Haunted Harborne

Well, that may be the last of the training over, but the memories of Harborne will always haunt me. Especially after looking through the photographs I took of the place :op

It's certainly got an interesting vibe, as have a number of other places that have led to strange and unusual photographs (or 'tricks of the light' as some might prefer ;) ). For instance, about eleven years ago, I went on a family holiday with my dad and aunt to Crete. We took a tour out to Spinalonga, an island formerly used as a leper colony where people were sent to die. A dry well was used as a mass grave, but the villagers themselves often lived for many years, building shops and trading with the mainland. Much of it had crumbled away, but enough remained to understand that you were walking through a village Even my dad admitted there was a definite presence about the place.

What I didn't know until recently though, was that something very odd happened to my aunt's camera whilst we were there. When she went to get it developed, all of the photographs from before the island, and all of the photographs after the island, came out fine. But not one single photograph from the island itself. They were all just blank. Dad corroborated this story. It was perhaps surprising how unsurprising that was - the place really was quite 'interesting'.

When I started discussing such things I started meeting other people with stories to tell. For instance, a professional photographer called Leigh came up with this picture taken at Nine Ladies, which he swears blind is not doctored. He felt that he had an interaction with the genius loci:

In addition to this, another bloke took this one of a bluebell wood in Wales:

Close up:

Both those and the following were taken with digital cameras. Personally, I find fascinating because you'd imagine less room for error. Err...even though it relies on hundreds of minute electronic connections all ticking over smoothly :op Although, I suppose the influence from electro-magnetic fault lines could be greater than celluloid?

The photo I took was snapped on 8th September 2007 at Harborne Hall in Birmingham, whilst on a Training Skills workshop. It's fair to say that I didn't sleep well, tossing and turning most of the night. From what I've heard, that's common for many people there. The following anomaly occurred only on this photograph. None of the other photos are odd:

I ran it past a friend who played with it in Paintshop Pro and affirmed it wasn't internal on the camera. She dimmed it down a bit so that you can see more clearly:

There's a really big one, bottom-right of the window, and one under the bed :op She also found this link which suggests they're just dust particles caught in the light... Love to hear from anyone who has taken similar snaps of weird and wonderful things. Feel free to post a link in the comments.