Can you see the spirits of dead people? A long-standing statement insists that an ethereal spirit or ghost, as well as entities similar to them, can appear in our world, though always under some exceptional conditions.
Often, ghosts or spirits of the deceased move in our world while maintaining invisibility. But on rare occasions, the inhabitants of the other world violate their incognito, and frighten the spectators who happened nearby.
Of course, one can only guess by what methods and possibilities such creatures can acquire a visible form and materiality in our world. On the other hand, for many of us, things that the eye cannot see in the usual way may become visible using another method. First of all, this will entail the use of modern technology, which enhances our natural ability to perceive worlds outside of reality.
It has long been known that during the photographic process, the presence of creatures invisible in the environment can be captured and later revealed on film. Such an instance of a ghost being captured by a film camera is said to have taken place on a large estate in Norfolk, UK, when a ghost, now known as the Brown Lady of Raynham, descended from a staircase into the hall.
The image of a ghost in the photograph
Many researchers of the paranormal argue that the photo shows a ghost descending the stairs, which is the best evidence of the existence of both ghosts themselves and spirits in general. However, despite the appearance of a frightening image in the image, assurances of the reliability of the photograph, how honest were the circumstances under which the photographer managed to snatch the image of the ghost of the Brown Lady?
Lady Brown's story began with a photographer, Captain Hubert C. Provand, who was commissioned for several photographs from Life Magazine in 1936. Hubert's assignment was as simple as photographing a large house for a magazine article. Amazingly, during the visit of the captain and his assistant, Endr Shire (apparently, this is a pseudonym) to the mansion, a camera aimed at the stairs snatched a frightening phenomenon - a ghost approaching the men!
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Seeing how something unreal, living in the other world, descends the stairs and gradually takes the form of a woman, Shira cried out, … no, the man was not frightened and did not offer to run away, he advised the London photographer to move, and rather to photograph the ghost, which by this time finally took the form of a female figure in a brown dress.
The famous researcher of ghosts and mystical formations, Harry Price, was convinced that the story told by the men really happened as they imagine it. They do not lie and do not invent, assures a specialist in paranormal phenomena, relying on conversations conducted with eyewitnesses and the authors of the picture. In addition, numerous examinations have shown the authenticity of the photograph.
And yet, despite the hundreds of exams arranged for the photograph, there are a number of things that can be seen in the photo, which, according to experts, are present here in order to indicate that, despite the not "fake" of the photograph, it most likely displays an artificially created image of a ghost. Here's what they say:
In 2006, Alan Murdie wrote for the Fortean Times about the strange “anomalies” that can be seen in the famous close-up shot: The anomalies in the painting become apparent when looking at the light in the original, uncropped photograph of Lady Brown. The anomalies do not lie in the center of the image on the ghost - where the eye naturally concentrates - but on what is happening in the foreground and background. On the left side, from the viewer (that is, on the right hand of the Brown Lady), a framed picture hangs on the wall. Directly under the painting that seems to be hanging in the air, a duplicate image of this painting appears.
Likewise, when we look at the railing, they bifurcate, it seems that the camera was shaken and the staircase was photographed twice. Several spots of light visible in the image also suggest doubling of the image throughout.
In other words, the original 1936 photo of Provanda and the Shire seems to have a number of significant flaws that cast doubt on the likelihood that the "ghost" in the painting is indeed the spirit of the deceased Lady Dorothy Walpole, as many have believed over the years.
But what is even stranger in this photograph, experts of the paranormal note, is not only the obvious "anomalies", but also the fact that the photograph was specially cropped so conveniently that the anomalies disappeared, they could have done so, knowing the shortcomings of the original photograph. Does this mean that revealing flaws were removed in order to reveal to the world an inhabitant of the other world, to reveal the mystical side of our reality in the form of the ghost of Raynham Hall? Or were the flaws removed for the reason that "Lady Brown" was visible in the image, thereby drawing attention to the mansion, giving birth to the legend of a true "English haunted house"?
The absolute truth can never be known, especially in relation to the story of Lady Brown and her famous photograph. Those people who could clarify the situation reliably now no longer meet. However, when looking at the body of information regarding this case, we see that there are a number of elements that speak of a specially created ghost image.
At the same time, this does not take away from us a number of questions such as: Does life have the right to exist after death? Indeed, this may be, and although the debut of the Brown Lady was not "proof" of life after death, we have no facts that destroy the version of the existence of the other world.
Some critics have argued that Shira faked the image by applying grease or other substance to the lens in the form of a drawing, or perhaps he himself ran down the stairs during the exposure. Others argue that the image is derived from the randomness of double exposure. Including the version is not excluded that the ghostly vision was born in some cunning way by the light that fell on the camera of the camera.
