Charlotte, N.C. Court House Ghost

[PPI Karl]

People are claiming this is the ghost of a woman in a grey dress, writing in a notepad (stenographer's pad???).  The security guards who saw this on camera claim a couple of them went down to check it out and walked through the apparition.  Any thoughts?  I'm a little perplexed as to where they get the "grey dress" idea if it's a translucent ghost on black and white video, and why they're so certain about the gender.  I certainly don't see any secondary sex characteristics or actual evidence of a dress, for that matter.  I guess this is what bothers me about so many of these ghost stories:  people are more interested in presenting them as stories than they are as evidence; hence the obsession to details of character and setting.

(Original article.)

[Holly]

By looking at the picture, to me it looks like a woman in a womans pants suit or skirt. Can't see that far down. But by the cut of the jacket I would say it's a woman. But again it's not a great pic. Also they probably got a better look at it than what we see.

[PPI Brian]

Hi Holly and Karl,

I played around with this image in Photoshop, and after spending quite some time messing with it, I must admit that I find it strange. It appears to be a three-dimensional image of a person. I adjusted the lighting effect in Photoshop to highlight the shape of the image against the wall.

If it?s a fake, it?s well done. (Having said that, I believe I could fake an image like that? as could your average High School photography student with a little imagination and a steady tripod!) 

I would like to see the original, not a low-resolution watermarked copy.

What can I say? I?m a skeptic. 

Regards,

Brian Miller

[dwalters]

This actually looks like it was a screen grab of a webcam. Webcam's usually have a 3 to 4 second refresh rate..sometimes even a little longer. This just looks like somebody was walking by as the camera was refreshing. The Queen Mary has a webcam, and you get this effect a LOT...especially while people are walking through the pool area during a tour. On this picture though...if you look to the right side by the window, you could see a very VERY faint outline of the same shape...that tells me that someone was just walking by as the camera was refreshing.



But who knows....maybe it is a real ghost. I am just trying to find a logical explanation...that's what we do here at PPI.

[shieldmaiden]

Look closely, it looks like a distorted reflection of the items sitting on the desk. And i believe that's what it is - somehow reflected in glass or something in the room and caught by the camera. Lots of angles in the image to give it the illusion of being a woman in a gray dress with black butterfly collar, etc.

SZerbest, 18 Jan 2007

The ghost is a reflection from an outside light source through a woman's sweater that hangs on the coat rack in front of the window at the far end of the room. You can even see the two green plastic soda pop bottles near her left shoulder. Her long dark flowing hair is the shadow created by the coat rack itself. Had the owner of the sweater remembered to take her sweater home, this article would not be here.

Wraith, Bridge City, TX, 20 Feb 2007

This was in the article...just thought it was interesting.
Shield