I might just have to jump to the other side of the fence on this one.
QUOTE
On the left hand side as the viewer sees the picture, (i.e. on the Brown Lady's right hand side) hangs a framed picture on the wall. Immediately beneath, seemingly hovering in the air, is a duplicate image of this picture.
I don't see this at all. We've had discussions before about the inconsistincies in the staircase and members have even clearly marked the photo with what they believe to be the solutions to our questions mostly starting
here (actually with Anvil's quote above my post) and continuing to the next page of the thread. It's always bothered me that I've never seen photos of the staircase without the ghost, but without a better explanation or evidence to the contrary, the solutions brought to light in the linked thread seemed very logical. In short, (the theory goes) there is a platform in the center of the staircase that when viewed at this angle is difficult to see that likely extends out a couple of feet. Now if you
closely view the area that the Forteantimes article claims is a double exposure of the painting on the wall, their theory just becomes outlandish. All one has to do is study the horizontal angle of any point in the painting to see that the double exposure theory isn't plausible. For this to be a double exposure and the angles to be so drastically different, the camera would have to have been dropped about 5 feet. Not only that, but the area that they claim is the painting's double exposure doesn't look similar at all to the painting. Another questionable part of the theory to me is that if indeed there was a double exposure, shouldn't the entire photo be doubled, instead of just a few specific areas?

In my opinion, they did a good job finding the light arc, but should have taken the money and ran. That alone was enough to debunk the photo to hardcore skeptics. There is the chance that the figure was simply a light anomoly from the arc or light leaking to the negative from a faulty camera, I'm not a professional photographer or a scientist and I certainly have no clue as to the problems one might encounter with cameras of the day. When they got into claiming double exposure and the "second painting" they lost me completely. The double exposure doesn't even support how the figure would come into the photo in the first place and IMO they just got carried away.