The ghost on the LOCKED pier: A-level student snaps ghoulish figure said to spook early morning.

DaltheJigsaw

What do you guys think: The ghost on the LOCKED pier: A-level student snaps ghoulish figure said to spook early morning anglers

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102023/The-ghost-pier-A-level-student-snaps-ghoulish-figure-said-spook-early-morning-anglers.html#ixzz1mZ0QZMqN

ThailandTom

As much as I believe in formless beings, I cannot give my opinion as a yes or a no here Leon. Today with photoshop so advanced and people thinking their lives will be better if they get a little fame etc, I just cannot say.

DaltheJigsaw

As much as I believe in formless beings, I cannot give my opinion as a yes or a no here Leon. Today with photoshop so advanced and people thinking their lives will be better if they get a little fame etc, I just cannot say.

Good point! But interesting nonetheless.

Honden

Hmm, that's pretty interesting...I'm curious if he published the 30 second timelapse film somewhere.

Sagat

SO THAT'S WHERE BILL HAS DISAPPEARED TO!!! :shake:

BILL, COME HOME! ME AND KATIE MISS YOU!

Zero

I have been in many places I wasnt supposed to be at times when I wasnt supposed to be there - it hardly looks ghostly - plus its the daily mail... interesting though - I have personally heard a 'ghost' crying and so has my mother - never knowingly seen one though...

B5C

The Daily Mail at it again! A blurry photo of an man is an ghost. lol

Sagat

Wow, that's clearly not a maintenance man. :coffee:

Telly03

When I think back at all the times I have been places I wasn't suppose to be, it usually involved fishing

ginab

I like the "comments" under the picture. One lady writes "If I didn't know better I would say thats my husband." That just made me LOL

Dakini

The interesting thing is that fishermen say they've seen a ghost on that pier in the early morning. If the statements in the article are to be believed, then this could be gen-you-wine. Why would none of the other time-lapse photos show a figure, though?

Cameras have been known to catch ethereal figures on film. This one looks too solid to be a ghost, doesn't he?

In case anyone was wondering what Sagat's first post means, his house was haunted by the woman who died in it. He refers to her as "Bill". Billie hasn't been around for awhile, though.

Hey, Sagat, did you ever try any of the strategies members suggested, to deal with Bill? Lighting candles, telling her she's dead and needs to go to the Light, or the "Other Side", or whatever?

zombiegirl

For me anyways, Photoshop has pretty much ruined any sort of reliability for a photo published on the internet, unfortunately.

And yeah, I've definitely been places that I wasn't supposed to be before... usually searching for ghosts though! When I was younger, my friends and I broke into an abandoned insane asylum that was shut down in the 80's. Sigh. Nothing happened though...

http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/ghost-Clevedon-Pier-caught-camera-student/story-15245762-detail/story.html

This article has the timelapse, but it's sorta impossible to really confirm it anyways...

federica

the saying "the camera never lies" was never more false.....

Actually, the earliest written reference to this phrase, was found here:

The earliest citation of the precise 'camera cannot lie' phrase we have found is from The Evening News, Lincoln, Nebraska, November 1895, complete with an intimation of the early doubts about the literal truth of the phrase:

"Photographers, especially amateur photographers, will tell you that the camera cannot lie. This only proves that photographers, especially amateur photographers, can, for the dry plate, fib as badly as the canvas on occasion."

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110510131922AAsW0SR

Even as early as 1895 - and it seems orally, before that, people did not give 100% credence to photographic evidence.....

Cinorjer

Would you like to know a true skeptical set of thoughts upon seeing the picture and reading the information?

First, before I even clicked on the link, I suspected what I'd see was a fuzzy, blurry picture. This sort of picture is often used as "evidence" of ghosts or UFOs due to the pareidolia effect. This is an optical illusion where the mind fools itself by seeing something into truly random patterns, like burn marks on toast looking like Jesus. And low and behold, we have a fuzzy, out of focus image where the blobs and shapes look like someone standing and holding onto a rail. To say it couldn't be anything else is confusing your perceptions with reality. The world is full of optical illusions, some intentional and some accidental.

Next I read the information about the picture, looking for information about the way the picture was taken. The picture is blurry because it's a cropped, extreme blowup of a picture taken from a distance. Again, this often leads to mysterious images that appear on a photograph. It was from a series of pictures taken at 30 second intervals, and we are told the image was not there in the before and after. We are not shown the before and after pictures, though. We have to take his word for it. And 30 seconds is more than enough time for someone wandering around to walk in and out of the picture.

But in reading the information given, there is a simple explanation, one that is so obviously the likely answer that we don't have to go any further. It says the "pier was closed to the public at that time of the morning". So what? There's a park down the road from me that's closed to the public overnight until 9 am, and people are always walking around in it and ignoring the sign and locked gate that's easy to slip around.

We're supposed to believe it's not common for people to ignore a posted sign and simply stroll onto the pier, during a time when there aren't many people around? The man taking the picture was far away, so he could not actually see if anyone was walking around the closed pier. So the obvious solution to the mystery is that someone walked out onto a pier during a time it was supposed to be closed to the public and looked out over the rail when the camera took the picture.

All the rest of the information is typical misdirection of ghost tales everywhere, and further details will be invented as the story gets passed around. So a new ghost story is born.