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     From the time man first carved drawings on cave walls to depict events of his life and the world around him, capturing and recording images has been a favorite and necessary endeavor for the ages.Spirit photography had its roots in the early 1860s, when W. Campbell first captured the image of a small boy seated in a chair. The unusual part of this otherwise ordinary shoot was that it was intended to be a picture of the chair. The boy was not present at the time.

     But perhaps the real pioneer of the field in its infancy was one William Mumler of Boston, Mass., who while taking a self-portrait, discovered a woman in the picture he recognized as a cousin who has died 12 years before the shot was taken!

     Mumler began to produce more and more photographs of this nature and many people of means (including former First Lady Mary Lincoln) paid what then were considered handsome sums of money to pose for him in the hopes of being joined in the picture by otherworldly subjects. Mumler's work was intensely scrutinized and eventually exposed in court as fraud in 1872. Slow shutter speeds and the need for subjects to remain still as long a minute or more to allow the print to finish would allow an accomplice, undetected, to stroll through the photo at an opportune moment producing a transparent image in the background. Mumler also became very proficient at what we now refer to commonly as "double-exposures" by taking photos on plates which already contained images on them. Strangely (or perhaps not) many people - despite growing evidence to the contrary - claimed Mumler was the real deal.

    Advances in photographic technology now allow for more genuine documentation of "ghostly" photos, but those advances also allow for any middle school-aged student to Photoshop an image so real it would take a photographic physicist to debunk it. Despite such progress (and deception) in the field, there have been a number of photographs - some taken simply by chance by people who happen to have been in the right place at the right time - that defy all efforts to dispel their authenticity.

      We present those photographs that we feel have risen above all others as the best photographic evidence of ghosts caught on film:

        This photograph was taken in 1966 by Rev. Ralph Hardy, a retired clergyman from British Columbia, Canada who was visiting the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. Rev. Hardy had merely intended to take a photograph of the famous Tulip Stairway in the Queen's House section of the building. Upon development, this cloaked figure ascending the stairs appeared in the picture. Experts from Kodak who examined the negative have ruled out forgery or double-exposure issues with the film. Interestingly, there have been many other reports of paranormal activity within the building with many centered around the staircase, including that of a woman who was thrown off the top banister and fell to her death 50 feet below mopping up blood from the bottom of the staircase.


 

       This photo was taken by the webmaster at Ghosts of Tombstone - Mr. Terry Clanton - a descendant of the infamous Clanton Gang who shot it out at the OK Corral. He claims:

       "I personally shot this photograph of my friend in Boothill Graveyard... We had it developed at Thrifty Drug Store and I know no one tampered with it! The picture was shot in black & white, because my friend wanted old west looking pictures of himself dressed up in my 1880 period clothes. I know there was no other person in this photograph when I shot it, especially some guy holding a knife! That's right folks, if you look carefully the person in the background appears to be holding a knife! Look just to the right of my friend and you'll see a person which appears to have no legs or is coming out of a grave!"

       Please note that our own research of the photo yielded no hard photographic evidence to dispute the author's statement. This excerpt is the same found in most accounts of the event. It is generally accepted as genuine, but we have to acknowledge that yes, someone could have wandered into the picture. A re-creation of the shot two weeks later revealed that a person's legs can indeed be seen through the brush so we will take Mr. Clanton at his word.

 

       On November 9, 1995, the Wem Town Hall in Shropshire, England caught fire and burned to the ground. A man named Tony O'Rahilly was an on-looker who snapped some photos of the blaze in progress. Upon development, this photo of what appears to be a young girl inside the burning building appeared. The photo was thoroughly examined by the Royal Photographic Society who found no trickery involved. Legend has it that in 1677 a young girl accidentally set fire to much of the town with an errant candle on an old thatched roof. Her ghost has been said to haunt the town for years. Regardless, no rational explanation for this picture has ever been put forth.

       A real estate agent was snapping some publicity pictures of another person inside the Joshua Ward house in Salem, Ma. when this picture appeared when the film was developed. The exact date of the picture is unknown. The Ward House was built on the foundation of former sheriff George Corwin's home. Corwin was responsible for the death of many alleged witches during Salem's dark days. It is said a curse was put upon him and all subsequent sheriffs by Giles Corey, who was crushed to death by placing rocks atop his body in an effort to force him to confess to dabbling in the black arts (and to a greater degree allow Corwin to lawfully seize his property).             Other activity said to surround the house includes candles that fly out of their holders and melt, alarms that go on by themselves and the sighting of an elderly spirit by the fireplace. Could the subject of this photograph be one of the poor souls who was condemned to death by Sheriff Corwin?

