As pessoas não conseguem explicar essa figura fantasmagórica nesta fotografia de 100 anos

When Belfast Live published a series of century-old photographs, lovers of the paranormal virtually had a field day. In fact, the Northern Irish news website was probably unprepared for the influx of traffic that would eventually come from eager ghost watchers – all fixated on one spooky snap. Yes, hidden among the photos was an image that seemed to feature an unexplained, ghoulish presence. And this strange vision is chilling enough to make almost any skeptic start believing.

The photograph in question was taken back in 1900 and shows a group of ten young women at a linen mill, all dressed for work. At a glance, the image is rather benign, giving us a small insight into what life was once like for these girls at the turn of the 20th century. Upon more rigorous investigation, however, the snap reveals something altogether more disturbing.

And the staff at Belfast Live later claimed that they had been oblivious to the photograph’s creepy nature when they were putting the collection together. This was only realized after a relative of one of the snap’s subjects got in touch with the site. Lynda was the granddaughter of one of the women pictured, and she had a hair-raising admission to make.

Lynda was naturally pleased to see that her grandmother Ellen Donnelly featured in the picture, but she also had something else to share. You see, the original photograph, Lynda claimed, was still in her father’s possession. And, rather creepily, Ellen’s relative would label the snap “a family ghost picture.”

In her letter to Belfast Live, Lynda even explained exactly where people needed to look in the “ghost picture” to see the supernatural. And after the site ran a new story pointing out the terrifying presence that Lynda had highlighted, the spooky photograph soon began spreading around the web.

To begin with, though, the folks at Belfast Live had uploaded the image for a more benevolent purpose. The original story including the spectral snap had been written by Mark McCreary and published on the website in April 2016. And this feature had opened by mentioning how modern technology has changed the retail industry. McCreary used the rise of online shopping to illustrate that very point.

The author also highlighted how self-checkout machines had taken away the human interaction of being served by a shopkeeper at the cash till. But, of course, such tech hasn’t always been with us. And McCreary wanted to evoke those days gone by, in what he called a “time... when services came with a personal touch.”

So, the pictures accompanying the piece present a way of life that’s almost unrecognizable by today’s standards. McCreary explained some of these old snaps, writing, “Our gallery includes great old images of delivery men using a horse and cart – and their own broad shoulders – to bring milk, [potatoes] and coal to houses across Belfast.”

These photographs were actually taken across several decades – from the beginning of the 20th century right up to the 1950s. And as British historians may know, Belfast was known for producing ships during the earlier part of this period. The most famous of these, of course, was the RMS Titanic, which infamously sank in 1912, condemning over 1,500 passengers to an awful fate.

Along with the significant shipbuilding sector, Belfast was also home to numerous linen mills. According to the National Archives of Ireland, in fact, the city once produced more linen than anywhere else on Earth. And these mills served as the workplaces of a large number of women, with Ellen Donnelly – who, remember, is in that spooky image – having been among them.

Naturally, other sorts of businesses grew throughout Belfast at the time. There were factories producing cars, tobacco and ginger ale, for instance, as well as engineering works. A variety of smaller firms and stores could be found throughout the city, too.

Bakeries, grocery stores and launderettes all flourished in Belfast at the turn of the century and beyond. And then there were the more specialized enterprises that may seem rather quaint to us today. One particular company, called Gribbon Bros., was involved in the making of handkerchiefs. Yes, you read that right.

But the retail industry in Belfast wasn’t without its darker side. In reality, children often took employment at points in their lives when they should’ve been learning at school. There were apparently some 2,000 kids working in linen mills at the beginning of the 1900s, with others acting as deliverers and salespeople.

And the images published on Belfast Live give us a fascinating glimpse of day-to-day life in that period. In one photograph, for instance, young boys are being handed copies of a newspaper. Naturally, one could safely speculate that it’s down to these kids to deliver these papers around the city.

Another photo dating back to July 1932 shows female employees at work. They’re busy at the Gallaher Factory, where they can be seen preparing boxes of cigarettes. And the sheer number of women packed onto this factory floor gives a sense of the operation’s incredible scale.

Elsewhere in the collection, a shot from around 1915 shows a number of men digging up a road. That feat is arduous even today. And we can only imagine how difficult the process must have been without the help of any of the modern machinery that construction workers now have at their fingertips.

In another snap, men can be seen rolling large barrels along the ground, preparing them for transport. This shot was taken at Dunville’s Distillery, which specialized in the production of whiskey. And, yet again, the photo shows us how much more physically demanding such a system must have been without the help of current-day technology.

In fact, all of the photographs in the gallery shed light on the way that things used to be for Belfast’s workers. But there was one shot in particular that would capture the imaginations of plenty of people – and for a chilling reason. This image, of course, is the one featuring Donnelly and her colleagues.

Yes, while the photo nicely functions as a window into the past, it became famous for another reason entirely. And while at a glance, things in the picture seem to be normal, there’s actually something lurking behind Donnelly. Horrifyingly, there appears to be an additional, terrifying presence in the shot – maybe even a ghost.

