Fortean Photography...Our Haunted Wedding
My friends Tobias & Emily Wayland of the Singular Fortean Society seemed to have had an uninvited guest at their recent wedding reception. They graciously allowed me to share it with you:
This month’s installment of Fortean Photography hits close to home as it took place at our wedding. We had a mysterious--and somewhat spooky--guest appear at the reception.
We decided to have our wedding and reception at the haunted AL. Ringling Mansion on Friday the 13th in October. After all, how else would people like us celebrate our spiritual and legal union?
A guest and trusted friend was taking casual photographs on her iPhone as most do at weddings. Tobias and I had either just started or finished our first dance when the picture was taken. Our guest couldn’t help but notice a strange, white figure wearing black appear behind our ring bearer in a photo. Naturally, she sent the image over to us to look at.
I’ve been examining and trying to debunk this image since I received it. Since it is from a trusted source, I know it is not a hoax. I brought the image into photoshop and inversed the image, since I felt the figure was much paler than any of the other people in the photograph. When inversed, regular skin tones turn bluish--the figure turned solid black indicating he was pure white.
Now, the first logical explanation is that this was one of our guests or a mansion employee that was older and had white hair. The owner of the mansion confirmed that he did not have any employees of that appearance. He estimated that the height of the figure was 6’0” based on his knowledge of the space and where the figure was in the photo. We compared these thoughts with our guests and no one of that description came to mind.
In a “live photo” version of the photograph you can see the figure cross the room from behind us over to behind the ring bearer. Our guest who took the photo also mentioned she does not remember seeing the figure standing behind Tobias and me before getting to that side of the room. Unless you have an iPhone, the live version of this image is impossible to share. The idea that our guest did not see the figure and it suddenly appeared and moved across the room is puzzling. The photograph and live photo are not of the best quality as it is an older version of an iPhone (pre iPhone 7) and it was captured in a dark room.
I asked a fellow photographer, a ghost tour guide, and the mansion owner for their opinions on the photograph for the sake of being thorough--no answers came from my inquiries. The mansion owner asked a medium friend who seemed to believe it was a lost relative visiting. Other thoughts were that it could be a butler given the dark “suit-like” clothing the figure is wearing. All of these are speculation, of course, as we truly do not understand ghosts. If we knew what they were, they would not be paranormal.
It’s still possible that our ghost is a guest, but when it comes down to it I cannot know for certain. I will say that it's fun to think we had a ghost pay a visit at our wedding. They weren’t invited, but they were more than welcome.
Unusually Yours,
Emily
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Glowing Creature in the Mississippi Delta
Buras, Louisiana - 2017-11-04: I routinely check my surveillance cameras at my other home when I go there at least once a month. I do this to see if anyone was around my house when I'm not there. The motion sensor lights are activated when something walks by and usually it's coyotes or raccoons.
So when I went down to my home in Buras on November 6th and was playing back the videos recorded by my surveillance cameras. I noticed a strange image in one of the videos for camera 3 on the night of November 4th. I checked the videos that were recorded earlier that night and found the one where the entity appeared. It seemed to fly into the area just in front of camera 3 and attach some how to the overhang of the roof. The thing was glowing and moving from time to time. It was visible from a little after 6 pm on the 4th of November until the next morning just at daylight. It was to the side of the camera so I could not see a better picture of it.
I checked the videos for the night of the 5th of November and the entity came back but was in front of camera 4. It appeared a little after 7 pm. It was glowing real bright and moving around. It stayed in that area from what I could tell on the video till about 9:30 pm
I checked all the videos going back till the middle of October and did not see it in any of those. In the videos you can see gecko's crawling about on the soffit behind the thing.
I have no idea of what it was but sure was not an animal since it had the ability to glow brightly. It looked like something not of this earth and is the reason I am reporting it.
FYI: Buras is located about 60 miles south of New Orleans close to the mouth of the Mississippi River. - MUFON
NOTE: No images or video provided. Lon
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Familiar Ghost Riding His Bicycle
Dear Lon,
I do not count myself as being psychic any more than most people. But I am certain that I did see a ghost in broad daylight whilst a passenger in my niece's car. She had picked up my daughter and me from our home and we were on our way to her home. It was just a normal day like any other and the conversation was not anything to do with the subject of ghosts. We had been just five minutes in the car and had turned at the lights when I saw a man on his bicycle riding on the pavement. He was as real as any living person but I knew that in his case it could not be, this old friend had been dead for more than a few years. I recognized him straight away. I saw his face which had a look of sheer pleasure about it, his white hair, and I remember thinking to myself he looks healthier now than he did in life. He wore the same sort of dark clothes he often wore and I remember thinking look at his legs. I thought that because he had once had an accident and had nearly lost a leg but they managed to save it although it had little muscle on that leg, that's why he rode everywhere. He was wearing those old fashioned bicycle clips that you wore when wearing long trousers. My abiding memory is the sheer pleasure I saw in his face. All of this only took a few seconds and we were passed him. Where I had seen him was right where he used to live, and I had often driven passed there myself and never seen him. He was not even in my thoughts when I saw him. I remember saying to my niece that I had just seen...she said that she had seen no one on a bike. She remembered him herself and would have recognized him had she seen him. My daughter did not see him either though she would not have known him. I know it was not mistaken identity, I can only think that he appeared for me to see him, as if he was saying that being on the other side is just fine don't worry. RL
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