Ghosts Are Attracted to the Familiar; & What’s With the Feet?
The death of a child is difficult to contemplate, because they were cut off from a lifetime of expectations and experiences. I thought of this as I examined some photos that I took around Christmas of Colonial Williamsburg, because I discovered that amongst a group of interpreters in conversation, my photo had an extra person in it that was not visible to the naked eye—a small child. What appears to be a little girl, three to four years old, in 18th century clothing is standing right behind one of the oblivious interpreters in the group. She seems to be clinging to the back of the coat of the costumed interpreter like a security blanket; perhaps the person and/or the clothing remind her of her mother or grandmother. This well-dressed child was no doubt the offspring of one of Williamsburg’s wealthier families, and yet she missed out of a lifetime of all this world has to offer, whether a delight or dismay, and remains forever a child.
In the photo below, a group of interpreters from Colonial Williamsburg gather to talk outside a building. One of the women has her back to you, and you can see the ephemeral ghost of a small child clinging to the back of her coat. The 2nd photo is a crop of the first so you can see the child ghost better. I’ve black out their faces because I did not have written permission to use their likenesses. Note that the little girls head is facing the back of the woman’s skirt while the shoe is pointed in the opposite direction. (This photo was taken during the Christmas season, hence the decorations on the storefront.)
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I took three photos of the group of interpreters, and in the second one the woman went her separate way from the group and evidently the ghost child followed her. But in the third photo I noticed another ghost making its ephemeral way towards the group, with only the shoes visible and the rest just a streaking evanescent light. This called to mind two things, and one I had mentioned in the previous paragraph. Out of three different photographs, two different ghosts appeared in two of them—are the ghosts attracted to the costumes? I took photos of other groups of tourists that night, and no ghosts showed up in those photos—so is the familiar clothing what draws them?
In the 3rd photo of the same group (minus the woman with the ghost child at her back), off to the right another ghost makes its way to the interpreters, with the shoes plainly visible but the rest of the body just a streaking, evanescent light. Again, I cropped the photo so that you can see the ghost better.
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Something else I was reminded of when looking at the third photo—I’m starting to accumulate photos where the only recognizable part of the apparition is the feet. The rest of the photo sometimes will have a blur of streaking light, but the shoe, and sometimes the lower part of the leg are clearly visible. In one case, I was looking for 19th century ghosts in the Lee Hall area and discovered a very modern shoe. The apparition appeared next to a woman, and I would later learn from her that she had lost her son ten years to the day that I took the photo, and she was able to identify the apparition standing next to her by the footwear—it was her son’s work shoe. In another case, feet appeared next to the Courthouse of 1770 without any bodies or even streaks of light, which makes me wonder why they can make their feet visible and not the rest of their body. Is it deliberate, or perhaps do they lack the (electromagnetic) energy to make a full body apparition? In a photo of people leaving the Bruton Parish Church, I captured a very tall man towering over two people in front of him. Once again, his upper body and head appeared to be a white mist, but you can plainly see his shoe and lower pant leg. At the William Pitt Store I photographed another anomaly—this time the apparition appears without either a head or feet—a leg without a foot appears to be hovering above the floor. What can I say other than just labeling this alternate reality as weird paranormal. So the next time you look at your photos, you may want to look down; you may find an extra pair of legs and feet that do not belong to anybody, just a mystic remnant from somewhere in time.
This cropped photo of the Courthouse of 1770 shows the disembodied lower legs and feet of 18th century ghosts:
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Here’s a very tall ghost leaving the Bruton Parish Church with the head and torso a misty white light but the shoe and the lower leg is clearly visible.
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The following photo shows the entrance to the William Pitt Store with a customer (not a ghost) looking at the store display. The second photo, taken about a minute later, shows a woman entering the store on the right with a headless and footless ghost hovering in the same spot the woman occupied just a minute before. This ghost is wearing modern and not 18th century clothing:
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Check out other ghost photo blogs include the following: the ghosts in the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA; the ghosts in Julep’s Restaurant in Richmond, Va; ghosts in a Las Vegas casino; dark hooded apparitions in Colonial Williamsburg, the ghosts of Merchant Square, Williamsburg, the ghosts of Jerome, AZ (2 parts), the ghosts of Relics Restaurant, Sedona, AZ, the ghosts of the Red Garter, Williams, AZ, ghosts in the Barnes & Noble Bookstore that featured my book, Williamsburg’s most haunted: the Peyton Randolph House, the ghosts of Antelope Canyon in Page, AZ, one of America’s most haunted roads: Crawford Road, near Yorktown, VA, Civil War ghosts in my house, and photographic proof that ghosts are attracted to children, and other paranormal posts.
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After 2 years of research, a lot of experimentation, and over 10,000 photographs, check out the world’s first groundbreaking photographic study of ghosts: Haunted, Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography (Part 1) available at both Schiffer Publishing and at Amazon, nominated for consideration in the nonfiction category for the 19th annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards:
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Amazon: http://amzn.com/0764350609
Part 2 of this book features the largest number of ghosts ever captured in a single camera shot, as well as several photos of apparitions that look alien to our world. Here is the link:
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Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/0764355724
Tim Scullion is a published author, photographer, and musician. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree Cum Laude. In addition to the book mentioned above, Tim has written a novel, a series of instruction books on the guitar, a children’s book (all available on Amazon) and has a photo-essay published by the University of Virginia in the book Troubled Times Companion, Vol. III.
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