Post by pixi on Oct 18, 2005 4:09:43 GMT -5
Steve Blackburn (steveblackburn@alltel.net) of Toccoa, Georgia, took this photograph with a Polaroid I-Zone pocket camera on December 23, 2000. The I-Zones have a focus range of 2 to 8 feet, a shutter speed of 1/125 sec and three aperture settings: indoor, cloudy and sunny. Film speed is ISO 640 and consists of 12-shot pocket sticker and pocket film. Size of the printed image is 1.3/8" x 7/8". It is easy to create a double exposure with the I-Zone, which is exactly what Blackburn accidentally did-- but it was a double exposure with a ghostly twist.
According to Blackburn, he loaded the camera himself and took the first picture on the roll of one of his twin daughters. The print did not turn out. Blackburn says he has owned the camera for some time and had previously exposed rolls with no malfunctions. He attempted a second picture of his other daughter. "To the left of her," he writes, "is the double-exposed image [of her sister] from the first picture, but who is on the right of her (leaning down)? Every other picture on the roll turned out okay, but we just can't explain the third image in the photo. The girls were the only ones in the room at the time and...nobody here resembles the other image....Yesterday (1/5/01), I received word from a Polaroid representative and they are also baffled by [the image]."
The photo appears to show a person in profile with his or her arm extended to touch Blackburn's daughter. Although on first glance, the figure appears to be female, the "hair" and "body" of the apparition are probably folds in the fabric of the sofa and illumination from the flash. What may argue for a real "unknown" captured on film is that the ghost's hand does touch the girl's arm exactly where it should if the figure were a real person--a difficult double exposure to fake so precisely. But without knowing the pose his first daughter was in, we can't be sure if what appears to be an arm is actually not a vestige of the first picture. What remains, however, is a profile of an unrecognized individual that does not appear to share the same angle of illumination as Blackburn's daughter.
