The ghost photo that haunted Gen X

Ghost-nerd Gen Xers such as myself had some great ghost photos to scare ourselves with as kids. There was the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, the ghost faces floating in the water beside the SS Watertown, the ghost(s) ascending the Tulip Staircase and some others.

But for me, and a lot of others I reckon, the scariest ghost photo of them all was what's known as the Chinnery Backseat Ghost. And it was right there in our middle school library, with the apparition's unforgettable glowing eyes sure to give us nightmares. It was one of the photos inside The World of the Unknown: Ghosts, which was written by Christopher Maynard and published by Usborne in 1977. We had this book in the amazing C.E. McCall Middle School library in Montoursville. In later years, the book became extremely difficult to find on the used market, probably because no one ever let go of it. But Usborne finally issued a reprint edition in 2019, allowing many middle-aged folks to revisit cherished spooky memories of their youth. 

And one of those spooky memories is the photo that shows a person who should not, could not, be there. As the caption states: "This picture is one of the most puzzling ghost photographs ever taken. The woman in the back seat was supposed to be in her grave when the photograph was taken. The driver's wife took this picture of her husband sitting in the car. She claims there was nobody in the car except her husband. Yet the photograph clearly shows the figure of a woman — her mother — who had died a week before. Experts say that the film has not been altered in any way."

Of course, like every other paranormal or cryptozoological phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s that brought me joy and wonder, this photograph has been pretty thoroughly debunked, with a double-exposure being more likely than deception through fakery. Just one example: Blake Smith penned an excellent piece for Skeptic in 2015, concluding "This particular image has been in 'top ghost photo' lists for years now, but I think we can now take down this exhibit in the gallery of ghosts with some confidence, and put it to rest."

An essay on the website Anomalies tries to keep a more open mind, asking, "But what if there is no explanation? After all, if the spirit of a dead person decided to impress its own image onto a frame of film, what would that look like? And would it be fair to expect such an attempt to look perfect on the one and only time that spirit tried it?"

Personally, I've come to the firm conclusion that ghosts don't exist. Or, at least, they don't exist in any way that's capable of making their presence known to living people through visual, auditory or physical means. That's a bummer, because I want to believe there are supernatural things out there that we can't fully comprehend. And ghosts and hauntings are a lot more appealing than much of the stuff going on in the (scary) real world right now. But, in good news, being a nonbeliever hasn't changed the pleasure I still get from reading ghost stories and looking at ghostly images that seem unexplainable.

Related links

• 1979 middle school book: "The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401"
• Book cover: "Haunted Britain"
• Who wants to join me in buying a crumbling, haunted British estate?
• Saturday's postcard: Ghost toddler
• 1928 headline and spooky article: "Radio 'Ghost' Balks Experts"

And that's just a sampling. Who knows what you'll find if you dust off the spooky corners of Papergreat's archive of 3,800-plus posts.