Okay....so before I go into detail on
this shot, let me just say that I'm not a believer in ghosts.
Granted, if you were to sit around a campfire with me I could wear your
ear off with tales of the supernatural from my experiences over the years
(the most eerie of which originated from my stint at the Village Eight -
see Crawlin' Joe).
But despite all my ghostly encounters, I still have a hard time genuinely
believing that spirits from beyond the grave interact with our world of
the living. I want to believe more than I actually do.
Needless to say, I have a lot of friends become frustrated when I respond
to the question: "Do you believe in ghosts?" with: "Not
really." Especially since I've allegedly photographed one.
Back story: In the fall of 2003, my
friends Will, Marat and I decided to head to Waverly Hills
Sanatorium. The sanatorium was a recovery hospital for those
suffering from tuberculosis (the irony of my visiting this place with my
TB positive past was noted more than once that night - see the
TB Snowsnail for more thrilling TB info). Posing as college
students for a local history course at U of L, the three of us went up to
the facility and tried to gain entrance. The moment we approached
the building, we were met with a roadblock and three security guards, the
product of years of abuse from teenage reprobates engaging in destructive
tomfoolery on the grounds.
The guards were very dismissive at
first, until we "explained" that as students for this course, we
wanted to photograph the building we had been researching for an
"in-class presentation". The guard stated that he would
have to contact the owners and that we needed to check back in about an
hour or so. So we left and killed a very strange hour at Wendy's,
the details of which can be learned at Twenty
Ketchup Shots Down (that makes three other Shitty Memories I've
referenced so far - the pieces of the puzzle are finally starting to come
together).
When we returned, the guard said that
he hadn't been able to get a hold of the owner, but for twenty bucks each,
he'd take us in the building. He claimed it was a standard
"tour fee" but the three of us just had a feeling we were
indirectly buying a night's worth of beer and pizza for the guards.
Nevertheless, Will and I forked up the funds. Marat lacked the two
sawbucks to gain entry, so he stayed outside in the guard's
tent.
While the price of twenty bucks might
have seemed a bit steep at first, we were permitted to scour the building
upstairs and down from approximately 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM, a decent four
hour block. The guard whom we'd paid acted as an impromptu tour
guide as well. He didn't want to unleash us inside unattended both
for legal reasons (should we become injured), and to ensure that we didn't
add to the damage already marring the disheveled sanatorium. During
that time, Will used my camcorder to tape almost constantly, filling up
three cassettes (which, to this day, I still have yet to sit down and
watch) and I shot almost 400 photos (mainly digital) as our tour guard
recanted numerous haunting tales of the buildings past.
Now I won't lie. There was
something very unnerving about being in that building. There were
times I would get the overwhelming sensation that there was someone
standing directly behind me. I would turn around only to see no one
there. I would also hear "movement". The only way I
know how to describe the audio sensation is the change in air pressure
your ears detect when you're sitting in a perfectly quiet room and someone
starts to sneak up on you. Their footfalls aren't producing sound,
but you're able to detect the distortion in airflow of a solid object
being present where there wasn't one before. In short, I frequently
heard large masses approaching me from various sides. These are
anomalies that everyone experiences from time to time. I just
experienced an unnaturally high amount within a short period. So
many that the hair on the back of my neck was raised about a third of the
time despite the fact that I never felt myself gripped with any legitimate
feelings of anxiety.
After our tour inside, we went about
outside. Marat had been shown "ghost photos" by the
security team while Will and I were touring, and was strangely more
spooked than we were. At his behest, I photographed a courtyard from
several angles because it had been a hotspot for unexplained activity in
the past. We left in the wee hours of the morning, feeling
disappointment that we hadn't seen any ghouls jump out and say
"Boo." I dropped Will and Marat off and continued on my drive
home. On the way, a strange inkling to check the photos I had taken
of the building from the courtyard surfaced from my subconscious. I
flipped my digital camera, and the first photo I saw on the memory stick I
injected was the one posted above. As I stared at it, a cold chill
shot through my body and I had to pull over to examine it closer.
There, clear as day (at least on my digital camera's screen), was a face
looking out from the left window.
The photo is hard to distinguish on a
computer screen (especially with the high contrast of a white background
surrounding it), but crank up the monitor's brightness, and you should
quickly see what I'm talking about. Just a light, translucent head
at the bottom corner of the window. If you still can't distinguish
it from the rest of the photo, I've placed some magnifications of the area
below.
Now, what's my take on this? The
truth is, I'm not quite sure. I have trouble dismissing it as an anomaly,
such as an odd reflection off of glass (since the panes were busted out on
the window) or fog (since the haze doesn't consistently appear throughout
the photo. Distinguishing a face n the picture might be as logical
as finding Satan's face in the eruption cloud over Mt. St. Helen's or the
Virgin Mary's face in the clouds (two extreme examples I know).
However, it is pretty distinct and I know I didn't tweak the picture in
any way. Regrettably, the enlargements I did above in Microsoft
Image Composer were greatly pixilated (an unfortunate side effect of the
cheap as free software). Should you see a hard copy of the photo
though, it's quite astounding.
So in the end, I still find myself
failing to accept the notion that ghosts do really exist. Perhaps
one day I will see one with my own two eyes and I'll be forever
convinced. I'll wonder how I was so naive for so long in refusing to
accept the existence of the living dead. Then again, I'll probably
just dismiss it as my own imagination and stay as stubborn as I am
now.
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