A face at the window?
Quite a lot of people have been in touch with me about a recent ghost photo that has been doing the rounds. At first I wasn’t going to write about it at all as I’ve seen it covered elsewhere. However given the amount of people getting in touch via my site I’ll share my thoughts here.
The BBC recently ran a piece on a photograph thought to show the apparition of a ghost with a feature on their site titled ‘Raised spirits on demolition site in Cumbria’. A photo was taken of a building about to be demolished by those who were conducting the work, and when the demolition worker returned home and uploaded the photos his wife spotted the apparition that many believe to be the spirit of a deceased woman who used to live on the site.
You can see what is thought to be a white face with some sort of white collar near the neck, and darkened shoulders too. I am more convinced though that this is more likely to be an illusion than anything significant.
However, because the building has been demolished we will never be able to conduct any further study of this, so speculation is all we really have.
It’s clear to see the windows have a fair amount of condensation on them meaning that the inside of the building is quite distorted. Through the window to the right and behind the apparition you can see the darkened outlines of a doorframes – and to the very left there looks to be a window further back in the building that is letting light in. Or perhaps a door with panes of glass in it. Apart from that there isn’t much interior detail at all.
The first thing that came to my mind was how tiny the ‘person’ was. If you compare their height to the doorways behind them ‘they’ reach about half way up. I would expect an adult to be at least a foot or two higher. Not only that but the hair starts about half way back on the crown of their head and they have a flat face.
We don’t have any interior photos of the building to hand to make comparisons with and so are unable to try and rule possible causes for this out.
Dave Armstrong, of Kendal contractors Cox and Allen, told The Telegraph:
“There was only a black wall behind the window, we had taken everything out – there were no visible features or anything with a skin colour.”
If we are to go on his word it would suggest that there was nothing in the room to cause what appears in the photograph. However we know that memory can be flawed and that things can be misremembered and without any other photos or footage to make comparisons with it’s just impossible to be 100% sure. It could be furnishings they don’t remember being in there, it could be a person, it could be something on the window itself… without anything other than testimony we simply cannot be sure either way.
I do not want to be quick to just dismiss something as an illusion, but I also don’t want to be quick to claim something must be paranormal, when in fact there’s no justification in reaching such a conclusion.
At first glance this looks human, but when you zoom in there are things that just don’t look at all human to me… It’s never simple, is it?
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A reverse angle shot, along with a photo of the demolition equipment would be useful. My first impression is the image is the result of a combination of shadows, condensation and reflection.
It also brings to question the whole business of “ghost clothes”, which has never made any sense. Granted, shoes do have “soles”.
It appears that the photograph was taken with electronic flash. This is shown by the reflection off the black drain pipe and the flare from the left hand window. The photographer was not ‘square-on’ to the building this is shown by the angle of the line formed by the top of the windows. If the photo had been taken straight on then the reflection of the flash would have been very severe.
Most camera flashes have fairly wide angles. The flash would most probably have bounced off all the windows, but more off the nearest three. It is quite feasible that someone standing well to the right of the photographer would have been illuminated by the reflected flash off one of the windows and his image reflected back to the camera by the window in which the anomaly appears: window three.
It is quite clear from the shape of the windows in the photograph that the camera is also angled upwards. The person reflected is therefore most likely standing at a higher level than the photographer; perhaps on a vehicle or higher ground.
If there is anyone out there with a 3D graphic modelling program then it would provide an interesting ray tracing exercise!
Ooh I think I might know of someone who could give that a try! I’ll report back – I have your email so I can let you know in private if you don’t ‘follow’ these comments.
There’s another figure in the left of the picture as well…
From The Telegraph 26/01/12:
David Grimshaw, a former resident at the property, said he was convinced the figure is the ghost of his mother, who died nearly a year ago aged 87.
“That is my mother. I’m totally convinced – no one else looks like that. She had glasses and big earrings and she used to wear a dress with a bow at the front,” he said.
If only we had a picture of the late Mrs Grimshaw?.
Gordon Bonnet at skeptophilia found one and Mrs Grimshaw (the living version)
looks nothing like the Mrs Grimshaw that is in spirit. That’s not to say that this isn’t a ghost though but I’ll wager it’s a combination of condensation, lighting effects, wall textures and slightly over active imaginations.
There are some photos of the house on the Daily Mail website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092092/Frances-Grimshaws-ghost-returns-haunt-builders-demolishing-beloved-guesthouse.html
You can see the house is on raised land hence the camera that took “the ghost” photo being pointed upwards. The house is quite tall (see the last photo) hence quite a substantial piece of demolition equipment was probably used to take out the top storey. It would be interesting to know if the driver of that equipment looks more like the ‘image’ than the photo of the late Mrs Frances Grimshaw. If someone can find the location of the house on Google Street View then it would be interesting to see what’s on the opposite side of the road.
Looking at the full-sized, complete image, it looks a little bit like someone knocked a chunk out of a wall moulding, revealing lighter-coloured material behind it.
Given they scavenge everything they can before demolition – sinks, etc – that that might have happened wouldn’t surprise me.
There’s also, of course, the possibility that it’s, say, a worker inside the house kneeling down to get something, which can never really be ruled out in a case like this.