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Ghosts & Hauntings

Young girl's selfie is photobombed by 'ghost'

By T.K. Randall
March 2, 2017 · Comment icon 80 comments
A 13-year-old girl has managed to capture a photograph of an anomalous figure on her mobile phone.
Young Haley and her brother Kolton had been on a fishing trip with their grandparents when the photograph, which she snapped while sitting in the back of their truck, was taken.

It wasn't until she started browsing through her pictures later on at home that she noticed an unidentified individual who is visible through the window in the background.
The person in the green top is her brother, but right next to him is another man wearing a dark outfit and baseball cap who none of the family members had seen there at the time.


Even more peculiar is the fact that the man seems to be at the wrong height - Kolton is bending down in the image yet the man, who is seemingly standing up, is not much taller than he is.

The bizarre photograph has since been shared several thousand times on Facebook.

Source: Walb.com | Comments (80)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #71 Posted by Krater 7 years ago
I work with Photoshop every single day. You are wrong. This is an obvious fake. End of discussion.
Comment icon #72 Posted by Chaldon 7 years ago
If you like it. Did not want to say that, but I am a professional graphics designer and a digital photographer for almost 20 years, and I am still not so sure whether it's fake or not. I know when it's an obvious fake, this one is clearly not an obvious one. Of course, I can make a fake like this, considering my knowledge about CMOS and JPEG artifacts, but some woman or some girl, whoever could make it? I don't know.
Comment icon #73 Posted by Chaldon 7 years ago
The easiest way to make a fake like this is to put the camera on a tripod (or fix it some other way), then make two shots - one clear and the other with the "ghost", then compose them both together in the editor. Do the shots as fast as possible one after another. This way the light and the perspective will be correct, as well as all the sensor and compression artifacts. The only problem is you have to have a real person at hand to be the "ghost". When compositing, be careful not to shift the area to be superimposed - otherwise the JPEG block edges around the area will give away that it's fake... [More]
Comment icon #74 Posted by Chaldon 7 years ago
Here is a good tool for image forensics: https://29a.ch/photo-forensics Or a simpler ELA analysis plugin for Gimp: https://github.com/sentenza/GIMP-ELA I could not find any signs of tampering in the picture. It looks perfect, still the embedded text reveals that even the full-size version was resaved in Photoshop 3.0 for some reason, which is somewhat suspicious. It could be simply for resizing, yet I don't see any signs of that, as the size is 1080x1440 which is a typical HD resolution (tuned 90 degrees). May be the levels were adjusted. I am not sure.
Comment icon #75 Posted by Chaldon 7 years ago
Here are the results of the ELA analysis: First comes the special set with the test area embedded in the top right corner of the image. I've made the test area by copying a rectangle area with the trees and superimposing it with 25% opacity and some feathering. I even matched the JPEG quantization grids. You cannot notice it with bare eyes (only by direct comparison with the original), yet it becomes clearly visible when analysed using the ELA method: And here is the clear original picture analysed in the same way: Remember that I don't want to prove ghosts exist. I am just telling the facts. ... [More]
Comment icon #76 Posted by I hide behind words 7 years ago
Is that a civil war era kepi cap?
Comment icon #77 Posted by South Alabam 7 years ago
"Jessica also said that Kolton explained that when Haley took the photo, he was fixing the tacklebox and nobody else was there, despite the fact it looks like there is a man right in front of him." There appears to be a shadow on the boys back of probably a grown ups head. And If no one else was there, why is she sitting in the truck, her 12 year old brother Kolton going to drive it home?
Comment icon #78 Posted by Calibeliever 7 years ago
It looks more like a visor to me because of the height in the front.
Comment icon #79 Posted by rashore 7 years ago
I think that's something due to how the media picked up the story- they left out the original part from the FB post about the kids were accompanied by their grandparents. I thought the same thing about the shadow on the back when I first read the story.
Comment icon #80 Posted by Chaldon 7 years ago
Just a warning for those who would try the ELA analysis method on other suspicious photos: the method completely fails if the image was even a slightest bit resized, and becomes nearly useless if the image was resaved in worse quality. It's absolutely not a magic wonder tool to detect every kind of forgery, it's only usable on high-quality images. The best sign of that it really works is the mostly black image (like in this particular case), but to achieve that you have to know the original JPEG compression quality. You can find it manually, which is a bit tedious task, or estimate it automati... [More]


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