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Ghostly boy in car could be guardian angel


Black Monk

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14 minutes ago, Kasparovitch said:

Melissa Kurt's facebook had the 2 pictures concerned, which I've saved fortunately.

How do you save FB photos, I thought you couldn't do that? I'd have no idea anyway. If you've saved them, can you post them? 

 

16 minutes ago, Kasparovitch said:

The first one is no hoax, of course, and this one has a little spot near Harper's right ear just above the seat that might be the same texture as the ghost's sleeve.

There's no sleeve, what's been identified as the 'ghost's' fingers are the helix and lobe of the girl's ear which are highlighted by the sun. 

19 minutes ago, Kasparovitch said:

Also, in this first picture there's a small white line near the seatbelt (inside part of the seat) that also shows up in the second picture (the ghost's). I don't know if this line has any connection with the ghost.

Can you highlight this line on either photo? It might be helpful.

Thanks 

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Oldrover, I've just uploaded one picture. I don't know how I could download FB pictures, but I did it. I'm not an expert in FB.

If you watch carefully around the ghost's finger, there's a sleeve the same color of the spot marked above the seat.

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12 minutes ago, Kasparovitch said:

Oldrover, I've just uploaded one picture. I don't know how I could download FB pictures, but I did it. I'm not an expert in FB.

If you watch carefully around the ghost's finger, there's a sleeve the same color of the spot marked above the seat.

Unless it's the picture without the 'ghost', it won't help, but thank you for your reply.

Again though, there is no finger, it's the girl's ear.

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7 minutes ago, oldrover said:

Unless it's the picture without the 'ghost', it won't help, but thank you for your reply.

Again though, there is no finger, it's the girl's ear.

Hopefully, I can upload the second picture now. There's something to the right of the girl's ear that is said to be a finger pointing upwards and looks so. This isn't present in the first picture, where the ear is also present. You can guess there's a sleeve around the finger.

Here you can see that the white spot in the girl's left lenses is nearer the car, so unless I'm judging wrongly, this picture was taken second.

The first picture is now in my previous reply if you check the first page.

02.jpg

Edited by Kasparovitch
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Ah, now I see it. And I have to say if those are your arrows they're much neater than my attempts to highlight things. Sorry, there's nothing to suggest that's anything other than a detail of the door card. Anyway, it's not pointing at the seat belt, more toward the door pillar. 

D you have the picture without the ghost? 

I don't suppose anyone knows what sort of car this is? 

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Oldrover, thanks for the compliment. I did this simply with Paint, and had to downgrade the picture for size restrictions.

Yes, the finger is pointing more to the pillar. There seems to be a second finger to the left of this one.

I don't think the car would help, but I think the location would.

01.jpg

Edited by Kasparovitch
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Something to add is this bluish shadow just to the right of the ghost, which doesn't show up in the first picture, and which meaning is unknown to me...03.jpg

Edited by Kasparovitch
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I was thinking something was added, ghost app etc, but the pictures are different, if you look in the reflection of her glasses and the tree line, there is slight differences.

I'd say "ghost" pic was taken after.

If your going to get some one to wear a seat belt, must be a better way to do it instead of showing up in a pic.

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6 minutes ago, Redefining Success said:

I was thinking something was added, ghost app etc, but the pictures are different, if you look in the reflection of her glasses and the tree line, there is slight differences.

I'd say "ghost" pic was taken after.

If your going to get some one to wear a seat belt, must be a better way to do it instead of showing up in a pic.

I don't think this is so basic as a ghost app, or it would soon be discovered.

The shadows are slightly different because the car is running.

If you watch the white spot I marked on the highway border, you see that it's farther from the car in the "ghost" picture, so this must be the first one, unless I'm judging wrongly.

Edited by Kasparovitch
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47 minutes ago, Kasparovitch said:

Oldrover, thanks for the compliment. I did this simply with Paint, and had to downgrade the picture for size restrictions.

Yes, the finger is pointing more to the pillar. There seems to be a second finger to the left of this one.

I don't think the car would help, but I think the location would.

