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Picton Cemetery: Children’s ‘ghosts’ Picture

Submitted by Javier Ortega on January 20, 2010 – 11:22 AM15 Comments | 3,964 views


"Ghosts" seen in the background


Near Campbelltown Australia, lies the small town of Picton. Picton’s St. Mark’s Cemetery is used during nights for the local ghost tour (lizvincenttours.com.au/ghosttours.php).
What Renee English, a participant in the tour, captured on her camera has convinced her that there are ghosts roaming about the old cemetery. Ghosts of children in particular.

Renee told the press that there were no children inside the cemetery while they were snapping pictures. Her photograph clearly shows two small male children walking across the cemetery. Could they have been spirits captured on photograph? According to legend, the boys are the spirits of David Shaw and Blanche Moon. Two little boys that met an early tragic death.

I think we need to all approach this photograph (like all others) with an open mind, but not “too open that our brains fall out”.

If there are any local paranormal investigators, I would like to see if they would check the logs (if any) of the people who attended the tour on that night. Maybe cross-referencing this photo from others that the rest of the people in the group might have taken. Maybe unbeknown to the family, there was small children in attendance that night.



Click for larger zoom

Click for larger zoom




Full source: News.com.au

DOES this photograph show the figures of two children, born nearly a century apart, walking in their own paranormal playground?

The family who took this picture while on a ghost tour in Picton, NSW, swear there were no children inside the St Mark’s Cemetery.

Which begs the question: who, or what, is out there?

Local legend has it that the two children are David Shaw and Blanche Moon, who died 60 years apart.

Blanche was crushed to death in 1886 when a pile of sleepers that she and a number of children were playing on slipped.

David was the son of a minister who died in 1946 from polio.

The woman behind the lens of this mysterious photo, Renee English, said she was “a sceptic” before undertaking the ghost tour on January 9.

“When we were standing at the bank looking into the Cemetery I was just snapping away and making jokes about the whole thing and asking when the ghosts were going to come out,” the Port Macquarie resident said.

“I know that when I took that photo there was no-one else in the cemetery. The only people we saw were a family of four about 10 minutes later but those kids were clinging to their parents the whole time.

“When we uploaded our photos and saw the children all the hairs on my arm stood up and I just went cold all over.

“That night I couldn’t sleep at all and I’m never watching a scary movie again.

“I wasn’t a believer in ghosts, but now I’m intrigued.”

Local historian Liz Vincent conducted ghost tours in Picton, claimed to be Australia’s most haunted town, until her death last year. Since then, her husband John and daughter Jenny Davies have taken up the mantle.

“Picton’s just so haunted,” Ms Davies said. “We find people always love to see their photos afterwards because most of these things aren’t visible to the naked eye.”

One of the tour’s most popular figures is Emily, a lady who was hit and killed by a train in 1916 while taking a shortcut through the Redbank Range Tunnel, also known as the Mushroom Tunnel, to visit her brother.

Emily Bollard resided near the railway line and was a single woman aged in her 50s. Before taking her shortcut, she didn’t check the timetable and was hit in the tunnel by a train coming from Thirlmere. She died instantly.

“She likes to move among the participants and loves to touch their hair and body, particularly their arms and legs,” Ms Davies said.

“Those on the tour often say that they’ve also felt a cold wind blowing through the tunnel.”




Written by Javier Ortega - javier@ghosttheory.com
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15 Comments »

  • TomS says:

    This looks totally photoshopped to me and not well. The pixelation is so full and boxy. And the children seem to be in better resolution than the rest of the picture.
    I’m guessing a photo expert could debunk this quickly

  • Black George says:

    Well, considering which country it came from…;-)

  • Reichnan says:

    Very hard to tell really.

    Doesn’t look too convincing to me though.

    BTW STFU George.

  • Pete says:

    save the picture to your harddrive and use a hex editor to see if it has been photophopped. Adobe photoshop stamps the file when saved giving date and time it was edited. This is the only way to find out.

  • Greg May says:

    What’s more likely, 2 ghosts are in the photo (which is a huge leap and defies all logic and possible reasons, and in truth is proof that there is an after life) ………. or…….. it is in fact 2 real boys who were walking thru the cemetary by chance or ……. deliberately!! Pretty good advertising, believers will look beyond reason anyway.

  • Black George says:

    Reichnan said:

    BTW STFU George.

    Yikes! I thought the HTML spec has an asbestos tag but the comment system didn’t recognize it in my earlier post.

    I meant that as a joke (hence the ;-) ) because of the recent Barwon ghost girl picture; it wasn’t a serious implication. Had I not been kidding I would have posted something like

    JAVIER, YOU MUST NOT POST ANY MORE STORIES ABOUT GHOST PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AUSTRALIA. BECAUSE THAT ONE PHOTOGRAPH WAS SHOWN TO NOT BE A GHOST I THEREFORE BELIEVE THAT ALL FURTHER GHOST PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AUSTRALIA ARE ALSO BOGUS!!!!

    or something to that effect. And I would have omitted the winking smiley.

    Sincere apologies for the unintended offense.

  • pete.2 says:

    The picton highschool wears white shirts

  • strovachek says:

    Filename : ghost-children-zoom-300×95.jpg
    Comment : CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 90

    Error: Couldn’t open EXIF file.

    Using Exif Reader (http://www.rysys.co.jp/exifreader/jp/)this is the info what the picture has. The hex editor does not show more info either.
    Well….?

  • strovachek,

    I think we would need the original photo so that we could extract the metadata.

    I really think this is just someone taking a picture and not paying attention as two kids from the group wonder off.

    -Javier

  • Michael says:

    Honestly it looks Photoshopped to me. Look at the figure on the right, where it meets the tombstone. It looks like it partially overlaps the tombstone.

    Also the brightness of the two objects is different than their surroundings. If a flash went off (hard to tell unless you are able to get a hold of the original to read the exif info on it) then the tombstones would be more illuminated than they are.

    That and the scale just look off to me for some reason. I wish this was real, but my gut is telling me it’s not.

  • Cassie says:

    It’s true! I live in Picton and it’s very haunted!

  • Gary says:

    I was looking at Stephen Wagner’s site at paranormal.about.com and he had done some preliminary video work with the picture and it’s rather enlightening:
    http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostphotos/ig/Picton-Ghost-Photo-Analysis/Pecton-Ghost-Photo—Photo-1.htm

    This is looking fishy also…

  • Michael says:

    Nice find there Gary. I hadn’t thought about the similarities of the two figures. What I would give to see the original file to read the exif data.

    Did a bit of searching and was able to find this article on The Daily Telegraph.

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/are-these-the-ghosts-of-a-boy-and-girl-who-died-60-years-apart/story-e6freuy9-1225821838098

    In it there is a larger picture from which the image that we are familiar with was cropped from (explains the pixelation). Not sure if it’s much help, but thought I’d pass it on.

  • Gary says:

    Nice find Michael, it definately explains why the picture we have (as do other sites) is so heavily pixelated. The picture seen above is zoomed in from what I would consider, extreme range.

    I would like to see the original data also, but I do not think that is going to happen although the link I provided above already has me swaying to the doubtful side of this picture.

  • jbondo says:

    Gary, the first thing I thought was that it was the same child. I also noticed the cut off on the right figure but when I blew it up I could see the face extended past the cutoff so I figured it to be an anomaly of some sort.

    Seems we’re all on the same page here.

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