Truly Dead or Truly Fake?
Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
Ahhhhh!! [Insert angry fist waving here] Curse you technology…and iPhone apps!
One of my favorite things to do as a child while visiting my grandmother (other then building blanket forts and monster sock puppets) was talking about the strange, the bizarre and the unexplained. My grandma was a true believer; we’ve even shared a paranormal experience once. I still remember her telling me that when she died she would come back as a ghost and visit me. Let me tell you, that’s a pretty scary thought for a child. It wasn’t comforting! Grandma as a scary ghost! Holy crap! And well…she did visit me, but that’s a topic for another time.
One of my much-loved memories with her was going through her copy of Reader’s Digest “Mysteries of the Unexplained”. That big beautiful blue book is full of pages, and pages of interesting photos and stories of everything paranormal. (FYI, you can still buy it on eBay…don’t think I just didn’t…only 5buck! Booyah!) And that is also where I saw my first ghostly photos.
1959 photo of mother hitching a ride home from the grave
Our conversation and detailed analysis of each photo and accompanying story would give me chills and make me all wiggly in my chair. As a kid, sharing this book with Grandma was thrilling, chilling and spooky, but as an adult, I think it was a way for her to share her spiritual viewpoint without anyone thinking she was crazy. As far as I was concerned, my Granny Gladys wasn’t nutty but waaayyyy cool!
She and I never talked about the possibility that these photos could be fakes. Maybe she didn’t want to burst my fanta-bubble, or maybe she thought they were real. I wish I knew, but I can tell you my 10-year old brain thought they were 100% genuine gold! After all they were in a BOOK! And if Reader’s Digest believes they are real, so do I. Okay, it was in the 80’s, and I was a kid, so what did I know about faking photos. The only thing I knew about film was fanning the print that immediately came out for our Polaroid camera.
Ghostly Monk
But now that I am older, and I’d like to think I’m a bit savvier when it comes to this kind of thing, I am not so sure they were authentic. You see I’ve recently come across some studies on some of my favorite vintage photos from that book and they don’t seem to be holding up very well against the scrutiny. These are famous spirit photos and I’m not going to give any of them away, because if you are anything like me, some things…treasured things (Hello! Easter Bunny, Santa Claus) are not to be tainted and destroyed but best left as precious memories at the very least.
Amityville ghost boy
Folks have been faking paranormal photographs for as long as they have been taking pictures. And with today’s technology ANYONE can do it with just a simple smart phone app. A dear friend shared a photo with me that she received from her friend. She was so excited to share what she thought was truly a ghost photographed. Sadly it was a fake and she was a victim of that blasted iPhone trickery!!! Grrrr.
Phone app ghost
I’ll admit I saw the app once on a friends phone and it’s fun and it’s clever but it’s also annoying. I enjoy scanning my favorite websites looking at spirit photos, I can do it all day (don’t tell my boss) but I am skeptical now at almost everything I see. Is it real? Am I falling for someone’s stupid joke? There is nothing worst then being made to feel like a fool about something you are so passionate about. It’s frustrating because the truth is so much better then the fake crap.
It really upsets me that we can’t trust some people to show bona fide proof that spirits do exist. It’s so hard to get people believe in the paranormal as it is, add falsification into the mix and well…it just makes our efforts a little more challenging.
Lord Combermere
It also worries me. What if I am one of the lucky few to capture a true sprit on film? Will I have others trying to prove it’s a fake, that I am a fraud? How can you authenticate your own photo? And I want to continue to enjoy looking at ghostly photos but since I don’t have much experience in this, are there techniques other then the obvious “it’s looks too good to be true” image in the photo that I can use to debunk these fakes? Or do I just turn a blind eye and naively try to enjoy the images? Yeah, my brain doesn’t really work that way, so that’s not going to work for me.
Wem Ghost Girl
Adam Wesselby 03 March 2013
Hi there
Ive read through quite a few of your articles and find them very informative and helpful as me and a close friend have decided to set up our own paranormal group in the UK and your articles have given us a lot of help and guidance so thank you very much.
This article especially jumped out at me as me and my friend have recently had a big blow to our believability as investigators this came about when the place that we both shared our first paranormal experience as children which both concreted our life long friendship as well as our belief in the paranormal was thrown into a media storm. The place we both had our first experiences was at our school at the time which was built pre second world war, our story was somewhat corroborated when a visitor came into speak to our class about been at the school during the war and described a teacher dieing on the premises that matched what we had experienced. As you can imagine two children of a young age coming up with these kinds of stories where both ignored as overactive imagination as well as leading to us been pretty much outcast from the other children, over the years we have continued to stand by this story and people have come to believe us more and more as we have matured. This belief was severely damaged when the school came to be demolished and a worker on the site went to the newspaper with the claim he had caught an image of a spirit boy on his phone, from the second i saw it the first thing i thought was its fake simply down to the fact it was to good to be true and the image just looked to set up and this is where i chose to stand on the photo, sadly a lot of other people in my local community jumped on this as true evidence and where truly amazed, so as you can imagine when the worker came forward some months later due to his conscience and announced it was in fact an image created with an app on his phone the people in my community where less than amused. As you can imagine since this incident both our original claims and any claims we have come up with since have been met with nothing but ridicule and as well has caused any members of the community who may be experiencing the paranormal to not come forward to seek the help they may feel they need and it is very frustrating.
I think the thing that frustrates me the most is i see paranormal investigation as a scientific exploration the same as experimenting with chemistry or biology we are simply attempting to set out a series of experiments both to collect data as well as in the hope to possibly back up theories, in this light i think although i can see these apps as entertaining and fun to play with your friends but when they are put forward to the community as something that they are not there should be some sort of consequence the same as if a paper was put out by a scientist which was found to be completely fabricated there would be. I dont know maybe my view of this is a little to the extreme but it is very frustrating.
admin 24 April 2013
Hi Adam, Thank you for taking the time to share your story. That means so much to me. No, you are not too extreme. I really want people to share their thoughts, concerns and their love for the paranormal. You rock!