I
detected an ethereal veiled form coming slowly down the stairs. Rather
excitedly, I called out sharply: ‘Quick, quick, there’s something.’ I pressed
the trigger of the flashlight pistol. After the flash and on closing the
shutter, Captain Provand removed the focusing cloth from his head and turning to
me said: ‘What’s all the excitement about?’”
Upon developing the film, the image of The Brown Lady ghost was seen for the
first time. It was published in the December 16, 1936 issue of Country Life. The
ghost has been seen occasionally since.
Lord Combermere’s Ghost
This photograph of the Combermere Abbey library was taken in 1891 by Sybell
Corbet. The figure of a man can faintly be seen sitting in the chair to the
left. His head, collar and right arm on the armrest are clearly discernable. It
is believed to be the ghost of Lord Combermere.
Lord Combermere was a British cavalry commander in the early 1800s, who
distinguished himself in several military campaigns. Combermere Abbey, located
in Cheshire, England, was founded by Benedictine monks in 1133. In 1540, King
Henry VII kicked out the Benedictines, and the Abbey later became the Seat of
Sir George Cotton KT, Vice Chamberlain to the household of Prince Edward, son of
Henry VIII. In 1814, Sir Stapleton Cotton, a descendent of Sir George, took the
title “Lord Combermere” and in 1817 became became the Governor of Barbados.
Today the Abbey is a tourist attraction and hotel.
Lord Combermere died in 1891, having been struck and killed by a horse-drawn
carriage. At the time Sybell Corbet took the above photo, Combermere’s funeral
was taking place some four miles away. The photographic exposure, Corbet
recorded, took about an hour. It is thought by some that during that time a
servant might have come into the room and sat briefly in the chair, creating the
transparent image. This idea was refuted by members of the household, however,
testifying that all were attending Lord Combermere’s funeral.
Interesting side note: Lord Combermere is connected to another well-known
paranormal story: the famous “Moving Coffins” of Barbados. The coffins inside
the sealed vault of the Chase family are said to have been moved about by
unnatural forces. The heavy coffins were repeatedly put in proper order, but
often when a new coffin was added to the vault, the coffins were found strewn
about. Lord Combermere, while governor of Barbados, had ordered a professional
investigation of the mystery.
Freddy Jackson
This intriguing photo, taken in 1919, was first published in 1975 by Sir Victor
Goddard, a retired R.A.F. officer. The photo is a group portrait of Goddard’s
squadron, which had served in World War I at the HMS Daedalus training facility.
An extra ghostly face appears in the photo. In back of the airman positioned on
the top row, fourth from the left, can clearly be seen the face of another man.
It is said to be the face of Freddy Jackson, an air mechanic who had been
accidentally killed by an airplane propeller two days earlier. His funeral had
taken place on the day this photograph was snapped. Members of the squadron
easily recognized the face as Jackson’s. It has been suggested that Jackson,
unaware of his death, decided to show up for the group photo.
Interesting side note: In 1935, Sir Victor Goddard, now a Wing Commander, had
another brush with the unexplained. While on a flight from Edinburgh, Scotland
to his home base in Andover, England, he encountered a strange storm that seemed
to transport him through time into the future. You can read more about his
experience in the article “Time Travelers” under the section “Flight Into the
Future.”
Tulip Staircase Ghost
Rev. Ralph Hardy, a retired clergyman from White Rock, British Columbia, took
this now-famous photograph in 1966. He intended merely to photograph the elegant
spiral staircase (known as the “Tulip Staircase”) in the Queen’s House section
of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. Upon development,
however, the photo revealed a shrouded figure climbing the stairs, seeming to
hold the railing with both hands. Experts, including some from Kodak, who
examined the original negative concluded that it had not been tampered with.
It’s been said that unexplained figures have been seen on occasion in the
vicinity of the staircase, and unexplained footsteps have also been heard.
Interesting side note: This photo isn’t the only evidence of ghostly activity at
the Queen’s House. The 400-year-old building is credited with several other
apparitions and phantom footsteps even today. Recently, a Gallery Assistant was
discussing a tea break with two colleagues when he saw one of the doors to the
Bridge Room close by itself. At first he thought it was one of the lecturers.