01.jpg

OK, so, the long thin arrow (on the left of the picture) is pointing to something behind the seat. It looks like it's light blue. Whatever it is, it's much more clearly visible in the 'ghost' photo.

I've highlighted what I mean here

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?attachments/boy-ghost-car-seatbelt-closeup-jpg.3607/

My (sad by comparison) purple arrows are pointed toward it. The horizontal and larger of the two point to the bulk of it, while the small vertical line points to where it seems to continue and be visible in the gap in the chin. 

Speaking of which, the 'chin' is obviously composed of two parts with a gap between them, the vertical red arrow points to this, and the little red horizontal line is in the gap, between the two the two parts. 

Whatever this is, it's starting to look less and less like a face, it's still impossible almost not to see it as one though. 

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17 minutes ago, Kasparovitch said:

Oldrover, sorry but your link asks for a login.

That something behind the seat is light blue indeed and looks like the ghost's sleeve.

Sorry, I'm not sure how else to do it. 

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18 hours ago, Kasparovitch said:

Oldrover, sorry but your link asks for a login.

That something behind the seat is light blue indeed and looks like the ghost's sleeve.

I've been looking at this all wrong. Firstly though, I don't believe the Kurtz's story. Not for a second.

But, I no longer think it's pareidolia. After it's been pointed out to me on the FT, I see that what I was taking as a two piece structure which resembled a jaw (why ever I started to think that, except that once I started I tricked myself into believing my own preconceptions) isn't at all. Instead it's the two fingers the child is holding up, that everyone was talking about in the first place. And I think I now see what you mean about the sleeve, you were right, I was quite wrong. The shadow and portion of the light blue material, which I thought was seen through the jaw, is actually the hem of the sleeve, and the shadow inside it. 

So, I now believe what we're seeing is a young child in the back, who is indeed sticking two fingers up behind the older girl. Just like everyone said in the first place, but which I couldn't, or wouldn't see. 

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1 hour ago, oldrover said:

I've been looking at this all wrong. Firstly though, I don't believe the Kurtz's story. Not for a second.

But, I no longer think it's pareidolia. After it's been pointed out to me on the FT, I see that what I was taking as a two piece structure which resembled a jaw (why ever I started to think that, except that once I started I tricked myself into believing my own preconceptions) isn't at all. Instead it's the two fingers the child is holding up, that everyone was talking about in the first place. And I think I now see what you mean about the sleeve, you were right, I was quite wrong. The shadow and portion of the light blue material, which I thought was seen through the jaw, is actually the hem of the sleeve, and the shadow inside it. 

So, I now believe what we're seeing is a young child in the back, who is indeed sticking two fingers up behind the older girl. Just like everyone said in the first place, but which I couldn't, or wouldn't see. 

Thank you, now I can finally see the fingers sticking up!   It looks to me like a boy ( maybe her brother?) popped up behind her to photobomb her selfies.  You can see a section of his light blue sleeve in the "non-ghost" picture.

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Now, it's clear that there's a finger, perhaps two, and a sleeve with a shadow inside and also that the sleeve shows up in the second picture (in my opinion, the "no ghost" picture is the second as I explained).

The sleeve in the second picture is the most intriguing detail. If this is a hoax, the falsifier would work only the first picture and not touch the second, and this is how important it is.

I mean, the falsifier wouldn't touch the second picture unless he or she is a highly clever person, as in this case the falsifier would know in advance that anyone finding the detail would think it's a genuine proof of authenticity.

The pictures are gone from Melissa Kurts' FB and this is very worrisome, as it must have a meaning.

The mother never told about a brother, but they can have a child friend who was at the car and couldn't recall that one month later when the mother noticed the ghost.

I'm not sure the pics I saved from the mother's FB are the original ones, as these would be the most important to investigate, including its hidden binary information.

Also, if Greg Poacher's only proof is his FBI+CIA temperature software, this is a very weak evidence...

These are only loose ideas as usual to allow further working.

