Lots of quiet questions arose when my best friend breathlessly showed me two innocent pictures he took of the stairway I built, (to show to his aging father), and they turned out to have a visage of a white ghost-dancer superimposed on the image. I was in shock, asked him for these copies, then thought long and hard.
It took ten minutes to discover that cell-phone apps are available which add ghosts to pix, but a search of Google images didn’t find ‘my’ ghost-ess. I also read up extensively on hoax-detection methods, enlarged the photos to discover that the main photo pixellates long before the ghost, and pretty much decided that he was simply playing a trick.
I called him up and said ‘Nice app, Danny’. He insisted that he had no idea what I meant. Further in the conversation he swore on any sacred book worth reading that the pix were absolutely un-retouched. I let it go at that.
And so I turn to the sleuths here at Xanga, as usual, for salvation.
Yes, the pictures were taken on the very calender date when a dear girl taken away. And yes, I fell while working on the ceiling right above those stairs, and almost died myself. Are
these factoids relevant?
I tend to believe that if ghosts and after-life wanderings were real, we’d all kinda know and accept it, as there would have been concrete indisputable evidence built up in 10,000 years of humans. Just like we don’t doubt that fruit flies exist.
All in all, I do want to believe in this girl. She’s got a beautiful style, great taste in apparel, and seems to have had a message for me. Am I too skeptically dense to accept it?
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jxsolberg 
Wow, that is really something. Beautiful. I am an analytical person but I would save these photographs forever in my secret “things I might believe in” box.
@ordinarybutloud – A big broad smile and even goosebumps to read your lovely thoughts. I’m proud to say I agree whole-heartedly♥
I don’t believe it’s a real ghost girl. It might be a manatee, though, or a three-toed sloth.
Wow! That’s really cool looking! Not believable, but beautiful all the same. Still, I wonder how it was done?
@we_deny_everything – ha, worth investigating- your alternates. The 3-toes do usually hang upside-down though, so there’s that. seriously, how to I proceed to prove conclusively what’s up here?
@Ampbreia – Assuming he manipulated it (despite believable denials) guess we look through the apps for this girl. I don’t have a power-phone, so I count on the kindness of strangers, so to speak.I agree, something sweet about her.
In any event, that seems to be a lovely gift to you. If it is a spirit, it seems to be emanating joy and vitality. I’d consider the house blessed by this visitor.
@amateurprose I swear I saw a comment here from you, but it disappeared before I could reply. Strange, ghostly even.You called it an obvious fake. Likely correct, but how do we tell, or prove that?
@JadeMaster2 – Sweet to hear. I have a recurring willing suspension of disbelief in all things relating to tragic loss of a lover. In the end, we live to be happy however, in spite. Thanks for your comment.
I like to think she is am angel, maybe she helped you when you fell.
@jsolberg – oh, no, surely she is not a fake. She might be a trick of light and shadow, a reflection of leaf on vine combined with a weird trick of sunlight…that I would believe. And to believe such a thing is to allow yourself to believe she is also supernatural, at the same time.
Nice stairs.
Yesterday, upon the stair,I met a man who wasn’t thereHe wasn’t there again todayI wish, I wish he’d go away…When I came home last night at threeThe man was waiting there for meBut when I looked around the hallI couldn’t see him there at all!Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)Last night I saw upon the stairA little man who wasn’t thereHe wasn’t there again todayOh, how I wish he’d go awayby Hughes Mearns, (1899, Antigonish, Nova Scotia)
@blonde_apocalypse – Thanks. I still have a bruise on my…um… backside from that fall. Maybe it’ll heal now.
@elgan – The Man I saw who wasn’t therehas changed; is it the dress, the hair?I pray she’ll never go awaySince real or not, she made my day
@seedsower – Beth, it’s probably just about right that a post I’d intended to use to try and figure out technically whether she’s real ends up convincing me that it doesn’t matter all that much. Thanks for the angel, dear:)
If she is real, she’s quite beautiful.
The pose is too stylized, and the absence of differences between the first and second image hammer the coffin nail home on the investigation. Surely she would turn and look at the photographer. Instead she’s supposedly receding to her right while facing to the photographer’s left. The trailing wisps are identical in both photos. The superimposed image has simply been moved to the left and reduced. The second clincher: background is quite pixellated, ghost has smoother edges. Additional question: why are the “two photos of the staircase” identical? He would have to be using a tripod, which is unlikely for a simple shot of a staircase.I’m not a skeptic. I’m a devout unbeliever.
@ordinarybutloud – Forever is a long time. There ought to be some hope for parole or even exoneration.
@Roadkill_Spatula – Thanks for the tech assessment. I came to the same conclusion, on the same bits of evidence. The real question then becomes, of course, how do you tell a friend he’s a..um..liar? Debate last night over dinner was divided between ‘He doesn’t know he is fabricating’ and other theories. But like Galileo mentioned on his exit from the courthouse ‘I still say she moves me.’
@jsolberg – I have no idea what to say to your friend. What a bizarre situation.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but if I saw one, I’d certainly want to take a picture of it. I’m just sayin’.
This all reminded me of Beatles songs “Maybe I’m amazed or Something in the way she moves” – I take all the messages I can get,
@twoberry – The problem, for credibility, may be that she is just too perfect, in her tattered flyaway way.
@mlbncsga – Wow, two spot-on perfect songs for this. Thanks, and stop by anytime with neat perspective.
I am more intrigued by the face on the left side along the door or wall or something. It has a head of black(?) hair, the right eye, I can see a stub of a nose, lips and chin. What is THAT? Oh and the so called ghost? I think it is a fake.
Oh, sorry, that’s me. I was on an out-of-body expedition and lost my way a few times. I didn’t know I showed up that well on digital images.
@ZSA_MD – ‘That’ is some kind of art object the guy made. You are right; it looks very weird in the photo. I need to visit and get a better look at it from that angle. (And the fellow still claims the photo is innocent.)
@whyzat – That would be sweet to see someone projecting into my neighborhood. I’ve decided I like this ghostess, whoever she is or isn’t
Solberg, you tower above the competing beasts like a giraffe in a circus parade, except for the 40 foot whooping crane.I’m sorry to say I’m not familiar with your ghostess. Or the app that may have summoned her. Being somewhat unsavvy with technology, I still photoshop my pictures with Photoshop.Also… all the talk of songs made me think of http://youtu.be/TxcDTUMLQJI 😀@Roadkill_Spatula – I don’t know man. I mean, if I ever become a ghost, I’d intentionally do strange things, or make the haunting look fake, just to mess with people. An unseen presence that knocks over a plate, people are willing to believe. Who would believe a ghost sighting that looks photoshopped? Or a terrifying specter that materializes, wailing, out of thin air, and spends the next ten minutes singing the chorus from the 60’s Batman show?
The image looks to be exactly the same in both shots, which look as though they were taken at two different points of view. The only thing different might be the cloth looking thing hanging from “her” left “shoulder” which vanishes with or is camouflaged by the stair rail support. I don’t know much about light, which is what it seems to be, yet, in order to cast an image, would it not be a shadow? I’m stumped as well, and shame on your friend for sticking to the head game for far too long (if it is indeed a head game). 🙂