The Priest

[JackDark]

Anyone have any info on this picture? Looks pretty authentic.

 

[escargot]

I've seen it before, I think it's quite old. It's certainly pre-digital.

 

[colpepper1]

The composition suggests the photographer was aware of the figure and his nerve steady enough to maintain camera position. There looks to be blur, so if it is an apparition its moves register on the photographhic emulsion in the normal way. The exposure is long so it looks for all the world as though a clerical figure has sat still for a few seconds at the photographers instructions, the lens was cap back on and the figure told to shift.

Of course it could be a ghost.

 

[rynner2]

Why a priest, or a 'clerical figure'?

Looks more like a mass-murderer to me! :shock:

And why is he facing backwards in the pews?

 

[colpepper1]

And why is he facing backwards in the pews?

He isn't. Check out the entrance to the pews and lack of altar to the rear.

 

[GNC]

I had that pic on the cover of an Andrew Green true ghost book, but I can't find it now. Sorry. Try a search on Green and you might find something.

 

[rynner2]

And why is he facing backwards in the pews?

He isn't. Check out the entrance to the pews and lack of altar to the rear.

True. And there's a font in the background too.

But he still looks more like Frankenstein's monster than a priest! 8)

 

[colpepper1]

Fonts are generally - though not always - at the back. I'll give you the Frankenstein part.

 

[Pete Younger]

Looks like a nun with glasses!

 

[Analogue Boy]

Good old-fashioned double-exposure.

 

[GNC]

Aha, here we go. The photo was taken in St Mary the Blessed Virgin Church in Eastry, Kent during 1956. The place has a reputation of being haunted, so a Surrey bank manager who was taking pictures of churches for a project made sure this one was empty then snapped away.

The figure is supposed to be a former priest who swore on his deathbed he would never leave (yeah, yeah), and the curious thing is that the layout of the church is different from the one taken in the photo, making the author wonder if the image changed because of the ghost's presence. Time slip caught on camera?

The book this information comes from and which has this as its cover is called Ghosts of Today by Andrew Green, published 1980.

 

[decipheringscars]

My opinion: there's a lot of light reflecting on the pews. I think it's a simulacra, unless it really is a staged double-exposure.

The idea it's a priest is read in based on the fact it's in a church (but when do priests ever sit in the pews?) and the claim that a priest vowed to "never leave" (a curious vow, at best, for a priest to make). That little white bit near the collar isn't where the clerical collar actually would be. It looks more like a bit of a white shirt or just skin showing at the neckline of a crew-neck shirt.