The Watcher

This photo was taken at Corroboree Rock at Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia in 1959. What does not seem to be a trick of light and shadow is a human form, semi-transparent, wearing what looks like a long white dress or gown. More curious, the figure seems to be holding something in the manner that a person holds a camera or binoculars.

One posssibility is that this is a double exposure of a living person. In 1959, this image would have been captured on film.

If it is not a double exposure and this is a spirit captured on film, then a number of questions arise: What is the entity looking and why? Do they have cameras and binoculars in the afterlife? Or is this an instance of a time slip in which the camera has recorded a scene from a different time?

It has even been speculated that this figure might actually be a time traveler or interdimentional being, who has been photographed in the act of watching us!

Coventry Spectre

On January 22, 1985, the Coventry Freeman organization were having a dinner event at St. Mary's Guildhall in Coventry, U.K. Everyone in the group had her or his head bowed in prayer when this photo was taken -- including a towering, mysterious figure standing top left. The strange cowled spectre appears to be wearing clothing much like a monk's frock from another time. Lord Mayor Walter Brandish, who was present at the dinner, said there was no one at the event who was dressed like that, and he could not explain the presence of the interloper in the photo.

St. Mary's Guildhall dates back to the 14th century and served as a prison for Mary, Queen of Scots.

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."

Sefton Church Ghost

Sefton Church is an ancient structure (started in the 12th century and finished in the early 16th century) in Merseyside, England, just north of Liverpool. This particular photograph was taken inside the church in September, 1999.

According to Brad Steiger's Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places, where this photo was found, there was only one other photographer in the church beside the person who took this picture. Neither of them recalled seeing the ghost or any flesh-and-blood person standing there who could account for this image. Because the figure is all in black, it has been theorized that the apparition could be that of a church minister.

Reader Mark Tomlinson reports that a pub next door to the church, called the Punch Bowl, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a man in blue nautical garb, which has been reported there for many years.

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.

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.

Godfather's Pizza Ghost

Several unnerving instances of ghost and poltergeist activity were reported by the management, staff, and customers of the Godfather's Pizza restaurant in Ogden, Utah in 1999-2000, prompting an investigation by Utah Paranormal Exploration and Research (UPER). Phenomena included:

* The sighting of several spirits, including those of a man, a woman, and two boys
* A jukebox that played by itself, even when unplugged
* A tile floor that inexplicably bulged up as high as ten inches, then leveled itself; a later examination showed nothing out of the ordinary beneath the tile and the concrete was intact
* As many as 40 fluorescent light tubes flew out of their boxes and smashed on the floor
* Mysterious whistling was heard from the kitchen several times.

UPER's investigation found that the restaurant might have been built upon a very old pauper's field -- a cemetery for the poor. It also resulted in this photo, taken by Merry Barrentine, UPER's general manager, in 2000. This misty apparition was actually seen with the naked eye for a few seconds as it materialized in the middle of the room.

Robert A Ferguson

This photo was taken on November 16, 1968 when Robert A. Ferguson, author of Psychic Telemetry: New Key to Health, Wealth, and Perfect Living, was giving a speech at a Spiritualist convention in Los Angeles, California. Faintly appearing next to Ferguson is a figure that he later identified as his brother, Walter, who died in 1944 during World War II. At first glance, this might seem to be a double exposure or some kind of darkroom trickery, but this photo is a Polaroid (one of several taken of Ferguson at the time), making any kind of hoaxing quite unlikely.

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.

Ghost in the Choir Loft

In 1982, photographer Chris Brackley took a photograph of the interior of London's St. Botolph's Church, but never expected what would appear on the film. High in the church's loft, seen in the upper right-hand corner of his photograph, is the transparent form of what looks like a woman. According to Brackley, to his knowledge there were only three people in the church at the time the photo was taken, and none of them were in that loft.

According to London Paranormal Database Records, "Mr. Brackley was later contacted by a builder who recognized the face of one that he had seen in a coffin in the church."

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.

You can read the full story of this photograph in the article,"The Ghost of the Seven Gables."

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!

Railroad Crossing Ghost

A strange legend surrounds a railroad crossing just south of San Antonio, Texas. The intersection of roadway and railroad track, so the story goes, was the site of a tragic accident in which several school-aged children were killed - but their ghosts linger at the spot and will push idled cars across the tracks, even though the path is uphill.

The story may be just the stuff of urban legend, but the accounts were intriguing enough that I wrote an article about the phenomenon, "The Haunted Railroad Crossing." The article included a photograph submitted by Andy and Debi Chesney. Their daughter and some of her friends had recently been to the crossing to test the legend, and she took some photographs. Inexplicably, a strange, transparent figure turned up in one of the photos. "They had no idea that it was in the picture until the next day when I printed out the picture and showed them," said the Chesneys. "It was really freaky. It appears to be a little girl carrying a teddy bear."

Other readers who have viewed the photo think it shows a little girl with a dog sitting at her feet. What do you think?

