The Great Ghost Photo Caper
Tim and I have recently become obsessed with this horrible docu-drama on the Discovery channel called A Haunting. However, that is a post-in-progress; it was merely the inspiration for this post.
After subjecting ourselves to several episodes of A Haunting just a couple nights ago, we were browsing articles on several of the “mediums” and “psychics” in the show, and a trail of links led us to the Coast to Coast AM website. If you’re not familiar with Coast to Coast AM, it’s a late night talk show (with a huge audience) that deals with all things paranormal, supernatural, and otherwise “fringey”. I have nothing against Coast to Coast AM, was a long-time listener myself, and the show is often very entertaining. Anyway, they have an enormous image gallery of user-submitted photos on the site. Most of the “ghost” photos are classic bad-photographer-captures-a-ghost-on-film type anomalies: lens flares, cigarette smoke in the foreground, double exposures, over exposures, film/negative defects, etc etc. Tim and I got the great idea of Photoshopping up a ghost photo to submit.
Here’s how we did the forgery:
I set the camera up on a tripod with a timer, and let it expose for about half a second so that the lamp in the shot would be good and overexposed, perfect to hide a ghost face in. We wanted both of us in the picture, but unaware of the “apparition” that was going to show up when the film was “developed”, so we busied ourselves with a laptop and an iPod. Originally, for comedic value, we tried to make a “ghost” out of a face from a Michelangelo painting, but couldn’t get it to look believable. We finally performed a Google image search for “white face”, and found a sufficiently creepy image on the first page of results. We opened both pictures in Photoshop, scaled it down, masked it off, performed a couple blurs on it, and reduced the layer’s opacity a tad. It took maybe five minutes for us to come up with something that looked decent.
We then made up the following story:
My girlfriend was messing around with my new camera shortly after Christmas (December 28, 2006) and took this photo of my cousin and I playing with new Christmas gifts. When we had the photos developed (December 29), she noticed something resembling a face near the lamp, above my shoulder.
We intentionally made no outrageous or supernatural claims, hoping to just imply that we thought it was an interesting photo. We didn’t really think it would make it to the galleries, because they must receive hundreds (thousands?) of submissions like this a week. We were surprised then when my Gmail notifier popped up last night while Tim was checking Gamefaqs for me to get through an annoying puzzle in Zelda. It was from the web administrator at Coast to Coast AM’s site, thanking us for the submission and telling us that it was “on the site” (without a link). We immediately hit the image galleries trying to find our forgery among the hundreds of photos of “orbs” and “ectoplasm” and other such claims. We couldn’t find it. Tim offered to continue looking while I went back to Zelda, and about five minutes later, he laughed.
“Bill, you’re not going to believe this”, and he flipped my laptop around to show me. Our photo was showcased on the front page! Zelda got paused while we giggled like schoolgirls for several minutes. I had also included my email address in the submission, and it wasn’t ten minutes later that we got our first mail from a listener.
Surely the photo won’t be on the front page like this for long, and it’s very likely that our forgery will be exposed, so here are screenshots (large files).
Surprisingly, our first mail was an attempt at a logical explanation for the photo, though the explanation didn’t really make sense. Every mail since then has come from believers, and I honestly feel a bit like a dick for duping them. To the Coast to Coast audiences’ credit, though, this picture was featured on the front page of the site (has been for nearly 24 hours now), and the show claims “millions of listeners”. Realistically, I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people hit this site on a pretty regular basis and I have received seven emails. Pretty sure most of them are claiming “bullshit”. I know the more I look at it, the more I think “What a terrible Photoshop job!” Here are the best emails I’ve received so far:
I noticed the picture that you sent to Coast to Coast AM’s website. It appears that there was some light leakage, due to the bright lamp, and the face is that of your girlfriend’s. By any chance, was she wearing sunglasses when she took the picture?
Hi Bill,
Your picture is very intriguing and I can only trust that it is an actuality. A logical assessment of it suggests that the music you were listening to at the time of the photo helped to create the face. An assumption was made that it was music you listened to. Perhaps a person very strongly attached to your entertainment or thoughts is having a manifestation.
WOW …WOW…WOW… that is just incredible…thanks for sharing…I’ve had a few really things that are pretty strange too…but… this is something else.
Hello,
I seams to me that we [generally speaking] are getting better at catching them on film [Who, what ever] our tech is catching more of the light spectrum and what ever is just past our field of view. They are around us that’s for sure, we just can’t detect/sense them with our own sight or feel them in other ways.
What are we missing, are they just beyond our demention, remember every thing vibrates at a certen frequency so if we could step up the cycles of our own eye sight would /could we see even more, just not touch it/them ?. thoughts to ponder.
Dude …
Nice shot! Do you recognize that person? I mean does it look like a dead relative? If not then it could be a spirit that’s hanging around your location.
Hi Bill,
That is some picture that your girlfriend caught. It looks like a male with sunglasses on and a receeding hair line and possibly a top of a mustache.
Did you know of anyone who looked like that? Did you have any other unusual happenings in your house?
Very interesting. Digital pictures tend to also pick up lots of ghost orbs as well. I’ve caught so many that I sometimes have to edit them out of pictures, using photoshop, as they sometimes freak people out.
At my kids Christmas program each year at their church school, there are always a ton of orbs on those pictures. Lots of old people have died there and I often wonder if they are coming back to see the kids sing each year. It is a very popular event - for both us living.. as well as those orbs -whatever they really are.
My name is [name removed]. I am the Administrator for the [name removed] Forum and an Independent Paranormal Investigator. I came across your photo on the Art Bell website and was wondering if you would like to comment on it or even visit our website and join as a member for free. [URL removed]
We are a research-based website. So, you will find that many of our members are either Independent Paranormal Investigators, or they may be affiliated with certain paranormal groups. Either way, we believe in sharing our findings with the general public FREE OF CHARGE.
We hope you will accept this invitation.Thank you for your time.
Sorry, guys. I have taken thousands of digital photos and never caught any ghosts. No hard feelings?
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:43 am
Oh my god. There’s a dead Marowak in your house. If you get the Syph Scope and beat it in a duel, it should leave you alone.
November 5th, 2007 at 8:21 am
this makes me laugh really hard
December 28th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
i just read this again…man that was so awesome of us. i love that we did this…man thats such a great read it was so much fun remembering how funny that all was.