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Every spring I take a group
of sixth graders to Washington, DC. I learned from my first trip that
I needed to carry a digital camera along with my regular camera. Most
every place that you go has extremely old paintings, and sunlight and
flash photography fades the paintings. With a digital camera I could turn
on and off the flash at will and still be able to take the picture. It
was by using the digital camera I was also able to take an usually large
amount of pictures that I could copy onto a CD for my students. The trip
of April 2001, took 126 pictures. (HP Photo Smart 215 camera with a Kodak
64K flash disk.) Out of all 126 pictures, only one came out strangely.
The trip of 2001, I had one student who had broken her leg and had to
be wheeled in her wheelchair. The great thing about this, to me, was that
while everyone else had to go through the main entrance, she and I got
to go through back doors and up business elevators, bypassing all the
lines. While we were waiting in the rotunda of the US Capitol for the
rest of the group to make it up the stairs and through security, I took
several pictures of the girls, the paintings on the walls, and the top
of the dome. I noticed that most of my group had entered into the rotunda
and I wanted to take a candid shot of them walking in to the Statue Room.
I took the picture just as a woman walked right in front of the camera.
Grumbling, I deleted the picture, took ten additional steps backwards,
and looked both ways to make sure no one walked in front of me again.
I waited for two people to step out of my view before I quickly took the
picture. I smiled, and hurried to catch up with the group, being the last
one still standing in the rotunda. As I passed the middle of the room,
I had a creepy feeling that I walked too close to someone. I remember
saying excuse me; however, I looked back to see who I had brushed, but
there was no one there. I chalked it up as I'm being silly. Clearly I
was the only one left in the huge room. I hurried into the statue room
and met up with the kids. Some of them asked to see the pictures I had
taken, so I switched the camera to video mode and flipped through the
last few photos. I noticed that there was a blue blob in the shape of
a man in one of the pictures, and I remember being upset because he was
directly in the middle of the picture. I started to delete the picture,
but decided that I better keep it because I didn't have time to go back
and remake it.
We exited the Statue Room and were led down some steps to the museum and
gift shop. I remember having a very uneasy feeling on the steps. I felt
as if I would slip and fall. The only thing I could think of was that
I was going slip and crack my head upon the steps. I also thought "How
many people have fallen down these?" And of course, my imagination
got the best of me and I thought I saw droplets of blood on the steps.
Upon the second look, I shook my head and thought I'm scaring myself.
Half way down, I had the uncontrollable urge to take a picture of the
stairwell. I lifted the camera to take the picture and then thought, "Why
do I want a picture of a stairwell?" I then turned around and took
a picture of my students on the landing below.
Skipping ahead in the story... We arrived back home VERY early Tuesday
morning, so I was extremely tired the next day at school. When I got home,
I crashed, not even wanting to turn on the computer and download the pictures
that I took. On Wednesday evening, I finally had a chance to sit down
and work with the pictures. My camera downloads them all into a "photo
album" and you have to click on each and every one to give it an
unique name and sort them into categories, preparing file folders to create
the CD for the kids. I was about 2/3 of the way through the pictures when
I had a fright. When I enlarged the thumbnail of the rotunda, I saw something
quite unusual. It wasn't that there was a man in the center of the picture
that scared me, it was that I saw my two students through his chest and
the light of the Statue Room through his neck. To make matters worse,
his expression down right scared me. He looked like he could kill someone.
After hyperventilation, I called my mother. I told her that I was going
to e-mail her something and I wanted her to call me back and tell me what
she saw, that I thought I might be seeing things. She called me back in
the same state I was. Her suggestion was that maybe it was double exposed
since I had to take that picture twice, but you can't double expose a
digital picture! I called my dad, the big computer expert of the family,
and he couldn't explain it either. I sent the picture to our tech support
person at our school and asked him to explain to me how I could have taken
the picture. I thought that if it could be explained, then it really wasn't
a ghost.
I eventually sent the picture to Kodak, who said if it was a problem with
the flash disk, then more than one would have had transparent people.
Hewlett Packard said it wasn't camera failure for the same reason. They
suggested that I send the pictures to the International Ghost Hunters
Society. They try and prove the picture is fake, and by failing they prove
that it is a ghost. They said that it is a genuine apparition.. one of
two full body apparitions to ever be taken. After having this experience,
I fully believe that God sends messages to us not only through angels,
but through the deceased. It also confirms my belief that someone isn't
truly dead when they die.. just their body. The only question that I have
left is.... If I HAD taken the picture of the stairwell in the Capitol,
what or who would I have captured with my camera... and what were they
trying to tell me? I'll never know, but now I take my digital camera everywhere!
lisaalex@juno.com
Lisa
Alexander
1061 Euharlee Rd
Woodland Middle School at Euharlee
Kingston, Ga. 30145
LAlexander@bartow.k12.ga.us
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