Madonna of Bachelor's Grove

This photo was taken during an investigation of Bachelor's Grove cemetery near Chicago by the Ghost Research Society (GRS). On August 10, 1991, several members of 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 over 100 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.

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.

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: Ghost Video

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!"

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.

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 Screaming Bigfoot

IN 2003, Kris Monk and her boyfriend moved to Wilderness, a small town in South Africa along the Garden Route, which is popular for its natural forests. When they moved there, the town was still relatively small, although in recent years it has grown substantially.

The couple found a flat on top of a garage on a nice quiet road. The main house was empty as the owners were from overseas and only used it in December for holidays. “From the beginning,” Kris says, “whenever we were outside we always had a feeling like we were being watched. We also had two cats that behaved very nervously all the time we stayed there.”

One evening, Kris was at home alone waiting for her boyfriend to get back from surfing when she heard a strange, high-pitched screaming sound from the valley right next to her house. “Let me explain the set up of our street quickly,” says Kris. “It had houses only on the one side, and on the other was a forest valley. So I heard the screaming coming from the forest.”

Thinking the screaming might be coming from a hurt animal, Kris took a flashlight and found a makeshift path into the bushes. She got halfway down the slope when she was overcome with a very eerie feeling. Too scared to go on, she turned back. Within a few minutes, the screaming stopped.

The growling

After the couple was in the apartment for six months, Kris’s boyfriend had to go away to work on his degree, leaving Kris alone in the flat for four nights of the week. She took a waitressing job at a restaurant down the street as she could walk there in a few minutes. “Wilderness is safe to walk around at night,” she says, “even if you are a girl. My dad, however, made me phone him when I was walking home, just so he knew I got there safely every night.”

One night Kris was talking to him and was almost at the steps that led up to her flat when she heard a deep growling from the bush next to her. Terrified, she ran up the stairs and into the house, locking the door behind her.

Kris began to notice that every night her cats would just sit and stare at the front door. “Our flat was all open plan, one big room, with only the bathroom being separate,” Kris explains. “Our bed was situated behind the bathroom wall, so the front door was not visible from there, but the cats would sit in the middle of the room a few meters from the bed and just stare at the door, with all their fur standing up for hours on end.”

The knocking

Kris’s boyfriend came home for his two week holiday. One evening when she was alone, waiting for him to return from surfing, she heard a knocking on the floor of the flat, which was the ceiling of the garage. “I went to the window, which overlooked the forest, and I could see the garage clearly from there, too,” Kris says. “I called down, hoping the person would come out of the garage and tell me what they were doing. I got no answer, but the knocking went on for a few more seconds. I closed the curtain and looked out through a small gap in them for about ten minutes, but no one exited the garage.”

By the time her boyfriend got home, Kris was a nervous wreck.

More screams

Shortly thereafter, a woman from up the road moved into the main house while she waited for her new home out of town to be built. She had two dogs, and from the first night, she told Kris, the dogs were very restless there. About a week later, Kris woke up one night to the same horrible screaming as before. Her cats were both on the bed with her but sitting up, listening with all their fur raised. She eventually fell back asleep after about an hour of the screaming.

The next morning, the woman from the house asked Kris if I had heard the eerie screaming. Kris confirmed that she had. The woman then said her dogs had both been very frightened by it, which was unusual because they were normally quite gutsy. The women heard the screaming every night for about a week.

A week or two later, the woman moved out and Kris was on her own again. Nothing unusual happened, aside from the cat continuing to stare at the door at night.

Something huge

By this time, Kris had bought a car and no longer had to walk home from work. Her boyfriend had another two weeks holiday, and one day while Kris was at work he went down the path into the forest. When she got home at about 4 p.m. that day, he took her down the path.

“As we got to the bottom of the slope, something huge ran past us into the bush,” Kris vividly recalls. “My boyfriend is six-foot-four and this thing was taller than he. We glimpsed its silhouette as it crashed through the bush. It was definitely furry. We proceeded into the bush, not being too afraid as it was still light. We went further and found there to be a stream running through the valley. Right near the stream we found and oddly shaped root formation. It was shaped like an igloo, but hollow inside and big enough for two people to sleep in easily. It had leaves all over the bottom, as if it were a nest.”

After this discovery, Kris and her boyfriend left very quickly.

Two days later, her boyfriend's brother came to visit. He parked his car in the garage, which was left open all day so they could get their cars in and out freely. “As he got out the car, he heard growling,” Kris says. “He promptly got back in the car and phoned my boyfriend from his cell phone asking him to come down and meet him. He told my boyfriend what happened, and my boyfriend told him the same thing had happened to me.”

A month later, the house was sold and Kris and her boyfriend had to move out. “Since we moved, we have not once had the creepy feeling of being watched while outside or anything,” she says, “though driving back up our old road we both get goose bumps. And our cats stopped behaving so nervously, too.”

What was it the terrified the couple with its tortured screams? Kris says, “We like to say it was a Bigfoot.”