The image is of a woman’s face, slightly blurry but clear enough that the features can be seen clearly without any imagination implemented whatsoever. The only problem? That woman isn’t supposed to be there. In fact, she’s not even supposed to exist! At least that’s what 19 year old Adam Harris is claiming. He snapped the photograph as a team of 15 investigators was documenting paranormal presences in the Barwon Park Mansion.
Barwon Park Mansion is largely unchanged from the night the 42 room building was originally finished. As the inaugural ball progressed, its guest of honor Thomas Baldwin, who had commissioned the creation of the house swelled with pride at his creation. Unfortunately, he died mere months later, and the mansion became a monument to his life. His wife, Elizabeth Austin, went on to become a well respected hostess, however. As she took on the charity works her husband had begun, she had to contribute and work on them undercover due to her gender and the times in which they lived. It is Elizabeth Austin’s ghost that is suspected by many to be the face in the picture. Unfortunately, when comparing the artist’s sketch of Elizabeth Austin looks nothing like the face in the photograph.
It seems the most obvious possibility is that this is actually a photograph of someone who snuck in with the group, but is this a fair assessment? It seems it would be far too easy for a trickster to merely claim the ghost appeared in front of his camera when really it was merely someone who had traveled into the haunted expedition with them. Another mundane explanation would be to assume the picture had merely been taken prior to the expedition and then shuffled in with the other ghost photographs. The fact that the girl’s face doesn’t appear near any landmark that would reveal the location that the photo is being taken in seems like an unrealistic expectation, but such a landmark would have created a considerable continuity in the image that would make disregarding it all the more difficult.
Of course these calls to question must be taken with an ounce of incredulity as they also call into question the honesty of an individual who has merely made a claim that, while incredible, seems entirely possible. Anyone exhibiting healthy skepticism must take care not to merely run to the “It must be a downright hoax” explanation unless an individual has demonstrated a history of hoaxes. As the story develops, character will be questioned and some will refuse to believe while others will believe immediately with no more evidence than the image itself which could be of a person who is entirely alive. Nonetheless, we’ll be there to keep you up to date on this amazing photograph in the hopes that it is evidence of something beyond this life on Earth that wishes to communicate from beyond the grave. In the meantime we are left only with this incredible image and the claim that it appeared out of nowhere somehow on a digital camera during a ghost hunt. It seems too early to make a call on this photo just yet.