The following photo was sent to me in November of 2008. The story was that the photo was taken by the little boy in the picture, who was snapping photos of himself when the face of the rather stern looking apparition of a woman appeared behind him in one shot. His mother wrote to tell me her son, who is four years old, claims that he has spoken with the woman as well as with the spirits of two other teens named Brian and Wolfie (one of whom apparently hung himself with a rope).
Uncertain what to make of the photo, I sent it off to Bryan Bonner at the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society for analysis. His belief was that the face may be from a television on in the background. He sent along the following info:
Case closed? Ah, if it were only that easy. Now I respect Bryan's opinion immensely, but I was having trouble with the explanation. First, while he said the photo has been making the rounds on the internet (always a red flag, especially when the client claims to not have sent it to anyone else), he couldn't tell me where he had seen it or when, and I haven't been able to come across it anywhere either. But even more, I didn't see the lady in the commercial as being the same one in the photo, so, with the help of Photoshop, I juxtaposed the lady in the commercial with the little boy so I could do a side-by-side comparison. Here's what I got (original photo on left, Photoshopped photo on right):
Okay, pretty close, I admit.
I do see a strong resemblance between the lady in the commercial and the "ghost",
but I don't see an exact match. Notice the facial expression is different
(of course, Bryan may simply have sent me the wrong frame from the commercial)
and the woman's hairline appears to be much lower in the original photo than
it does in the commercial. Also, the lighting on the faces are different, and
the woman in the original photo doesn't appear to be wearing lipstick while
the lady in the commercial is all dolled up. Bryan explains this away as photo
distortion, which I suppose is a possibility, but it also seems to be a stretch
to me. As such, I remain undecided about this photo and leave it to you to decide
for yourself whether this is a genuine spirit photo or an inadvertent photo
anomaly. Cool picture either way.