“Then I saw a woman glide across the balcony, and pass through the wall on the
west balcony,” he said. “I couldn’t believe what I saw. I went very cold and the
hair on my arms and my neck stood on end. We all dashed through to the Queen’s
Presents Room and looked down towards the Queen’s Bedroom. Something passed
through the ante-room and out through the wall. Then my colleagues all froze
too. The lady was dressed in a white-grey colour crinoline type dress.”
Other ghostly goings-on include the unexplained choral chanting of children, the
figure of a pale woman frantically mopping blood at the bottom of the Tulip
Staircase (it’s said that 300 years ago a maid was thrown from the highest
banister, plunging 50 feet to her death), slamming doors, and even tourists
being pinched by unseen fingers.
The Back Seat Ghost
Mrs. Mabel Chinnery was visiting the grave of her mother one day in 1959. She
had brought along her camera to take photographs of the gravesite. After
snapping a few shots of her mother’s gravestone, she took an impromptu photo of
her husband, who was waiting alone in the car. At least the Chinnerys thought he
was alone.
When the film was developed, the couple was more than surprised to see a figure
wearing glasses sitting in the back seat of the car. Mrs. Chinnery immediately
recognized the image of her mother – the woman whose grave they had visited on
that day. A photographic expert who examined the print determined that the image
of the woman was neither a reflection nor a double exposure. “I stake my
reputation on the fact that the picture is genuine,” he testified.
The Ghost of Boothill Cemetery
“This is the photo that changed my opinion about ghost photos,” says Terry Ike
Clanton, who runs the TombstoneArizona.com website. Clanton is an actor,
recording artist and cowboy poet, and is also a cousin of the legendary Clanton
Gang who clashed with the Earps and Doc Holliday at the famous gunfight at OK
Corral. Clanton took this photo of his friend at Boothill Graveyard. The photo
was taken in black and white because he wanted Old West-looking pictures of
himself dressed in Clanton’s 1880-period clothes. Clanton took the film for
developing to the local Thrifty Drug Store, and when he got it back was startled
at what he saw. Among the gravestones, just to the right of his friend, is the
image of what appears to be a thin man in a dark hat. By height, the man appears
to be either legless, kneeling… or rising up out of the ground.
“I know there was no other person in this photograph when I shot it,” Clanton
insists. And he believes the small figure in the background is holding a knife.
“We thought this was a tie at first, but after further review, it appears to be
a knife,” Clanton says. “The knife is in a vertical position; the tip is located
just below the figure’s right collar. If you’re not convinced that something is
weird here, look at my friend’s shadow in the photo. It appears to be going back
slightly to the right of him. The figure in the back should have the same
shadow, but it doesn’t!”
Ghost in the Burning Building
On November 19, 1995, Wem Town Hall in Shropshire, England burned to the ground.
Many spectators gathered to watch the old building, built in 1905, as it was
being consumed by the flames. Tony O’Rahilly, a local resident, was one of those
onlookers and took photos of the spectacle with a 200mm telephoto lens from
across the street. One of those photos shows what looks like a small, partially
transparent girl standing in the doorway. Nether O’Rahilly nor any of the other
onlookers or firefighters recalled seeing the girl there.
O’Rahilly submitted the photo to the Association for the Scientific Study of
Anomalous Phenomena which, in turn, presented it for analysis to Dr. Vernon
Harrison, a photographic expert and former president of the Royal Photographic
Society. Harrison carefully examined both the print and the original negative,
and concluded that it was genuine. “The negative is a straightforward piece of
black-and-white work and shows no sign of having been tampered with,” Harrison
said.
But who is the little girl? Wem, a quiet market town in northern Shropshire, had
been ravaged by fire in the past. In 1677, historical records note, a fire
destroyed many of the town’s old timber houses. A young girl named Jane Churm,
the legends say, accidentally set fire to a thatched roof with a candle. Many
believed her ghost haunted the area and had been seen on a few other occasions.
This video, in two parts, looks at some of the other sightings of appartitions
in the building, but questions the authenticity of the photo. (Unfortunately,
they examined a print of the photo and not the original negative.) See it here:
Part 1 and Part 2.
