Ghost photobombs

There are several possibilities, including:

1. This is a straight-out hoax, in which the image was photoshopped (or otherwise digitally faked) by somebody - the girl, her mom, her brother, or somebody else.
2. The photo is mundane - there really was a real person in the photo that wasn't a ghost, but either nobody noticed him, or somebody is telling lies about not noticing him.
3. The "ghost" image is an example of pareidolia, and in fact the photo shows no man.
4. The supernatural is real and this was a real true compelling ghost.

Based on the photo alone, we might be able to conclude that option 1 is the most likely explanation. To that end, see the link I posted above. But if the photoshopping is an expert-enough job, analysis of the photo alone might not uncover the fraud. That would require a closer examination into the circumstances and personalities and history of the people involved.

There's no way we can find out if 2 is true, unless the guy in the photo or somebody else who was there comes forward to say he was there. That is, without more evidence, we can't rule out option 2.

To me, option 3 seems unlikely on the face of it. I've taken a look at the photo and I think it would be stretching things to try to come up with a natural way in which the "ghostly" image could have been produced.

And if 4 is true then we have to radically re-think our scientific understanding of the world in order to incorporate astral beings who can nevertheless somehow interact with the physical world. The claim that this is a ghost is an extraordinary claim, so the evidence for 4 rather than 1,2 or 3 will have to be extraordinary, too, before we should accept this explanation.

It is clear that there is no extraordinary evidence that the photo shows a ghost. So, there's no rational reason to conclude that it shows a ghost.

Given the errors in the photograph, such as the incorrectly lit "ghost", the seams around the edges of the image region where the "ghost" appears, and other evidence of photoshopping or other image manipulation, my money is on option 1 here. I'm also impressed by the observation that no 13 year old takes a selfie on the phone and then doesn't look at it until hours after the event. Yet we are supposed to accept that exactly that happened here.

Obviously, Magical Realist will have taken considerable care to establish the bona fides of the girl and her family here before concluding that the image is extraordinary evidence of the supernatural. So, I'll now wait for him to present his compelling evidence that forces us to accept the "witnesses" statements at face value.

This puts your personal psychology into sharp relief, Magical Realist.

There is no "obvious" solution to the problem of this photo - unless the family comes out and admits to faking the photo after all. If things were "obvious" about this photo then either the ghost story would have been immediately debunked, or it would have been immediately hailed universally as the long-awaited proof of the supernatural. Instead, lots of newpapers picked up the story and used it as "what do you think about this?" click bait. And that's how you came across it in the first place.

It is actually you, MR, who is denying the obvious: that you can't rule out fakery here, or even a simple mistake on the part of the people who were there when the photo was taken.

 

The bar for something like this to totally convince you is about a centimetre off the ground, if that. All you need is for somebody to write "look! A ghost!" on a web page somewhere and you'll go "Wow! Gee Wiz. Who'da thought it?"

As Dave said, it could be just the girl. Or it could be that somebody had the idea to get the publicity and the rest of the family decided to go along with it. At the very least, they got their 15 minutes of fame out of it. Maybe they made some money, too.

You have no way of assessing the credibility of the people involved with this photo. You're just guessing about that. Wishing, actually.

Yes, lots of these kinds of photos "happen". We don't need to tell you that. You waste a lot of your internet time on this nonsense.

100 fakes are no more convincing than 1 fake. Lots of people making mistakes or telling lies doesn't strengthen the case for ghosts.

If there was one truly compelling piece of photographic evidence for ghosts, then we might be more inclined to accept other ghostly photos as genuine, but unfortunately all "unsolved" ghostly photos are about as hard to authenticate as this one. And there's also a long and not-so-proud history of such photos being conclusively "debunked".

You have only a third-hand report to say that the girl was crying. The mother told a reporter that story, and the reporter told you. You have zero way of knowing there isn't hoaxery involved here. Not without doing any further investigation. But you're never interested in scratching below the surface on these things anyway. You've already made up your mind before you plug "ghost" into your search engine.

There's no reason the grandparents would have to be in on the hoax - or even the mother, necessarily. The fact that they vouch for the girl is to be expected. The mom might even conceivably and understandably decide not to tell the truth if she found out about her daughter's hoax after publication of the story.

I never cease to be amazed at how easily you suck up this rubbish, Magical Realist. You go all wide eyed with wonder and credulity whenever you get the merest whiff of the word "ghost" or "UFO". Your brain switches immediately into neutral and I guess your little heart just flutters happily at the thought of another item for your collection.

 

Oh no! Such a thing would be impossible. And we know this mother wouldn't tell a lie to get publicity and possibly money, or to protect her daughter's reputation. Because we magically know that mom is a fine, upstanding, honest citizen. We don't even need to investigate her background or even talk to her. Not when we have Magical Realist's sixth sense for when people are telling the truth or a lie. It's almost supernatural, the skill with which MR just knows people are genuine.

 

That's possible. But if true, I admire his consistency in playing the role of person with a deep psychological need to believe in this stuff. Such a deep need, in fact, that he is apparently willing to turn off his brain in order to avoid having his confidence in this nonsense battered. This is serious denial of the obvious, and I can imagine it would be hard to fake that consistently and believably.

 

That's possible, although if that's the case he still looks under-lit given the bright sunlight. Although who knows? Maybe it was shady in front of the truck. But I think it would have been hard for the girl not to notice him if he was standing in front of the truck while she was facing the front windscreen.

We don't even know exactly where this was supposed to be, so we don't know how isolated a place it was, even.

Given how easy it would be to photoshop this (there are apparently apps for creating your own "ghost photobombs"), that seems very likely in this case.

Actually, I'd be interested in hearing MR's opinion about how many photos created with a ghost app he think might have passed muster on the "ghost hunter" websites as "legitimate" ghost photos. There must be literally thousands of such photos floating around the internet.

 

What? Me impugn a little girl as a hoaxer? No. I have made no accusations. I don't have the evidence. I merely raise the possibility and point out that the chances of your preferred explanation being correct are considerably lower than the chances of one of my suggestions being correct, given the usual run of these things.

I'm interested in true mysteries, and there are plenty of those out in the world to be examined while you waste your time trawling UFO sites, MR. Don't you ever get bored of all this ghost and UFO stuff? Doesn't it get kind of the same after you've seen your first few hundred claimed ghost photos? And don't you ever start to notice a pattern?

Exactly. Fakers and mistakers are rampant when it comes to ghosts and UFOs.

I'm afraid that when people don't turn their brains on they waste their lives on stuff that isn't important. We only get to live once.* Why waste your one life on bullshit?

Innocently, eh?

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* Probably.