My Favourite Pieces of Spirit Photography: Frightful Friday

Spirit photography: A type of photography whose primary attempt is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities.

Ghosts caught on camera is something you see regularly in horror novels, films and tv shows. It is creepy and can even create a pretty decent jump scare when done right. So this Frightful Friday we are going to look at some real examples of ghosts caught on camera.

You probably didn’t know this but I like to collect pieces of spirit photography. I could probably write an entire blog about the history of ghosts on camera, but today I will just be showing you some of my favourites. I have a collection of videos too but that is for another Friday.

So, in no particular order, here are my favourites.

1. The Amityville Boy

The haunting at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York, is pretty infamous. This photograph was taken in 1976, two years after Ronald DeFeo Jr murdered six members of his family in the house. When he was arrested Ronald claimed that he heard voices in the house telling him to kill his family. Many believe that the little boy captured in the photograph is a striking resemblance to nine year old, John Matthew DeFeo, the youngest member of the DeFeo family who was murdered that night.

2. Little Girl Ghost

Back in 2001 a couple in the US were taking photos of their 4 month old daughter when a little girl appeared in the background of one of the photographs. They have no other children and the house was locked.

3. Freddy Jackson

This photograph was taken in 1919 and was first published in 1975 by a retired R.A.F officer. It is a group picture of the officer’s squadron from World War I. An extra face appears in the photo in the top row, behind the fourth man from the left. It is said that it is the face of Freddy Jackson, an air mechanic who had been accidentally killed by an airplane propeller two days before the picture was taken and the picture was snapped on the day of his funeral. Members of the squadron easily recognised the face as Freddy’s. They believed that Freddy decided to show up for the group photo, even if he was dead.

4. El Paso High School

The ghost stories at El Paso High School in Texas date back over 30 years when student slashed her wrists before diving off the fourth floor balcony. In 1985 a class photo was taken and a young woman with blurred featured appeared in the image when it was developed. According to everyone else in the picture there was no one standing in that spot when the photograph was taken. Could this be the girl who committed suicide on the fourth floor?

5. Group Photo Ghost

This is one of the first spirit photos I found online that gave me a serious bout of the creeps. I have no information about the image, except the fact that the people in the photo didn’t know why the child was crying until they looked at the picture.