Ghosts of the SS Watertown
James Courtney and Michael Meehan, crew members of the S.S. Watertown, were
cleaning a cargo tank of the oil tanker as it sailed toward the Panama Canal
from New York City in December of 1924. Through a freak accident, the two men
were overcome by gas fumes and killed. As was the custom of the time, the
sailors were buried at sea off the Mexican coast on December 4.
But this was not the last the remaining crew members were to see of their
unfortunate shipmates. The next day, before dusk, the first mate reported seeing
the faces of the two men in the waves off the port side of the ship. They
remained in the water for 10 seconds, then faded. For several days thereafter,
the phantom-like faces of the sailors were clearly seen by other members of the
crew in the water following the ship.
On arrival in New Orleans, the ship’s captain, Keith Tracy, reported the strange
events to his employers, the Cities Service Company, who suggested he try to
photograph the eerie faces. Captain Tracy purchased a camera for the continuing
voyage. When the faces again appeared in the water, Captain Tracy took six
photos, then locked the camera and film in the ship’s safe. When the film was
processed by a commercial developer in New York, five of the exposures showed
nothing but sea foam. But the sixth showed the ghostly faces of the doomed
seamen. The negative was checked for fakery by the Burns Detective Agency. After
the ship’s crew had been changed, there were no more reports of sightings.
Specter of Newby Church
This photograph was taken in 1963 by Reverend K. F. Lord at Newby Church in
North Yorkshire, England. It has been a controversial photo because it is just
too good. The shrouded face and the way it is looking directly into the camera
makes it look like it was posed – a clever double exposure. Yet supposedly the
photo has been scrutinized by photo experts who say the image is not the result
of a double exposure.
The Reverend Lord has said of the photo that nothing was visible to the naked
eye when he took the snapshot of his altar. Yet when the film was developed,
standing there was this strange cowled figure.
The Newby Church was built in 1870 and, as far as anyone knows, did not have a
history of ghosts, hauntings or other peculiar phenomena. Those why have
carefully analyzed the proportions of the objects in the photo calculated that
the specter is about nine feet tall!
Ghost of the Seven Gables
While touring the historic House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts –
the birthplace of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne – Lisa B. snapped this
remarkable photo. The ghostly image of a small boy seems to be in the shrubbery,
peering over the wooden fence.
The most amazing part of the story of this photograph is that she subsequently
did some research about Hawthorne and the house. While looking through a
library, she came across one of Hawthorne’s books, Twenty Days with Julian &
Little Bunny by Papa. On the cover of that book is a portrait of Hawthorne’s
five-year-old son, Julian. And as you’ll see by clicking on the photo at left,
the portrait of little Julian bears a striking resemblance to the ghost in
Lisa’s photograph.
Grandpa’s Ghost
This photo was received from Denise Russell. “The lady in the color photo is my
granny,” she says. “She lived on her own until age 94, when her mind started to
weaken and had to be moved to an assisted living home for her own safety. At the
end of the first week, there was a picnic for the residents and their families.
My mother and sister attended. My sister took two pictures that day, and this is
one of them. It was taken on Sunday, 8/17/97, and we think the man behind her is
my grandpa who passed away on Sunday, 8/14/84.
We did not notice the man in the picture until Christmas Day, 2000 (granny had
since passed away), while browsing through some loose family photos at my
parents’ house. My sister thought it was such a nice picture of granny that she
even made a copy for mom, but still, nobody noticed the man behind her for over
three years! When I arrived at my parents’ house that Christmas day, my sister
handed me the picture and said, “Who do you think this man behind granny looks
like?” It took a few seconds for it to sink in. I was absolutely speechless. The
black and white photos show that it really looks like him.
Vacation Party Ghost
These two photos were taken in 1988 at the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Maurach,
Austria. Several vacationers gathered for a farewell party at the hotel and
decided to take a group photo. One of the party, Mr. Todd, set up is Canon film
camera on a nearby table and pointed it at the group. (The table is the white
band at the bottom of the photos.) He set the self-timer on the camera and
hurried back to the table. The shutter clicked and the film wound forward, but
the flash did not fire. So Todd set the camera for a second shot. This time the
flash fired.
