Sue Darroch and Matthew Didier's Paranormal Blog

This week, historian Chris Laursen looks at two family photos taken in the past ten years that take the debate of survival after death even further.

Family photos inadvertently capture the uncanny
by Chris Laursen

It's amazing what you can capture in photos. Candid moments in life where the personality of those you love shines through. Posed portraiture where the subjects are obviously uncomfortable being photographed. They are all important records, a frozen split second forever treasured, evidence of our past. On rare occasion, unexplained things are caught in the frame.

On Sunday, May 16, 2004, brothers Christopher and Paul Petty went out to enjoy the sunshine in Sussex, England's Sheffield Park Gardens and took a few photos to remind them of the day. Something unexpected showed up in one of the digital photographs of Christopher sitting on the grass. There is a figure of a pale and shadowy woman behind Christopher, her head slightly bowed almost as if she were copying the subject's pose. Christopher and Paul say there was no one behind him at the time. No people. No statues. Nothing.

The story caught the interest of the BBC. In a story on the BBC's website published June 1, 2004, Christopher explained: "After much consideration I can only guess that there is either a photographic explanation for this, or that the shadow is in fact a ghost." Initially, BBC employees looking at the photo thought it was an elderly lady taking a stroll in the park, but they could not dismiss the fact that the brothers said there was no one else around at the time.

Over a year after the photo was published, Sussex resident John Bristow and his family contacted the BBC and wanted to find out if the photo was a hoax. He felt that the woman in the photo bore a striking resemblance to his mother, 87-year-old Florence Bristow, who died in the park on August 4, 2001. The BBC recollected the traumatic event at the park: "They hired a motorised buggy, intending to travel around the edge of the lake. Unfortunately, Florence suffered a heart attack and fell across her son who lost control of the buggy, which then plunged into the water. John's wife dived into the lake in an attempt to save her and although first reports suggested Florence had drowned, later tests showed that she had died before entering the water. Resuscitation attempts were tried at the lake side but to no effect."

Paul Petty verified that there was no one in that part of the park when he was taking photos of his brother. "I hope that there is a logical explanation for the figure in the photo," he wrote to the BBC, "and that the photo has not caused distress to the family of Mrs. Bristow."
Comments on the BBC website ranged from definite support to outright suspicion. Carolyn Petty, the brothers' sister, added a twist of simulacra to the mix, writing, "the face has another face within it which is even more spooky, it's to the lower right of the bigger face! I reckon it's got an animal type face to it - maybe a cat, tiger or lion." Such interpretations aside, it seems unmistakable that there is a woman standing behind Christopher that may or may not be the ghost of Florence Bristow.

Like many such strange photos, no solid conclusions can be made. Evidence is as fleeting as any other ghostly sighting. But it is harder to dismiss an even stranger and eerily similar photograph taken ten years ago and posted by about.com as one of the best ghost photos ever taken. The photo was taken on Sunday, August 17, 1997 by Denise Russell at an undisclosed location. You can clearly see a man standing behind Ms. Russell's grandmother in one of the pictures taken of her that day. The family did not discover the figure standing there until they were reviewing their photo album on Christmas Day, 2000. They were speechless to note the resemblance between the man standing behind their grandmother and their grandfather, who had died on August 14, 1984. There certainly is something uncanny about this photo, especially when compared to photos of Ms. Russell's grandfather.

Stephen Wagner, the editor of the paranormal section of about.com, put it very well. He wrote, "The accidental nature of these photos lends them credibility because the photographers didn't have an agenda - it wasn't their intention to capture a ghost image, it just happened, and they are just as surprised as anyone else to discover it."

Interestingly, both of these photographs feature figures, unseen by the photographers at the time, standing behind the subject of the photo. It is as if they were inadvertently caught in the snapshot. But how did they get there if they weren't there in the first place? The same situation was faced by photographers of other famed ghost photos, including the photograph of a deceased woman in the back of a car (1959), the Tulip Staircase photographed by Canadian tourists in Greenwich, England (1966), the Ghost Research Society's Bachelor's Grove Cemetery female apparition in Chicago (1991), and the apparition of a girl in the town hall fire in Shropshire, England (1995). In these examples, nothing unusual was seen at the time the photos were taken.

There are no doubt hundreds or thousands of equally inexplicable photographs in family collections - photographs that could no doubt further survival after death and paranormal research. But since many of these photographs may contain an image of a loved one, it is likely the family would prefer not to share it publicly. Although controversial, the photos released by Christopher and Paul Petty and Denise Russell are excellent insights into how photos can give us possible glimpses into the world of those who have passed over. Such photos can be submitted for confidential analysis by reputable research organizations such as PSICAN, the American or British Society for Psychical Research, and so on.

Further reading:

About: Paranormal Phenomena:
http://paranormal.about.com/

BBC's Strange South:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/southerncounties/community/strange_south/

Image credits:

Photos of Christopher Petty and Florence Bristow reprinted on bbc.co.uk

Photos submitted by Denise Russell to about.com