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The Newby Church Ghost Photograph (AKA: *That* Ghost Photo)

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Anonymous

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*That* ghost photograph

One of the most memorable images from my childhood was seeing this piece of spook photography. It was taken by the Rev. K.F.Lord who was taking the photo of the altar at Newby Church, Yorkshire, England in 1963. He claimed to see nothing unusual at the time of the photograph being taken.

So what was it then? How was it done? It's always seemed a little stagey to me, but why does it still seem to hold up to scrutiny?

Embedded link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020809080300/http://www.castleofspirits.com/hoodmonk.html

For archival purposes, here are the MIA webpage's contents ...



REVEREND K. F. LORDS NEWBY CHURCH PHOTOGRAPH

I received the following e-mail regarding this photo :

"With regard to the (black and white)monk in the church photo which you claim is a double exposure, in the early 80's I was connected to a team that examined this (and many other) supposedly supernatural photographs for the BBC, and the one thing we decided it wasn't was a double exposure. We used, at the time, the latest in computer enhancement technology and no trickery was detected. We examined about fifteen other famous photographs (including Indre Shira's photo of the Brown Lady in Raynham Hall) and all of them were explicable in decidedly prosaic terms. Furthermore, the photograph is of the complete altar, not just the half with the 'monk' in it. I feel you are doing a diservice to the photograph by presenting it in this truncated form"
Faithfully
Karl Denchly


Photograph was taken by the Rev. K.F.Lord who was taking the photo of the altar at Newby Church, Yorkshire, England in 1963.
He claimed to see nothing unusual at the time of the photograph being taken

Admittedly this photo looks rather fake at first glance. But since it seems to have undergone some serious scrutiny I guess it's up to you to decide if you believe it is real or not.

Newby-Ghost-Monk.jpg


Newby-Ghost-FULL.jpg

 
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It's certainly an odd one! Probably the one that everyone remembers.

To me, the face of it looks like the top view of a snake's head. And the
"eyes" seem to protrude like a fly's. The "body" on its own could maybe
be just a dark stain?

One minor point has always puzzled me and that is the fact that every
version I have ever seen has the same white line on the altar-cloth. Looking
closely at it, this seems to be a cut on the photograph, as if done
with a razor-blade. It suggests that every copy has been taken from a
single print of the photo.

I wonder what happened to the negative? :confused:
 
This photo was examined by a photographic expert for ITV's Strange-But-True? TV series, in the first episode of the 1997 series, I have them all on video.

It was quite obviously a man with a white rag over his head. Upon closer examination they could see specular reflections from a pair of glasses in the eye-holes in the rag, and eyes could be seen behind those. And he whole thing was faded using a double exposure.
 
*sniffle* my childhood dreams destroyed!!! well, not really, but i always liked that pic...
 
I've heard it was a fake to - I think it was the Strange but True gang who laid that to rest.

I did see on the prementioned Castle of Spirits website, a claim from a guy who says he worked at the BBC in the 80's and analysed the photo...

"With regard to the (black and white)monk in the church photo which you claim is a double exposure, in the early 80's I was connected to a team that examined this (and many other) supposedly supernatural photographs for the BBC, and the one thing we decided it wasn't was a double exposure. We used, at the time, the latest in computer enhancement technology and no trickery was detected. We examined about fifteen other famous photographs (including Indre Shira's photo of the Brown Lady in Raynham Hall) and all of them were explicable in decidedly prosaic terms. Furthermore, the photograph is of the complete altar, not just the half with the 'monk' in it. I feel you are doing a diservice to the photograph by presenting it in this truncated form
Faithfully, Karl Denchly"

Fake or fraud? Would a man of the cloth fake a ghost photo?
 
Great picture. Definitely one of the strongest defining images of my early interest in strange phenomena.

One thing puzzles me though, and it's rather specific. I have a memory of seeing a page in a book (I was certain that is was The Unexplained until I bought a full set and found it wasn't there) that had an illustration or diagram that somehow was meant to show how this photograph had been faked using an elaborate setup involving mirrors!