The film was later developed, and it wasn’t until one of party members was
viewing the photos that it was noticed that the first (non-flash) photo showed a
somewhat blurry extra head! (In the sequence above, the second (flash) photo is
actually shown first for the sake of comparison.) No one recognized the ghostly
woman, and they could not imagine how her image appeared in the picture. Besides
being a bit out of focus, the woman’s head is also too large compared to the
other vacationers, unless she is sitting closer to the camera, which would put
her in the middle of the table.
The photo was examined by the Royal Photographic Society, the photographic
department of Leicester University, and the Society for Psychical Research, all
of which ruled out a double exposure as the cause.
Ghostly Grip
This interesting photo was taken sometime around the year 2000 in Manilla,
Republic of the Philippines. According to The Ghost Research Society, two
girlfriends were out for a walk one warm night. One of them entreated a passing
stranger to photograph them using her cell phone’s camera (hence the
low-resolution picture). The result is shown here, with a transparent figure
seeming to tug on the girl’s arm with a firm if friendly grip.
Without further information on this photo, we have to admit that the ghost could
have been added with image processing software. But if it’s genuine and
untouched, it certainly qualifies as one of the best ghost photos.
Cemetery Ghost Baby
A woman named Mrs. Andrews was visiting the grave of her daughter in a cemetery
in Queensland, Australia in 1946 or 1947. Her daughter Joyce had died about a
year earlier, in 1945, at the age of 17. Mrs. Andrews saw nothing unusual when
she took this photo of Joyce’s gravemarker.
When the film was developed, Mrs. Andrews was astonished to see the image of a
small child sitting happily at her daughter’s grave. The ghost child seem to be
aware of Mrs. Andrews since he or she is looking directly into the camera.
Is is possibly a double exposure? Mrs. Andrews said there were no such children
nearby when she took the photograph and, moreover, did not recognize the child
at all – it was no one she would have taken a picture of. She remarked that she
did not believe it was the ghost of her daughter as a child.
Investigating this case, Australian paranormal researcher Tony Healy visited the
cemetery in the late 1990s. Near Joyce’s grave he found the graves of two infant
girls.
Decebal Hotel Ghost
Authorities have warned people to stay away from the Decebal Hotel — because
construction was taking place on the 150-year-old building. What they didn’t
warn people about was the ghost. The spirit of a tall woman in a long white
frock has long been reported at the spa. The hotel in Romania is rumored to hide
ancient Roman treasure, and the ghost, it is said, appears to protect it from
treasure hunters.
Only anecdotal evidence for this ghost existed until 2008 when 33-year-old
Victoria Iovan snapped this photograph, which indeed seems to show the ghostly
image of a tall figure in long white garb. “I photographed my boyfriend in the
hotel,” said Iovan. “Back home I was shocked to see another woman’s shadow in
the picture. She looked like a priestess in long white clothes.”
The Phantom Pilot
Mrs. Sayer and some friends were visiting the Fleet Air Arm Station at Yelverton,
Somerset, England in 1987 when this photo was taken. They thought it would be
cute to take a picture of her sitting in the seat of retired helicopter. No one,
Mrs. Sayer insists, was sitting next to her in the pilot’s seat… although a
figure in a white shirt can clearly be seen sitting there. She told an
investigator with the Society for Psychical Research that she remembered feeling
rather cold sitting in that seat, even though it was a hot day. Other pictures
taken at the same time did not come out.
Worth noting is that the helicopter was used in the Falklands War, but there is
no information as to whether or not a pilot died in that aircraft.
Tewin Bury Farm Ghost
This amazing photo was taken by photographer and graphic designer Neil Sandbach
in 2008. Neil was photographing some scenic shots at a farm Hertfordshire,
England, as part of a project for wedding stationery; the couple planned to have
their wedding ceremony held there.
Later, Neil was astonished when he examined the digital photo on his computer.
There, as if peeking around a corner at him, is a ghostly, white, almost glowing
figure of what looks like a child. Neil says he is quite sure there was no one
there at the time.
There is further corroboration that this is a true ghost photo. Neil had shown
the couple the anomalous photo, and before the wedding they asked the staff at
the farm if they had ever had any spooky experiences there. They did not mention
Neil’s photo. Indeed, they admitted that the figure of a young boy, dressed in
white night clothes, had been seen on several occasions around the barn.
Apparently, this is the ghost that Neil photographed.
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