The Arizona Society of Paranormal Research has received a letter from a certain Fred Leuther. The author of the letter, an electrical engineer by training, once served in the Tennessee Department of Corrections. In his message, Mr. Leuther reported on an unusual phenomenon that he witnessed in 1980.
Tennessee law allows the death penalty. Usually, the condemned take their last breath in the electric chair. More than twenty years ago, Fred was involved in the maintenance of execution equipment in a Nashville prison.
In 1980, the prison administration intended to replace an old wooden chair that had served more than forty years, on which dozens of brutal murderers and rapists were found dead. The new electric chair, made of plastic, had a modern design and improved technical characteristics that made it possible to achieve the desired result faster, to save the condemned villains from unnecessary torment.
As you know, the electric chair, an American know-how, was invented in 1889 by Edwin Davis, a prison electrician. For the first time, the invention was used for its intended purpose on August 6, 1890 at the Aubern State Prison in New York. This execution is still considered the most humane. However, there are cases when a convict caught fire or died in agony due to insufficient voltage in the network or other technical omissions.
Engineer Leuther was called in to replace the old chair with a new one. According to the tradition existing in the state, a piece of wood from the old one must be installed in the new chair. This rule dates back to the 19th century, when criminals were hanged. The first electric chair was fitted with a piece of wood from the gallows. It was believed that this is a kind of relay baton, in some mystical way protecting the jury from mistakes.
According to the rules, before dismantling the chair, it should have been photographed. To the surprise of the prison staff and officials who were present at the dismantling, the photographs clearly showed the blurred outline of a human figure sitting in a chair.
By the time the photographs were developed, the old wooden chair had already been removed from the pedestal, but, fortunately, not destroyed. The head of the prison gave the order to photograph him again. This time, the staff prison photographer, who usually captures the criminals who arrived to serve their sentences, used a digital camera that transmits the image to a computer monitor.
Promotional video:
The result was repeated. No more suggestions that the outline in the first shot was a shooting or development defect. Criminologists were invited. The specialists took another photo of the chair. The analysis of the images obtained made it possible to determine that all the images have the contours of five figures - the contours of the bodies of people of different build and height. Unfortunately, the features of their faces were not captured.
The first version was as follows: in the photo, in some incomprehensible way, the executed criminals were captured. The prison administration decided to burn the old chair and not disclose the strange frightening fact. A piece of wood from the old chair was inserted into the new plastic chair as expected.
Leuther has kept one of the photographs for himself. Not having the right to take documents out of the building, Fred deliberately committed an official violation. Twenty-three years later and in retirement, he decided to share information with paranormal researchers. Leuther, like his colleagues, gave his word at one time not to divulge the secret, but did not sign any obligations.
Ralph Stone, an active member of the Arizona Paranormal Society, traveled to Nashville to speak with Leuther. He could not remember anything new, except for the facts stated in the letter. When Stone asked to name other people who had dealt with the strange phenomenon, the pensioner agreed, but asked not to refer to him. Thus, Stone found two more former employees of the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
One of these people flatly refused to admit the fact that he saw unusual pictures with the contours of the bodies. “The one who came up with this nonsense has read all sorts of nonsense about the souls of the dead and all that,” the former warden answered the question about the photographs. Another person, who wished to remain anonymous, acknowledged the fact that he saw pictures of an old wooden electric chair with outlines that resembled a human body: "Yes, I held these pictures in my hands, and, I swear to you, they emanated a grave cold, like from a crypt." …
Fred Leuther agreed to lend his photograph to the Arizona paranormalists. It was very important to establish whether it was a fake. Joseph Eastman, who studied photography, determined that it was most likely taken in the eighties. This can be judged by photographic paper. The light outline was not applied to the photograph, but was already present on the negative. That is, the picture is genuine. True, it cannot be argued whether the photograph actually captures the electric chair on which people were executed. It remains to take Leuther at his word. Unfortunately, the officials refused to talk about this topic.
Well, Ralph Stone and his colleagues have a perfectly reasonable explanation for the unusual phenomenon.
The fact is that the biofield that surrounds every living person throws out clots of energy at the time of death. It is these clots that are captured in the photographs. When a person dies from an illness or unexpectedly during an accident, these clots are not very intense. When a person knows that he is about to die, as happens during the execution, the release of energy reaches a colossal force. We can say that the photo captures embodied human horror and pain. For some unknown reason, these clots of energy invisible to the eye did not dissipate over time, so after many years the camera was able to capture them.
A similar mechanism works when people unexpectedly feel the moment of death of someone close to them, being even at a considerable distance from them. The energy thrown out at this moment by the dying reaches the loved one, as they are, as it were, tuned in to each other's wave.
Author: M. Bukk
Source: “Interesting newspaper. Incredible №24 2012