The Stone Girl Of Eyeworth

So much for my rubbish theory that the figure is the ghost of an Elizabethan-era lady - every Elizabethan statue or effigy I've seen on the 'net wears a ruff (unlike the arguably-mob-cap-wearing ghost statue thingy!). So basically we're seeking a very, very short non-Elizabethan statue ghost rag whose hobby was either photography or flute-playing.
 
Steven said:
So much for my rubbish theory that the figure is the ghost of an Elizabethan-era lady - every Elizabethan statue or effigy I've seen on the 'net wears a ruff (unlike the arguably-mob-cap-wearing ghost statue thingy!). So basically we're seeking a very, very short non-Elizabethan statue ghost rag whose hobby was either photography or flute-playing.
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with no neck and an extraordinarily long nose. That ought to narrow it down.
 
Further to my previous Rubbish Theories:

Can't help but wonder if the rather contemplative expression (and lowered eyelids) on the figure's face is in imitation* of a standard historical expression on the part of subjects for painting: like, for instance, the expression on the young Catherine of Aragon's face below, perhaps meant to signify her piety and/or her innocence of worldly matters; or even her submissiveness in what was a male-dominated era ~

1737390449878.png


* I'm basically wondering if an old image i.e. a painting from past times has been overlaid upon a more contemporary image; hence, the Eyeworth photograph's figure.

See also: a typical portrayal of Saint Catherine of Siena:

1737390878318.png
 
Pizza Hut, 1571: an Elizabethan-era woman in the centre wears a mob cap similar to the one in the Eyeworth photograph ~

1737391964785.png
 
Steven said:
It's really curious how so many members see differing things; for example, I only ever see a rag or carrier bag whenever I look at the 'figure' from a distance, so to speak, and yet plenty of other folks see it as the likeliest explanation. Close-up and zoomed, I see either a statue or a potential ghost or perhaps some fraudulence: i.e. zoomed-in, it looks to me as if the figure's face - and not merely its supposed body - has been altered, and even the dark outline that surrounds some parts looks either suspicious or merely the play of light/sunshine. To me, when zoomed, the face looks like it's been overlaid with another, 'spookier' or expressionless face, and the altered colouring reinforces that impression. All in all, though, I'm still uncertain about everything, even my own impressions - whether it's genuine or not, I just cannot tell.

TL;DR Well that was a bloody waste of everyone's time, Sherlock Steve, Man of Convictions...
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That's the problem of course, we don't know how much the image has been manipulated like the photos of the Cottingley fairies which were altered considerably from the original prints.
 
SimonBurchell said:
A disposable T-shirt that can be thrown in a hedge in such a way as to create a highly suggestive yet completely ambiguous form when photographed by a passer-by. Preferably biodegradable, because I really don't approve of throwing things in hedges.
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I think cotton is biodegradable, isn't it? It might take a while, but it will eventually rot. Although some of my clothes don't even seem to make it past one run through the washing machine these days.
 
The other kind of pareidolia:

I was examining my own response to the 'Stone Girl' incident & photographs, in a critical way, and found that I couldn't resist being too narrow-minded simply because of my own interests: history, art and literature, ghost stories real and fictional, and especially what I consider to be the charm and elegance and grandeur of ghost stories generally. The first aspect - charm - is tied up in everything from a particular notion of England and its history as something often quaint and poignant, to a kind of moral justice in which victims of wrongdoing - ever returning as ghosts - remind us that they were once living, vibrant fellow humans whose lives frequently ended tragically. This perspective of mine even extends to fictional ghosts who are viewed as being vengeful and villainous; it's why the beautiful and charming illustration below - from Susan Hill's classic ghost story The Woman in Black - makes me overlook the ghost's malicious if futile revenge and instead consider her to be a victim of life, really, a victim of others and an object worthy of sympathy. This image especially subtly references all manner of things from Caspar Friedrich's paintings to the Reformation to a far more personal tale of one cast-out of society: a vignette of Jennet Humfrye's bereavement, sadness and loneliness. It also, perhaps, references van Gogh's tormented final painting before his suicide:

1737457523217.png


And so my responses to the mystery discussed in this thread reveals me not as the objective 'blank slate' expected of a true Fortean or investigator but someone who, from the beginning, was so captivated by the whole business that it was all too easy and tempting to mentally conjure up a backstory for the Stone Girl. All the ingredients for this fantasy were lying in wait for me - the weight of England's history during the Henrician and Elizabethan periods; the notion of quiet, rural charm, 'the green and pleasant land'; the poignancy of so many ghost stories of abandoned, betrayed or misused women whose ghostly presences continue to alert us to their lives and deaths; and of course our natural concern with mortality and posterity. All this and more coloured my thoughts and ideas, and it made me Romantic when I should ideally have been neutral, curious and discerning. This is the magic of Fortean phenomena and of imagination, certainly, but it is a fault - after all, I can't even be sure whether the whole Stone Girl thing is genuine, or a hoax or an innocent misinterpretation. Ghost stories, perhaps, reveal us as much as they reveal strange phenomena.
 