  The old woman in the photo was in her 90s when her daughter took this picture. Her father, the woman's husband had already been dead for many years. The daughter reported that her mother was in the early stages of dementia (or Alzheimer's) and had been heard talking at times to her dead husband. When the film was developed, their daughter was astonished to find a man who clearly was her deceased father standing behind his wife. Some pictures of her father are seen above for comparison.

       A daytime investigation conducted on August 10, 1991 at Bachelor's Grove Cemetery in   Chicago yielded this startling photograph by Judith . The picture was snapped using infra-red film and clearly shows what appears to be a young woman, semi-transparent and wearing period clothing sitting atop a bench in the cemetery. The number of hauntings reported at Bachelor's Grove number literally in the hundreds and run the gamut of paranormal variety. It is thought the woman in the photo may be buried next to her infant son and is also said to wander the grounds with the baby in her arms. Skeptics have steadfastly refuted the authenticity of the photo, but their explanations have fallen short in light of professional photographic analysis.

      This photo of Sir Victor Goddard's World War I squadron who served on the HMS Daedalus was taken in 1919. In the back row, fourth from the left stands an airman posing for the picture like the others, but with a very distinct difference - there appears to be a man standing over his left shoulder also looking toward the camera. It is said to be an aircraft mechanic named Freddy Jackson, who had died two days earlier when he was killed by an airplane propeller. His funeral took place on the same day this picture was taken. All squadron members instantly and definitively identified him. Apparently he wanted to be included in the group shot with the others.

        In 1959, Mrs. Mabel Chinnery and her husband were visiting the grave of her mother. She had decided to bring along her camera to take some photographs of the gravesite. After getting what she wanted, she decided to take a picture of Mr. Chinnery who, good son-in-law that he was,  had opted to wait in the car. When they got the pictures back from the chemist (British for drug store developers), the couple was shocked to see a familiar figure wearing glasses seated in the back seat of the car.  Mrs. Chinnery immediately recognized that person as her mother, apparently wanting to take a ride with the couple as she did often in life. A photo expert examined the photo and negative for a British newspaper and declared the photo to be authentic. "I stake my reputation on the fact that the picture is genuine," he went on record as saying. (You may insert your own back-seat driver joke here.)

       Lord Combermere, a descendant of Sir George Cotten, became the Governor of Barbados in 1817. Ironically, he was involved in an infamous paranormal event during his occupancy of that position, the "Moving Coffins of Barbados". Caskets inside the sealed burial vault of a family named Chase were said to have shifted their positions without any apparent human intrusion. The caskets would be set back to their original positions and each time a new member of the Chase family was introduced to the crypt, the caskets once again would be found in disarray. As Governor, Lord Combermere ordered an investigation into this phenomena.

       The photograph above was taken in 1891 in the Combermere Abbey Library in Cheshire, U.K. by Sybell Corbett while in the company of her sister. In the chair on the left, a faint, semi-transparent figure of a man can be seen. 

        In and of itself, a characteristically compelling  spirit photo. However, at the exact time this photo was being taken, Lord Combermere, along with family and staff were attending a funeral 4 miles away - his own. Upon scrutiny by family members, it was revealed that this is the ghostly image of Lord Combermere himself, killed days before in an auto accident.

        Miss Corbett's photographic journal revealed the photograph's exposure time took about an hour and it was reasoned that some member of the staff may have wandered through the room and sat in the chair, but given the testimony of the household maintaining that all servants and family members were attending the funeral, Mrs. Corbett and her sister were very much alone.

        This famous photograph taken in September of 1936 by Mr. Indre Shira remains to this day probably the most compelling example of ghost photography ever taken. Mr Shira was commissioned to do a series of photographs by Lady Townsend of Raynham Hall for submission to "Country Life" magazine.  Raynham Hall is located in Norfolk, England.

        While Mr. Shira and an assistant, Captain Provand were setting up for a shot of the grand staircase, he saw a vaporous form being to take the shape of a woman in a veil. As the figure started to descend the stairs, Mr. Shira hurriedly gathered himself and took a quick photograph of what they were seeing.  Captain Provand, seeing nothing both then and afterward, was puzzled by his partner's reactions.  Needless to say, his opinion changed after the film was developed with this stunning photograph as a result.

        The Brown Lady is thought to be Dorothy Walpole, second wife of Charles Townsend who is said to have died of smallpox (although some speculate she was killed by her jealous husband after an affair). The photograph was published in Country Life on 26 December 1936, and also in the December edition of Life magazine in the USA.