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In the winter of 1995, Tony O’Rahilly, a sewage farm worker in the Shropshire town of Wem,
England, looked on as his town hall caught fire and burned to the ground.
Taking hold of his camera, he documented the unfolding catastrophe from across the street.
One of the photos shows the disturbing sight of a young girl, backlit against the fiery
inferno, looking down from the burning building towards the photographer.
Could local legend help identify the girl? In 1677, a young villager by the name of Jane Churm
accidentally set fire to a thatched roof with a candle.
The fire rapidly spread, destroying many of the town’s timber-framed houses, and claiming
the lives of countless innocent souls. Could this be the ghost of Jane Churm?
1963 in the market town of Ripon, England. Church minister K.F. Lord takes a series of
photographs inside Newby church. One of the pictures reveals a translucent
apparition, its face shrouded by a white cloth, looking towards at the camera.
Some have suggested that the robed figure resembles a 16th century monk, its white shroud
covering leprosy or some other facial disfigurement. Modern analysis has revealed that the figure
is not the result of a double-exposure, and in relation to the church altar, measures
abnormal 9 feet in height.
June, 1966. Visiting England from their home in Canada,
clergyman R.W. Hardy and his wife pay a visit to London’s seventeenth century Queen’s
House. Impressed with the building’s Tulip
Staircase, Mr Hardy sets up his camera to take a photograph.
Little did he know that his Tulip Staircase image was to become one of Britain’s most
celebrated paranormal photographs. It reveals a shrouded figure ascending the
staircase in apparent pursuit of a second, and possibly even a third figure.
Hardy insisted that he and his wife were the only people present when the photograph was taken.
In the summer of 1964, Jim Templeton takes a photograph of his five-year-old daughter
while on a daytrip to Burgh Marsh on the Solway Firth in Northern England.
It was only when the photograph was developed that he was shocked to notice the bizarre
sight of what looks to be a spaceman stood directly behind his daughter.
Templeton later insists that the only people present were himself, his daughter, and his wife.
When experts at Kodak confirmed the photograph
to be genuine, the mysterious image of the Solway Firth spaceman went on to create headlines
around the world.
A ghostly encounter was the last thing Mrs Sayer had in mind when in 1987 she visited
the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Somerset, England. Posing for a photograph in the passenger seat
of a retired Falklands War helicopter, Mrs Sayer found the cockpit unaccountably cold,
despite it being a hot summer day outside. Although Mrs Sayer insists she was alone in
the helicopter at the time, the developed photograph gave a possible explanation for
the peculiar chill, when it revealed a ghostly figure in a white shirt sat in the pilot’s
seat beside her. Could this be the ghost of a Falklands War helicopter pilot?
Eastwood City, Manila. Two girls on a night out ask a passing stranger
to take their photograph. What they see when their mobile phone is handed
back, shocks them. On the right of the frame stands a spectral
figure, apparently clutching the arm of one of the unsuspecting girls in a supernatural grip
London’s Hampton Court Palace has its fair share of ghostly encounters, and in October
2003, one supernatural resident is revealed on the closed-circuit security cameras.
Over three consecutive days the attention of the security staff is drawn to one particular
fire door at the palace. On day one, the palace cameras capture the
doors being unaccountably flung wide open. On day two the incident is repeated, but on
this occasion a mysterious figure in period dress is captured on camera, closing the doors.
On the same day an alarmed palace visitor writes in the visitors’ book that she thinks
she has seen a ghost in the same area of the palace.
The fire doors open one final time on day three, but the apparition, seemingly content
with its time in the spotlight, this time avoids being captured on camera.
In the Teesside town of Billingham, England, seventeen year old Matthew Summers takes a
photograph of a group of friends on his mobile phone.
But on zooming into the image, Summers is surprised to find not seven faces looking
back at him, but eight. Looking out from between the legs of two of
the unsuspecting girls is the face of a ghostly child.
At the HMS Daedalus training facility in 1919, a Royal Air Force squadron pose for their
group photograph. Little do they realise that looking out from
the back row, fourth from the left, is the face of a recently deceased airman.
Members of the squadron later identify the ghostly figure as that of Freddie Jackson,
an air mechanic whose life was cut short in an airplane accident just two days prior to
this photograph being taken. The day was notable not only for marking Freddie
Jackson’s ghostly appearance in the squadron line-up, but perhaps not entirely co-incidentally,
for being the day that Freddy’s body was lowered into the ground at his own funeral.
Perhaps one of the most famous of all supernatural photographs is that of the Ghost of Raynham
Hall. 1936, and Captain Hubert Provand, together
with an assistant, are taking photographs of the hall on behalf of Country Life magazine.
Suddenly aware of a ghostly form descending the staircase towards them, the assistant
urges Provand to release the camera shutter, and the resulting picture becomes the most
iconic ghost images of all time. According to legend, the ghost is that of
Lady Dorothy Walpole, wife of the notoriously violent Charles Townsend.
On discovering that his wife had committed adultery, Townsend held her captive at the
hall until her death in 1726. The spectre of Raynham Hall takes its rightful
place at number one on our list of the top ten most mysterious ghost photographs.