Ghost Captured in Photo

Informant is a theatre student at USC who was raised in Wisconsin and comes from 65% German heritage. 

Ghost story.

This is something my mom actually experienced. There’s a little bit of backstory to it as well. She and her boyfriend went to this old lighthouse – they actually- they got lost, they were looking for something else and they found this old lighthouse. And they were just taking a whole bunch of pictures. She snapped a couple pictures, looked back at them, and was like “holy shit! I think I just caught a picture of a ghost!” and her boyfriend was like “what? No. try it again.” So she took another picture. “There’s absolutely nothing in front of-“ and you can find these pictures on her Facebook.  I can get you the link or something so you can see them. It looks like an old man. It seriously does. And it’s kinda hard to explain. Because like – it was colder outside, but she had the windows up in the car. It wasn’t a flash on the window; you would know what that was. And we don’t think it was her hair, because hair is pretty easily recognized even if it’s like “ghostly footage” or whatever – it still is pretty easy to see if it’s hair. It’s really strange. My mom does not have the skills to photoshop anything so pretty sure it’s real.  They came back the next day, asked around “is there any history with this lighthouse?” they weren’t actually supposed to be up there, so that’s a thing.  And they were like “well, I mean the owner’s wife died there – I don’t remember if she died gruesomely or not, but he – we assume it was him, the owner, that they had caught.  Or like the original owner- that they had caught on film because it was definitely – I thought it was a guy, my mom thought it was a guy.  Some other people disagreed, but I thought he had a mustache.  There were at least one, maybe two deaths there.  So we think it was probably a ghost.  And very interesting.  They asked around and they were like “yeah, she was killed there, she died there,” near the barn, or the silo or something, I don’t know.

When did you first see the pictures? 

She posted it, probably 2012.  A couple years ago.

Where were they?

I think it was at a lighthouse in Northern Wisconsin.  Kinda close to Green Bay.  You know there’s that mitten that’s kinda like up here – peninsula there.

Were you there?

No, I wasn’t.  But my mom is not one to lie, so I believe her.

How soon after the trip did you see the picture?  Did it get posted right away?

Yeah, like the day after.

My cousin kept trying to debunk it, and my mom kept throwing up roadblocks, so there really isn’t an explanation we can think about.

Is your mother a superstitious person?

Sort of, not majorly.  She’s kinda like me, where she’s not the most superstitious, but sometimes there’ll just be those moments where you like “holy crap” and you freak out.  She’s religious, so if you count that as a superstition – with some people, my sister, do – then I then I guess.

[Informant discovers the photo and shares it]

It’s like hair is the only thing it can possibly be,  but there such a clear face in there.  It’s not in any other picture and she snapped the first two in one go. So if her hair fell over the lens it would have had to do it like super quick.  Once you get down into this area it’s very much so a face.  I don’t know what to believe.

Got any other pictures?

Not of him.  That’s the only one where it appeared.  This is where they were – the Sherwood Point lighthouse.  It’s actually a coast guard owned building now, so I think they weren’t supposed to be up there.

Pretty neat, right? My family’s one and only ghost story.

Did that picture in any way affect your level of belief in ghosts? 

I think I’ve always really believed in them. Not so much in the “Ooh, something’s haunting me” kind of way, But I think that there’s definitely a level of anger that someone can hold towards something that’ll keep around.  I don’t know, I’m a little superstitious. When I was a kid, my sister used to tell me “When you go under bridges, you have to hold your hands up, and when you go over bridges, you have to lift your legs up. When you go past a graveyard, you have to hold your breath” – you know, things like that. So I used to do that as a kid. Now I don’t anymore but there’s a little part of me that’s like whenever I go under a bridge that’s what I think. Whenever I go by a graveyard I involuntarily take a deeper breath, and I’m like “I didn’t need to do that,” but I still do it.

Actually, you know what? I am totally superstitious. I walked past a crow the other day, it was right in front of me, it seemed super chill for a crow. It just kinda looked at me and was like “’Sup,” and kept going.  I freaked out, ‘cause I thought that was super meaningful. And I went and did a whole bunch of research on crow symbolism.

 

Informant did not have a direct memorate but rather gave a second-hand account (given that they weren’t there, and it was their mother’s story). The story still had an effect on them and they were quite sure the photo contained a ghost.