This has puzzled me for a while. I was going to post it before, but the whole thing seemed so absurd I deleted it.
Anyway, here goes...
Back in 1993 I was an art student in Langley - East Berkshire College to give it it's proper name. It was a one year arts foundation course, and over the first term we got to do a small 'taster' of different disciplines - fine art, graphic design, textiles. One of these tasters was photography - and in the days before digital photography, this involved dark rooms, chemicals, rolls of negatives etc... The project that we were set was to do with mirrors. I dutifully took my mirror out into the back garden of the house in which I rented a room, leaned it against the fence, nestled it amongst weeds and took some very uninspired photographs.
I wasn't particularly good at photography and all its associated arcane darkroom practises, so somehow got one of my classmates to develop my film for me while I went and had a coffee and cigarette downstairs. At some point someone came down, and said that I should really check my negatives - as both myself and another friend, whom we'll call 'Andy' - had 'loads of figures' on them.
Somewhat puzzled by this, as there was no-one about when I took the photographs, I returned to the dark room and looked on the negatives. There certainly did seem to be a figure sat in a chair. Hard to tell as it was in negative. I set about developing the photograph, suddenly excited at the possibility of accidentally capturing a ghost...
...which of course turned out to be a disappointing case of simulacra in the weeds and plants surrounding the mirror.
Oh well.
Andy's turned out to be quite different.
He had taken his mirror out to some local woods near where he lived in Reading - rested the mirror in streams, on tree branches etc. Looking at his photographs as he developed them, it became apparent there seemed to be a number of figures in the photographs - actually in the mirror itself. I only remember two of the photographs - though I think there were more. One photograph seemed to show what appeared to be a slightly blurry image of what appeared to be a gnome - rather like a garden gnome - big nose, hat etc. Except this gnome looked pretty pissed off - pissed off and surprised - and pointing an angry figure toward the camera. The other one I recall (I think this may have been the mirror laid in a shallow stream) showed the head and shoulders of a 'giant' 'lifting' itself out of the mirror. I say 'giant' but that's not really accurate (and after a distance of 25 years, I really don't think 'accurate' is a term I can use for any of this) - imagine a very rudimentary head and shoulders sculpted out of rock or granite. I think the thing may have had a nose / eyes / mouth - but it was all very basic.
I really can't describe quite how strange these photographs seemed. Andy - very sceptical and unbelieving of anything supernatural - seemed a little bit shaken up by this - protesting his innocence, and saying there was nothing even remotely odd when he took the photographs.
We went downstairs for a coffee. The darkroom we left unlocked - was always left unlocked. When we returned to the darkroom a short while later, all of Andy's negatives and photographs were gone. We turned the darkroom upside down looking for them - nothing. They turned up again the next week - except all the photographs and negatives showing the figures were missing.
It sounds utterly ridiculous doesn't it? Even now, writing it, the whole thing seems utterly absurd and completely unbelievable. I'm not in contact with any of the people involved any more - I have no idea where the wood was that Andy took the photographs. Maybe it really was a hoax? (The thing I'm probably most certain of it not being a hoax is that nobody 'owned' up to it - and Andy's puzzled, slightly embarrassed - almost a bit angry - reaction seemed very genuine). Perhaps it was just a case of simulacra after all, as it had been in my photographs? These weren't high definition photographs taken with a digital camera after all - but the first uncertain forays into black and white photography by inexperienced art students. Plenty of scope for accidental patterns to appear. Then the photographs disappear, and turn up again later on? With all the photographs showing any 'evidence' conveniently gone?
It all seems a bit too story-shaped to me - a nice twist in the tale to give some sense of closure (too much like the denouement of those ghostly hitchhiker tales to me). It's been 25 years since those photographs now, and I think what might - probably - happened was that my imagination filled in those gaps in my memory over the years - made those gnomes and figures more real - added in the disappearance and appearance of those negatives / photographs, (except they did disappear though - but did the other photographs / negatives really turn up again?)
I don't trust my memory on this. I don't believe my own story - but this is what I remember happening anyway. I'm on the verge of deleting it again now, because having read through it, it just seems so absurd, so I'm going to post this before I change my mind.