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Steven said:
The other kind of pareidolia:

I was examining my own response to the 'Stone Girl' incident & photographs, in a critical way, and found that I couldn't resist being too narrow-minded simply because of my own interests: history, art and literature, ghost stories real and fictional, and especially what I consider to be the charm and elegance and grandeur of ghost stories generally. The first aspect - charm - is tied up in everything from a particular notion of England and its history as something often quaint and poignant, to a kind of moral justice in which victims of wrongdoing - ever returning as ghosts - remind us that they were once living, vibrant fellow humans whose lives frequently ended tragically. This perspective of mine even extends to fictional ghosts who are viewed as being vengeful and villainous; it's why the beautiful and charming illustration below - from Susan Hill's classic ghost story The Woman in Black - makes me overlook the ghost's malicious if futile revenge and instead consider her to be a victim of life, really, a victim of others and an object worthy of sympathy. This image especially subtly references all manner of things from Caspar Friedrich's paintings to the Reformation to a far more personal tale one cast-out of society: a vignette of Jennet Humfrye's bereavement, sadness and loneliness. It also, perhaps, references van Gogh's tormented final painting before his suicide:

View attachment 86367

And so my responses to the mystery discussed in this thread reveals me not as the objective 'blank slate' expected of a true Fortean or investigator but someone who, from the beginning, was so captivated by the whole business that it was all too easy and tempting to mentally conjure up a backstory for the Stone Girl. All the ingredients for this fantasy were lying in wait for me - the weight of England's history during the Henrician and Elizabethan periods; the notion of quiet, rural charm, 'the green and pleasant land'; the poignancy of so many ghost stories of abandoned, betrayed or misused women whose ghostly presences continue to alert us to their lives and deaths; and of course our natural concern with mortality and posterity. All this and more coloured my thoughts and ideas, and it made me Romantic when I should ideally have been neutral, curious and discerning. This is the magic of Fortean phenomena and of imagination, certainly, but it is a fault - after all, I can't even be sure whether the whole Stone Girl thing is genuine, or a hoax or an innocent misinterpretation. Ghost stories, perhaps, reveal us as much as they reveal strange phenomena.
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None of us are truly objective. We can't be a proper 'blank slate' however much we might try or wish to be. We are all coloured by expectation and belief and experience. So someone who truly believes that they have seen a ghost might be unable to see past the 'it's a ghost', and someone who has been hoaxed (possibly engendering feelings of shame or embarrassment) will see a hoax.

We are the products of our past. We can't help it.
 
From that picture it looks as though the bush (with the rag/stone girl in) was VERY close to the photographer. From the original pictures it was hard to get perspective and the bush could have been on the other side of the bridge, but this makes it seem that she was almost standing right up against it.
 
catseye said:
From that picture it looks as though the bush (with the rag/stone girl in) was VERY close to the photographer. From the original pictures it was hard to get perspective and the bush could have been on the other side of the bridge, but this makes it seem that she was almost standing right up against it.
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This was the earliest Google Maps street view image I could find that was from the Winter. As it is from 2011 the plants will have changed but it provides a good perspective

The bridge railings have changed but is is definitely the location.,It is maybe relevant that the photographer is stood off the track and at a lower level as the ground drops away on both sides.
 
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Also, have not yet found the local paper that ran the story with photos first, so before the Sunday Express:

Pat Hudson’s Backstory

This was pulled straight from the New Forest Hounds website and is written by Pat Hudson, a member of the hunt.

“The photograph was taken at the end of a Saturday meet in January l987. The meet was at the gatehouse cottage by the entrance to Eyeworth Lodge. It was a frosty morning so the meet had been put back to midday. A friend was riding with me and as hounds left the meet, his wife ran over the bridge to take a photograph of hounds coming towards her. They went back to London where a few days later she had the film developed at a branch of Boots. The two photographs are shown just to indicate that the figure appeared within a few seconds, between the two photographs being taken. Who or what she is is open to discussion. All we are certain of is that there was no one there on the day that looked or was dressed remotely like her. The film has been looked at by an expert and it is definitely not a case of double exposure. Some people say she is holding a camera but, even if she is, how was it that no one saw a very grey person dressed in these clothes on the day?