They say the picture was taken in a highway near Maitland. There are two highways here, Interstate 4 and Highway 17. This may help a lot as the boy must have died in a great accident that appeared in the news for sure.

However, whether that boy can be confirmed or not, it may not add much to the ghost's investigation as that boy is only an interpretation by the mother.

Edited by Kasparovitch
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This is an important point in the picture. Look at the girl's hair marked in front of the ghost. It's faded and looks cut (green arrow).

Left: Ghost picture - Right: No ghost picture.

03A.jpg

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 13669447_10209973178423675_5375386626860908704_o.jpg

HOAX FINALLY DETECTED

This is the most crucial detail and I think will close this discussion as a hoax has been detected.

The pictures were taken almost simultaneously. There is no wind inside the car. The visible windows are closed.

Almost the whole hair of the girl looks untouched between both pictures, except the part in fron of the ghost, like there was some wind or any other kind of interference.

One can't prove there was no wind or interference at all. However the bottom part of the right hair is almost untouched between pictures, which couldn't happen if the right hair had moved somehow, whatever the cause.

The bottom part of it couldn't stay untouched, even virtually same position relative to seat, as you can see at the circle. Now compare the part pointed by the arrow, so different there's an empty part in the ghost picture.

No interference could do this and not affect the bottom part of the hair. Except, of course, "photoshopping" somehow the picture.

I think this a final prove and explains why the pictures are gone from Melissa Kurtz' FB. Maybe someone detected this before and confronted her.

I'm sorry for Greg Pocher's verification that the ghost is genuine. He must review his expertise.

Thankfully, Melissa Kurtz once posted both pictures in her FB before removing them. It would be much harder to prove the hoax with one only picture.

Edited by Kasparovitch
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The mother failed to notice that Dominar Rygel XVI paid a visit on her daughter's forehead.

dominar_rygel_xvi.jpg

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Sorry to pop in late - nice work folks!

But I've got to pull you up, Kasparovich, just on that very last bit.  That blurred fuzziness in the bright, but low contrast area is in fact exactly what you get when you have a JPEG image and you are looking at bright low contrast areas highly magnified.  JPEG compression will subtract detail from areas like that by blurring / smoothing them* - it's a convenient way for it to save file size, as your eye is not looking for sharp small details in low-contrast areas - blurred areas take up much less filespace than high detail areas.  So jpeg focuses (lousy pun intended) on keeping the detail up in the darker, more contrasty areas.  If you look at the images you will see quite a few jpeg artefacts (look around the edges of things), so this is image is suffering a bit from compression...

So, I'm not seeing any tell tale signs of editing (but I admit I have only had time to glance through the thread..).  I think it's a just a lousy made up story and there is indeed a person there - and she knows dam well who it was.  She will have closed her facebook in shame as she was getting exposed as a liar, imo.

 

* There's actually more to it - as you get to high brightness levels (ie nearing pure white), 8-bit (ie JPEG) images rapidly run out of numbers, so colour and brightness separation/gradation becomes more and more problematic..  So even if the little jpeg routines wanted to show good detail in the brightest areas, they might not have enough values to play with anyway....

OK,  I'll stop now before people fall asleep..

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ChrLzs, thanks for your comments.

I guess this will be debunked, but unfortunately I don't see much investigation going on the subject, except at metabunk.org and at a Brasilian page which stopped some days ago (in Portuguese only).

There are many strange things here:

1. No one can verify the accident she talks about. Who gave her such information?

2. She was driving North-South, as the Pageant took place in Downtown Disney, which is South of Maitland, where she claims the pictures were taken. Well, in the morning you have the Sun on your left when you travel North-South, but the girl, and even the Ghost, are clearly shone by the Sun on the right. This could happen only if the car was British-driven and even in this case the picture had to be inverted.

3. Greg Pocha wasn't offered original pictures to analyze. He said that his "secret" software detected that the pictures had been changed and said that resizing would be enough to detect changes, so he accepted without further foundation that the pictures had just been resized. Why didn't Melissa offer Greg original pictures?

4. Even though people think that photoshopping hair is a hard task, I still think that the right portion of her hair is strange, and believe that any debunking will analyze that.