I am beginning to think I may have either dreamt or imagined it, but it was from when I was about 6 or 7, so I don't think it's the kind of thing I would have made up (unconciously or not!).

If anyone else has seen this diagram, let me know.
 
Debunked! And it was some geezer wearing specs too :rolleyes:

Good point about the clergy - it seems that they can add lying and forgery to their other dubious pursuits. Maybe the photo was faked to prove there was an afterlife and put arses on pews :hmph:
 
If anyone else has seen this diagram, let me know.

Hmmmm, not seen that diagram, but the process you describe is a standard one.

It involves placing a 'half silvered mirror' (a sheet of glass with tiny cross-hatch silver 'pixels' on it) at 45 degrees in front of the camera.

A small 'stage' is set-up at right angles to the mirror and is draped in black and brightly lit.

The camera 'sees' the image directly in front of it - plus 'faintly' (depending on the strength of the lighting) the subject placed in the stage area.

Although very simple to do, it seems a little elaborate for this church scene.

Also, I'm pretty sure you couldn't get quite the same results as those seen in this photo. You could easily do the white face, but not the black cloak.

To me, it looks like a film developing error that just looks like a stereotypical phantom in a place of worship. Er, which is probably more fantastical than just a picture of a ghost in a church.
 
The mirror set-up is known as Pepper's Ghost, and it was often used in the theatre. No need for half-silvering either, a large sheet of plain glass could be used.

But as Frobush says, this would be over elaborate for a hoax photo - it was intended for real, 'live' ghost performances!
 
this thread got me thinking about childhood experiences with 'Ghost' pics so I decided to try and find one I remembered of a little girl in a church.

I did a Google on 'Ghost Photographs' and the top site was http://www.psychics.co.uk/realghostpictures/homepage.html

they have a stack of ghost pic thumbnails but when you click for info, you get a flash saying 'Members only'.

ok, thinks ethelred, I'll join. They'll know I'm coming, Devil a doubt, them being psychic in all.

search the page as I might, I could find no 'Join Here' link.

how foolish I felt when it dawned on me that I had being trying to join their club under false pretences. I'm not psychic and I only pretend I can talk to the dead in order to spook people.

they knew this at psychic.co.uk and removed the 'Join Here' button seconds before I landed on their site.

dont mess with psychics is the message
 
To Frobush & Rynner - Thanks for the info. That's definitely the same thing I remember seeing.
 
Sorry Ethel, but if you click member login it then gives you the option to join. Unless they realised that I was 'one of them' :eek!!!!:
 
yep. Sussed it. The join button was hidden behind a 'telephone readings' banner ad. I should have known that because.... (ok, I'll stop now. Dont milk it, etc).

but check their MB. Loads of people seeing their Grandfather on his bicycle at the end of the bed and asking for help. And no-one replying much.

I feel a film script coming on. I see Bruce Willis and Halle Bop Osmond. Bruce has a fight in a bathroom, right, then....
 
ethelred said:
but check their MB. Loads of people seeing their Grandfather on his bicycle at the end of the bed and asking for help. And no-one replying much.

Is that common - Grandfather on a bike at the bottom of the bed? :D

When my Gand dad died I saw him in my bedroom but I don't remember seeing him on a bike.:
 
And just to milk it even further, what's the point of 'Psychic chatrooms':confused: It'd be just loads and loads of blank pages.
 
I was bored, so I did some fiddling to the monk ghost photo in Paintshop Pro. Working under the idea that, if its a darkened stain, you should be able to undarken it, and it will vanish.

I made a selection around the outline of the shape and adjusted it using the highlight/midtone/shadow function. I can't make both the top and bottom completly vanish at the same time. If I adjust it so the bottom is invisible, then you can see a bit of black by the head. And if I adjust it to remove that, you can see a bit over the stairs. So I don't think its a flat stain, theres slight variation.

The bottom seems to drap onto the stairs. More visible in the complete photo here

geocities.com/inhell_2000/churchmonk.jpg
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
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That link didn't work for me so I went the long route and found it in the ghost pics page. (Nice collection!!)