I thought the photograph was interesting enough to take it to the local paper and they printed a story with the pictures which lead to an approach from an independent photographer who asked if he could buy the negatives from us. I suggested that we let him exploit the photographs, as he had the expertise, and we go 50%/ 50% on anything he made out of the story. He agreed to this and over the course of the next year a double page spread appeared in the Sunday Mirror, the National Examiner in the States ran a big story on it and a glossy Japanese magazine also picked it up – and that is but a few. I was sure we were going to enhance hunt funds by thousands of pounds and be able to do some much needed repairs to our property- if not a total rebuild! Alas, when I tried to get some of our 50%, the man had turned to straw – or maybe to a ghost!!”

https://weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2021/11/20/the-mysterious-stone-ghost-girl-of-eyeworth

It would be good to find this as it will help pin down when and where the enlarged and potentially enhanced third image originated
 
Judging from the positions of the horses/hounds, there was considerably more than 'a few seconds' between the two pictures. Depends what they mean by 'a few', but I would say up to a minute, could even be longer, as hounds will go out and come back a few times and if the horses aren't even moving in the first shot it could take them a while to get up to the bridge.
 
catseye said:
Judging from the positions of the horses/hounds, there was considerably more than 'a few seconds' between the two pictures. Depends what they mean by 'a few', but I would say up to a minute, could even be longer, as hounds will go out and come back a few times and if the horses aren't even moving in the first shot it could take them a while to get up to the bridge.
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Time for a farm vehicle carrying a load to pass through and get some plastic from fertiliser bags or whatever caught on the bush...?
 
What we REALLY need are photographs taken by other people attending the meet, of the bush from other angles. A lot of people take cameras to meets - I am surprised that nobody else present took any pictures that might throw some light (or rags) on the affair.
 
The two photographs are shown just to indicate that the figure appeared within a few seconds, between the two photographs being taken.

Am I misreading ^this^? It's a bit odd that Pat's friend's wife was, apparently, taking a photograph of (ostensibly) nothing.
 
Steven said:
The two photographs are shown just to indicate that the figure appeared within a few seconds, between the two photographs being taken.

Am I misreading ^this^? It's a bit odd that Pat's friend's wife was, apparently, taking a photograph of (ostensibly) nothing.
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I think she was taking a picture of the meet. Old cameras made it hard to judge the perspective, it probably looked a lot closer to her in real life than it looks in the picture.
 
Steven said:
Not sure if this helps in any way, but here's a monochrome version of the cropped image Paul posted a while back:

View attachment 86382

Sorry that it's bigger than the Statue of Liberty.
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Bearing in mind though that the pictures show that the bush was really quite close to the photographer, the whatever-it-is can't have been very big. Just about the same size as, say, oh, a rag...
 
What do we think about the presence, or absence, of the transparency we might expect to see if the figure were a ghost? (Though not all apparitions are transparent, of course). For this reason alone - to me, it's lack of 'ghostly transparency' - as well as other reasons, the photo strikes me as really strange: perhaps a mixture of crude fakery that's also...strangely well thought-out.
 
I've exhausted my miniscule brain with every possibility known to humankind, including Doc Shiels-type trickery. Currently, I'm wondering if the figure is perhaps a vintage doll; maybe a 1980s doll, perhaps even made of porcelain (and maybe with a face, taken from an old painting, overlaid upon the original doll's face).

Examples of 80s dolls, some of which are vaguely similarly-attired to the figure in the photo (and which can't help but appear quite spooky):

https://www.google.com/search?q=1980s doll white cap uk&udm=2&tbs=rimg:CYO9tkRCLu0CYVm8FNkz4k85sgIAwAIA2AIA4AIA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQuIIBahcKEwiA0Y-tx4eLAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBw&biw=1600&bih=773&dpr=1
 
Steven said:
I've exhausted my miniscule brain with every possibility known to humankind, including Doc Shiels-type trickery. Currently, I'm wondering if the figure is perhaps a vintage doll; maybe a 1980s doll, perhaps even made of porcelain (and maybe with a face, taken from an old painting, overlaid upon the original doll's face).

Examples of 80s dolls, some of which are vaguely similarly-attired to the figure in the photo (and which can't help but appear quite spooky):

https://www.google.com/search?q=1980s doll white cap uk&udm=2&tbs=rimg:CYO9tkRCLu0CYVm8FNkz4k85sgIAwAIA2AIA4AIA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQuIIBahcKEwiA0Y-tx4eLAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBw&biw=1600&bih=773&dpr=1
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You know, it's far less taxing on the brain if you view it as, oh, I don't know, a rag hanging on a bush.
 
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