5. Melissa removed the pictures from her FB. Even if it proves nothing, that's strange, very strange for someone who wanted the pictures so shared she contacted a British newspaper to publish them.

5a. How many newspapers did she write to before the British journalist accepted her pictures? Wouldn't it be more likely that the pictures had been published by a USA newspaper?

6. I'd like very much to know the exact spot where the picture was taken. It was most probably Interstate-4 near Maitland, and the building reflected on the girl's right lenses might help. Every detail must be checked and confirmed.

7. The pageant started on July 8 at 4pm and lasted until July 10. Why was she driving near 11am on July 9, as registered on the pictures disclosed by Melissa? Does anyone have an event calendar? She was about 45 minutes to the event, so it had to start at 12am on the second day.

8. I hope the investigation will continue.

 

 

Edited by Kasparovitch
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Good luck, and by all means continue, but I tend to be rather jaded when it comes to stuff like this.  At the moment we really have nothing but a very inconclusive picture that shows something that could be any number of things (but I agree it looks a lot like a finger salute..) accompanied by a number of claims that are not supported/evidenced.

What we do know is:

- some people love to make up stories, after going over their pics and finding anything that looks like it is worthy of internet attention.....

and that's about it. :D

I'm sure if I had the motivation and pored over all my images I could find lots of things that I couldn't easily identify, and that sorta kinda looked like they might be a bit of a person or 'entity'...  But that's simply the nature of reality.  A 2d snapshot taken at a  single moment in time of a changing scene that *wasn't* properly documented or examined at the time *will* contain unidentifiable bits.  No amount of investigation of most images like that will ever come to an unequivocal conclusion..

So, will it ever be fully debunked?  Probably not, although the story about the death should be fairly easy to find, if true.

But is it worthy of spending lots more time on? - well, that's a judgement call, but to me, no.

Edited by ChrLzs
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2 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

- some people love to make up stories, after going over their pics and finding anything that looks like it is worthy of internet attention.....

IMO, this is what explains the majority of these silly stories that find their way into the tabloids and end up on these forums.  Just tall tales being told about boring photos.

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  • 3 weeks later...
 

From my post at

https://www.metabunk.org/explaining-the-ghost-boy-in-the-back-seat-photo-with-occams-razor.t8156/page-3

where a complete investigation was carried out [comments added]:

«« I think this is the point of the situation at this time:

1. These are probably a true pictures, maybe modified somehow but probably not "photoshopped" [no such evidence found].
2. They weren't taken in July, as claimed and supported by camera settings [which are wrong for time and almost for sure, date too], but maybe later. The most probable date is August 6, 2016 or some days before or after [more probably after].
3. The exact location [Interstate 4, see forum] and approximate time of the day [later in the afternoon] were disclosed.
4. There was no fatal accident one year before in the area [no such evidence found, something unlikely for such an accident as described by the mother].
5. There was another person inside the car, as that image is unlikely to be an artifact.
6. The second picture captured a spot the same texture as the child's shirt, perhaps him returning to his seat after showing up by surprise in the girl's picture making some symbol with the fingers. This child might not be using his seat-belt again.
7. Mother and daughter gained publicity, daughter started using a seat-belt at last, and maybe there was some money return from the newspaper.
8. It's unclear if it's acceptable to date the pictures wrongly based on wrong camera settings. If the camera wasn't used for these 2 selfies only, which is unlikely (pics are numbered 178 and 179), there is a sequence of pictures before and after that might help finding a more accurate date.
9. It's unclear how the mother learned about a factitious accident in the area.
10. For ultimately debunk the pictures, the mother had to admit the wrong infos, maybe unlikely, but not impossible (mother, daughter, or child or his parents or someone knowing him or them). »»

[Even if not ultimately debunked, this at least debunks it. For a ghost to be accepted, any other possible explanation must be excluded beyond any reasonable doubt. Given the inconsistencies found, namely a wrong date and time, a third person in the car at the time cannot be excluded, something by far more probable than a "ghost"] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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