![\"Wem](\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/wemhall.jpg\" "\\"Wem")
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On November 19, 1995, a resident of the town of Wem in England took some photos of the old town hall. One image shows a little girl gazing placidly out through an open door.<\/p>\n
This isn’t at all frightening until you learn that the photos were taken while the building was burning to the ground.<\/p>\n
The Wem Hall Ghost is one of the more convincing “ghost photos” ever taken, not only because the face looks so clearly human but because the fire would have prevented a real person from wandering into the picture. It even comes ready-made with a likely suspect for the ghost: A girl named Jane Churm who was responsible for a fire in the town in 1677.<\/p>\n
Others just see a really stunning example of pareidolia<\/I>, humans’ tendency to see faces in completely natural formations (which also explains various holy figures’ habit of appearing in mildew stains and potato chips). A couple of skeptics weigh in here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even though the face in this photo really really<\/em> looks like a face, the closeup<\/a> puts me in mind more than a little of the Face on Mars<\/a>. It looks human because our brains are wired to interpret it that way. (There’s also the “monkeys and typewriters” issue: Given the sheer number of photos taken around the world every day, there are bound to be a few that catch mundane items at unusual angles.)<\/p>\n So what do you think is the more likely explanation? Falling debris caught at just the right moment, or a glimpse of The Other Side?<\/p>\n Either way, I think it’s a heck of a creepy photograph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On November 19, 1995, a resident of the town of Wem in England took some photos of the old town hall. One image shows a little girl gazing placidly out through an open door. This isn’t at all frightening until you learn that the photos were taken while the building was burning to the ground. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1882"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1902,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions\/1902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![closeup<\/a> puts me in mind more than a little of the](\"http:\/\/forgetomori.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/wemtownhallghostgirlclos32.jpg\"){kind=link}