Other critics point out that the image of the lady is very similar to the Virgin Mary, whose sculptures are found in almost every Catholic church. The researchers saw in the ghost a strong resemblance to the Madonna - the tilt of the head, the hands folded in prayer, the square or rectangular stand on which she stands are also clearly visible. This suggests that the photograph is a simple superimposition of a Madonna statue on an empty staircase, and was later passed off as a ghost, thus revealing the rich history of Rainham Hall.
Oh yeah, the ghost story of Lady Brown of Rainham Hall
A long history tells that the "Brown Lady of Rainham Hall" is in fact the spirit of Lady Dorothy Walpole, who went to the afterlife in torment (lived 1686-1726). Dorothy was the second wife of the English Lord Carl Townsend, who made a reputation for himself as a man with an extremely violent disposition.
According to the legend, one day Townsend finds out that his wife cheated on him with the Marquis Thomas Wharton, to which an angry Briton locks her in one of the rooms of the family mansion. According to Mary Montague Wortley, Dorothy never saw children again, spending the rest of her life in captivity until 1726, when the poor woman died of smallpox.
For the first time, the ghost of a woman entered secular society at the end of 1835, when Lord Charles Townsend hosted many guests at the mansion to celebrate Christmas. Among the guests was Colonel Loftus, who later said that when they began to disperse together with Hawkins, they saw the ghost of Lady Brown.
The men's attention was immediately drawn to the woman's very old-fashioned brown dress. On the evening of the next day, Loftus claimed to have seen the Brown Lady again, surprising him with the empty eye sockets on her radiant face. By the way, if Loftus himself was actually not at all afraid of the ghost, then his stories terribly frightened the servants, some of them left Rainham Hall forever, fleeing from possible persecution of the ghost.
Captain Frederick Marriet, Ghost Hunter
It would seem that they were gossip and forgot, which does not happen on Christmas, but it was not so, the ghost of a lady in a brown dress comes again the next year. According to knowledgeable people, in 1836 Captain Frederick Marriet, the author of several nautical novels and a friend of the famous writer Charles Dickens, asks Lord Townsend for an overnight stay, asking him to shelter him to watch the ghost. Captain Marriet, being a brave man, wanted to personally debunk the myths about ghosts, and to prove his theory that mystical rumors were invented by smugglers, in order to scare away unwanted eyewitnesses and do his dark deeds in secret.
It is not known what the captain himself experienced, he never talked about it, but in 1917, the captain's daughter, Florence Marriet, told about her father's investigation in the paranormal area. For the three days that he was going to spend in the mansion, the captain was placed in a room with a portrait of Dorothy Walpole. They say Dorothy loved to be in this room during her lifetime, and Marriet settled here, holding a loaded revolver nearby.
In the first two days, a significant meeting did not happen, and Frederick was already beginning to be annoyed that the ghost would never come, especially since he would leave the mansion on the fourth day. However, to the delight of the daredevil (if I may say so), the meeting with the soul of Dorothy in the guise of a ghost took place on the third night. As soon as the man was about to go to bed, there was a knock on his room … no, while there were only the baronet's nephews. The young men invited the writer to come to their room and appreciate the merits of the new pistol just delivered from London.
Deciding that the hour is late and everyone in the castle has already gone to bed, Marriet goes to the master's nephews room in a shirt and trousers. True, he does not forget to take a revolver with him, explaining to the young people with a smile: In case you run into the Brown Lady. Assessing the merits of the weapon, the young people, under the same joking note, intending to escort Father Florence into the room, declare: In case you run into the Brown Lady. The three of them walked along the long corridor, not suspecting what they were going to meet on the way.
It was a long and dark corridor, where the servant turned out all the lights for the night. However, when the men reached the middle of the corridor, he was suddenly illuminated by the flickering light of a lighted lamp coming from the other end of the corridor. Probably one of the women is going to check the nursery,”explained young Townsend in a whisper. It is not clear what moved the men, but they decided not to frighten the woman, and to hide in the niche of the double doors of one of the rooms, while Marriet froze at the crack with a revolver in his hand.
The shimmer was getting closer and closer, - writes the memories of Father Florence, - until I finally recognized in this figure the colors and style that were told when remembering the ghost of a lady. It was a replica of the woman in the portrait, Dorothy Walpole aka the Brown Lady. He wanted to ask the woman what she needed here, in the end to explain his behavior, and already began to move forward by putting his finger on the trigger of the revolver.
Suddenly, a strange figure itself stopped at the door, lifted a lighted lamp and illuminated the features of its face, she grinned demonically! The captain could not stand this, he was sure it was a ghost, so he jumped out into the corridor in one long jump and immediately fired.
The roar and smoke of the shot surrounded the captain, but he hit, only the figure instantly disappeared, as if it were not there at all, and in fact it was watched by three sober men. The bullet punctured the door of a room on the other side of the hallway and lodged in the paneling of the interior doors. In the future, my father never again sought a meeting with the Brown Lady from Rainham Hall, said Florence Marriet in 1917.