Everyone agrees the photograph shows a figure of a man standing by a window.
What they don't agree on is...who and what, it is.
Mary McDonald, member of the board of the Richards-DAR House in Mobile, guesses, "It's a male figure, and, probably Captain Richards."
Captain Charles Richards is the man who built the mansion in 1860. He and his wife raised twelve children there.
Mary McDonald says some members of her group who give tours of the home have reported hearing children laughing near the stairs and seeing the image of a lady.
McDonald says, "We have had reports of a woman being seen looking out of a window in the back corner of this bedroom and has been seen from the driveway. I myself has not seen anything or heard anything, but that doesn't mean others haven't."
She admits to being very skeptical, but she was here the stormy night the picture was taken. A group of "ghost chasers" from Montgomery were checking the house for paranormal activity. A magazine reporter for Mobile Bay Monthly and a photographer were there to watch the ghost chasers work. Dennis Holt, the man with the camera, says they all sat in the dark in the Master Bedroom for a long time. The group found some electrical and temperature anomalies, then, they all moved on.
Holt stayed back...he wanted to take a picture of the empty room because of something the group told him, "Always when you leave the room, look back into the room because many times that's when you see something." He moves to the doorway, re-enacting his movements that night. "I stood right here, take about a five second exposure. Now during this five second exposure, there are two bursts of lightning. Then I turned it off. One exposure, folded it up and walked downstairs."
Later, when he was showing the pictures in the camera...the image of the man by the window popped up.
Holt says, "...and we can't explain it. But there is person standing in the window, and there was no one there what I taking the picture...I've taken this picture, put it on the computer with several other photographers, blown it up, changed the curves, levels, done everything we can to determine what it is and no one can come up with an explanation."
Meteorologist Jere Hough is standing by the window in the picture.?"Now I am very close to the position where the image showed up on the photograph." Hough looks skyward, "Captain Charles Richards I don't know if you're here or not, but if you are, you're on County Road 5, in the DeTonti Square Historic District of Mobile, and I'm Jere Hough, News 5."
Mary McDonald says her group is split on whether the ghostly publicity will help or hurt their tourist business. For more information about visiting the Richards-DAR House, go to www.richardsdarhouse.com
More information about the photograph can be found in the July 2007?issue of Mobile Bay Monthly. Their website is www.mobilebaymonthly.com
(Original headline: Ghost Image? )
