Springfield Ghost Society
The Best Ghost Photos Ever Taken
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If seeing is believing, then these photos will convince you of the existence of ghosts.  Here are some incredible ghost pictures and the equally remarkable stories behind them. 

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.  Faking ghost photos through double exposure and in-the-lab trickery has been around as long as photography itself; and today, computer graphics programs can easily and convincingly create ghost images… But these photos are generally thought to be untouched, genuine portraits of the unexplained. 

    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.  The Raynham Hall mansion was the home of the Townshend family for over 300 years.  Dorothy was the sister of Sir Robert Walpole, Charles’ one-time partner with whom he had a falling-out.  It was also rumored that Dorothy, before her marriage to Charles, had been the mistress of Lord Wharton, “whose character was so infamous, and his lady’s complaisant subserviency so notorious, that no young woman could be four and twenty hours under their roof with safety to her reputation.”  Charles suspected Dorothy of infidelity.  And 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, noting that her face was pale and hair disheveled.  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. 

The 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

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.  Comberemere 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 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.

 

   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 aboard the HMS Daedalus.  In back of the airman positioned on the top row, fourth from the left, can clearly be see 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.

   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. 

Convincing ghost photographs are hard to come by.  Most of what we see in the category of ghost or spirit photography includes glowing orbs, strange mists, mysterious swirls and other anomalies.  As intriguing as these photos are, however, they cannot compare to the rare photos that seem to show clear apparitions of human forms.

  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 

Terry Ike 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.

 

The 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.  Neither 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 Shropshhire, 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. 

  The Madonna of Bachelor’s Grove 

This photo was taken during an investigation of Bachelor’s Grove cemetery near Chicago by the Ghost Research Society.  On August 10, 1991, several members of the GRS were at the cemetery, a small, abandoned graveyard on the edge of the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve, near the suburb of Midlothian, Illinois.  Reputed to be one of the most haunted cemeteries in the U.S., Bachelor’s Grove has been the site of well over100 different reports of strange phenomena, including apparitions, unexplained sights and sounds, and even glowing balls of light. 

GRS member Mari Huff was taking black and white photos with a high-speed infrared camera in an area where the group had experienced some anomalies with their ghost-hunting equipment.  The cemetery was empty, except for the GRS members.  When developed, this image emerged: what looks like a lonely-looking young woman dressed in white sitting on a tombstone.  Parts of her body are partially transparent and the style of the dress seems to be out of date. 

Other ghosts reportedly seen in Bachelor’s Grove include figures in monks’ clothes and the spirit of a glowing yellow man. 

Baby Ghost 

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 grave marker. 

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 seemed to be aware of Mrs. Andrews since he or she is looking directly into the camera. 

Is it 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.  

   

Grandpa’s Ghost 

This photo was received from Denise Russell.  “The lady in the 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. 

Sources:

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