Years ago, when I was first getting interested in ghosts, that photo really used to scare me, but only after a friend said, "Ooooh, its face is like a skull but it's stretched!" For some reason that phrase made it much more chilling. Still, it doesn't seem to bother me now.

Perhaps it's because it now reminds me a lot of someone with a couple of sheets wrapped around them.
 
Anyone know if that photo was cropped? It seems weird that the alter, which would have been the real purpose of the photograph, is not centered. It's as if the photographer actually made room for the ghost.
 
the first photo link shows a cropped vertion of the origional photo, Ogo.

I remember reading in a childrens ghost book that ghost photos were easy to fake, all you nead is a camera with a slow shutter speed and you have to move your "ghost" out of the picture while the photo is still being taken. they showed a few ones they had made themselves as well. All were black and white (old cameras= slow shutter speed + old film= longer exposure neaded) and they all show streching of the ghost in the direction it was moved out of the picture. their fakes looked extreamly similar to the monk at the alter photo.
 
Newby Church ghost photo

I think the church was Newby, picture is of an altar with a real tall cloaked geezer whose face is covered by a mask with eye holes. Really scary image, remember seeing it on the Arthur C Clarke World of Strange show when i was about 6 or 7.
Im guessing it was a total fake, scariest ghost pic Ive seen tho. Was it fake?
 
This was the ghost photo that most scared me half to death as a kid looking through sets of The Unexplained and The Usborne Book of Ghosts.

I personally believe that it is (more likely than not) a fake, but that doesn't lower my opinion of it. It's a great photograph in its own right, and still has an eerieness about it even now. It's one thing to dress someone up in a cloak and take a double exposure, but quite another to put in such details as a 'melty-face'! :eek!!!!:
 
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August Verango said:
It's one thing to dress someone up in a cloak and take a double exposure, but quite another to put in such details as a 'melty-face'! :eek!!!!:

But the "melty face" always looked to me like just a cloth mask with two eyeholes cut in it - the classic kid's "ghost in a sheet" look. Still scary, though!
 
Yes, I agree. But whether by accident or design, it's very effective. Maybe because the face is in contrast to the cloak rather than being one sheet covering the body as well as the head.

I've made a scan of the head part of the photo (taken from the Usborne book - All About Ghosts). It seems to show a bright reflection in the left eye hole, as a poster on the other thread mentioned. Also, the very bottom of the 'face' is cut off quite sharply in an inverted 'V' shape, making it look as though the 'mask' is tucked into the cloak.

Not that any of this particularly matters to me. It will always remain a classic image.
 
Please stop posting that pic :) still scares me:eek!!!!:
 
AAHH! Even now that photo scares the hell outta me. Just looking at it Im waiting for it to burst through the PC and start strangling me and screaming in my ear!

OK, help needed... :)
 
Seriously did anyone evr come forward on this one and admit a hoax? What was the church's view, didnt they string some rubbish about it being a 7ft monk who'd died there?
 
We have never been able to explain, what seems to be a face at the window, in this family photograph which I think was taken in the early 1960s. The woman in the chair is a relative of mine. She is blocked out at her request.

The face at the window was noticed some years after the original picture was taken - but as you can see it also appears on the negative
 
I had to look quite hard to find it but I think I did (bottom right of the window just above the heater). thats really quite spooky.

Does anyone have the software and know how to enlarge that section. I have bought and paid for photoshop on this computer but it's the hubbies and I'm dammed if I know how to use it!
 
I've just added an 'enhanced' crop of the face to the page.

The image is also attached.
 
I went and dragged the hubbie away from the sofa and Pokemon Ruby on the game boy advance to enlarge the picture for me. Ever the sceptic he said "thats been photoshopped, but it is hard to tell on a jpg." But then this is the man that when I showed him 'that' picture said "that never sacred me I always knew it was a bloke with a sheet on this head."

It's quite a spooky photo though
 
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