Gambler's Ghost

[Gary]

Found this photo linked at coasttocoastam.com.

"This was taken the afternoon of Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2010 through a pane of glass in the Saratoga Saloon exhibit at Dodge City's Front Street. I was focusing on the gambling apparatus (faro, keno and chuck-a-luck) on the table in the foreground. This isn't a great photo, and wasn't meant to be anything other than a research pix, the visual equivalent of scribbling some notes. But, it is unusual in that you can see me holding the camera in the mirror in the upper left, and see that nothing is behind me to cast the ghostly reflection.

Also, I was in Dodge City -- and toured the Boot Hill and Front Street exhibits -- to gather research for a paranormal series set in the Old West ("Wylde's West"). And just before I took the photo, I thought there was someone in the room with me, and actually turned and looked over my shoulder. What is especially ironic is that every fall semester, I challenge my photojournalism students to come up with a (faked) ghost photo for me to debunk. I tell them there's never been a convincing photo of a ghost, and that if they actually capture one (in a photo I can't explain away), they get an A. I'm sure this photo is just a trick of light, shadow, and reflection, but still... it is strange. The photo has not been altered or enhanced in any way. The technical info, for those interested: Canon EOS 10D, 19mm lens, 1/30th second, f 3.5, ISO 800.

--Max McCoy"

[PPI Brian]

Cool photo. But I don't see a "ghost". I see a reflection of the photographer in the glass, and I see his reflection in the mirror. Am I missing something? 

[PPI Tracy]

I see two things.  I see a guy with his back to the glass (or that's how it appears) taking a photo.  Then, if you let your eyes do the matrix thing, it appears as if there is an old guy with a sort of conductor's hat and scary face, dressed in a black suit w/ white shirt, facing the glass.

Nothing paranormal.......

[PPI Tim]

I too believe this is a reflection. The picture of the ghost is toast. Next...

[PPI Brian]

I see two things.  I see a guy with his back to the glass (or that's how it appears) taking a photo.  Then, if you let your eyes do the matrix thing, it appears as if there is an old guy with a sort of conductor's hat and scary face, dressed in a black suit w/ white shirt, facing the glass.

Nothing paranormal.......

I see the weird scary "face", but it appears to be a reflection of the photographer's hand holding the DSLR camera. 

[Gary]

It's funny.  Yesterday, I was having a very difficult time trying to fit the reflection in the glass to the photographer.  When I looked again this morning, it popped out at me immediately.  There is a dark frame around the mirror in the back of the room which I think is what blends the image well enough to make it hard to see him.   But I can see his arm now, and the even the camera. 

[Mark.Yates]

How do you explain the face without a nose? There is an obvious face there as if it were a skull but with skin on it. I can see the cheek bones, jaw line, skin that appears to be sunken in, darkness where the eyes would be, and like I had mentioned no nose.

[PPI Tim]

Notice a camera?

[Gary]

Mark, I was seeing exactly what you were seeing, til I looked again.  The bottom of the skull that we are seeing is the photographers elbow bent to support his camera.  Move up just a bit and you can clearly see the camera.  The dark frame that can be seen around the mirror in the back of the room distorts that reflection making it a little harder to see. 

[PPI Tracy]

Mark, that is exactly one of the things that I saw as well.  But as Gary was stating, the bottom of the photographer's bent elbow looks like the bottom of the skull.  


Also, what appears to be the nose is actually his ear.  The earpiece he has in looks like an eye. Matrixing at it's finest.

[Mark.Yates]

I still don't agree with that theory. Reason being is the angle. I see the photographer taking the photo however, the image that looks like a face with no nose is tha opposite angle of the photographer. If the image was the photographer then that means the reflection in the mirror would have to be the same angle and neither of that is true. Also even at that close of a distance you would be able to make out what you see in the mirror reflecting off the plexiglass and we don't. Do you have other photos of that same pose or postion at that same location?

[PPI Brian]

Reflections are tricky, especially when the angles of the reflection are slightly different. In this case you can see the reflection of the photographer in the mirror, but the angle of the glass he's shooting through is slightly closer to the photographer, and the light reflects at a slightly different angle than the clearer image reflected in the mirror. Additionally, there is an object in front of the mirror which partially obscures the reflection of the photographer, making the reflection in the glass look different than the reflection in the mirror. In this image, I isolated the photographer's reflection in the mirror, and flipped the image horizontally to show how the photographer actually appeared while taking this photo:



You can clearly see how the light reflects off his hand, which is supporting the lens of his camera.

In the next image, I flipped the entire photograph horizontally, so you can see how the reflection would have appeared had it not been reversed:



Now you can clearly see how the creepy "face" was actually created by the reflection of the photographer's elbow. He appears to be wearing a brown leather jacket, and the shadows that were created by wrinkles in the jacket created the "face" that made the original photo so interesting. This is clearly a case of pareidolia, otherwise known as "matrixing". Face recognition is hardwired into the human brain at a very early age. It's easy for us to infer facial features from odd shadows that happen to mimic the geometry of a human face, because we're programmed to do that from birth. It's a very interesting photograph, and it demostrates how easily we interpret faces from random patterns of light and shadows.

[PPI Tracy]

NICE, Brian!  Very NICE!   

[PPI Tim]

Cue the music.