Naturally, belief in spirits or ghosts is nothing new. And even though there’s no scientific basis for their existence, many people are still convinced that we experience visitors from another realm. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center study, 18 percent of people in the United States have claimed that they themselves had encountered ghosts.

Supposed apparitions have long turned up in photos, too. One well-known example is a 1936 image purported to have been taken by a photographer from the publication Country Life. The spooky snap apparently depicts a ghost – the so-called Brown Lady of Raynham Hall – standing on a staircase in Norfolk, England.

The Brown Lady is thought to be the spirit of a woman named Lady Dorothy Walpole, whose brother was U.K. Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Born in 1686, she went on to marry a man called Charles Townshend, who was known for his brutal outbursts. And, reportedly, after discovering that his wife had cheated on him, Townshend locked her away in Raynham Hall, where she is later thought to have died in 1726.

Then, over a century later, Lady Walpole’s spirit supposedly appeared to people during a Christmas gathering at Raynham Hall. According to one Lucia C. Stone, a pair of guests at the property claimed to have witnessed the figure dressed in brown traveling en route to their bedrooms. And the following day, the specter was apparently seen in more detail. Chillingly, a witness went on to explain that the vision had only holes where eyes should have been.

But Lady Walpole’s ghost apparently didn’t rest after that, as in 1836 she is said to have materialized in front of a man named Captain Frederick Marryat, Marryat’s daughter Florence later detailed her dad’s alleged encounter, writing in 1891, “I have heard [my father] describe how he watched [the ghost] approaching nearer and nearer… [He] recognized the figure as the facsimile of the portrait of ‘The Brown Lady.’”

Captain Marryat’s daughter Florence continued the description of her father’s experience with the ghost. She went on, “He had his finger on the trigger of his revolver and was about to demand [the ghost] to stop and give the reason for its presence there, when the figure halted of its own accord before the door behind which he stood... Holding the lighted lamp she carried to her features, [she] grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him.”

But the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is just one of countless ghosts claimed to have been captured on film. Many more photos have been widely circulated over the years – all said to feature unexplained spectral presences. And in 2016 Belfast Live unwittingly published yet another image to add to this lore.

At a glance, there’s nothing particularly notable about the photograph of the female staff. Just like the other pictures in Belfast Live’s collection, it offers a small but charming insight into the life of 20th-century workers in the city. And as we mentioned, in this particular case the image focuses on women from a linen factory.

In fact, when the photo was published along with 15 others as part of the Belfast Live feature, no one at the website initially noticed anything odd. But when one of the site’s readers wrote in to comment on the image, it would never be seen in the same way again.

That reader, as we revealed earlier, was Lynda, who contacted Belfast Live to explain that she was the granddaughter of someone in the photo. She wrote, “Great to see an old photo of my granny... when she worked at the mill. She was Ellen Donnelly – née McKillop – and she is fourth on the right in the second row down.”

Lynda continued, “I don’t really believe in ghosts, but there have been a few odd going-ons around this photo, so I hope this doesn’t cause any more!” She added, “Did anyone spot the mysterious hand on the girl on the right’s shoulder?”

Yes, if you look carefully, a mysterious hand seems to be draped over one of the women’s shoulders. Strangely enough, though, this appendage doesn’t appear to be attached to anyone. And as everyone standing around the hand has their arms folded together, it couldn’t really belong to any of them, either.

Predictably, internet users have been having their say on the ghoulish-looking hand in the photo. And while there were those who simply labeled the pic as “creepy,” others were more measured in their responses. Writing in the comments section of a feature on the Daily Mirror’s website, one reader even elaborated on their own theory.

“Photo manipulation existed before Photoshop,” the individual wrote. “One of the most common types was composite photos – basically what would now be described as ‘Photoshopping someone in.’ There were various techniques for this, including double exposure or making a pasted mock-up print to photograph and manipulate when printing that photo in the darkroom.”

This same internet commenter also pointed out that there was a problem with some shadows in the Belfast Live snap. They added, “If you look at the image of the girl with the hand on her shoulder, the shadows on her in the image do not fall at exactly the same angle as those on the faces of the other people in the image.” This, the person implied, hints at the fact that the photo had been manipulated.

Meanwhile, in the comments section of the Belfast Live article, a reader put forward another plausible explanation for the ghostly vision. And, apparently, the unidentified hand in the photo may not have resulted from a purposeful editing job after all.

This person explained, “As late as the early 20th century, exposure times for portraits were often at least several seconds long. So, the subjects had to stand very still, or a double exposure or blurring would result. One explanation might be that the woman [on the] top right had her hand on the other woman’s shoulder at the beginning of the exposure, and then she quickly moved to a folded-arms position when she realized the exposure had started, creating a double exposure.”

And then there was the Belfast Live commenter who believed that the hand had not materialized because a ghost had appeared in shot – nor had it appeared as the result of some camera trickery. Instead, they argued that the vision had been created simply because of the way in which some fabric was positioned.

As this skeptical individual put it, “It’s just the dress on her shoulder. If you look at the ‘fingers,’ they are actually the dress material. It’s just the way it fell. If the lady behind her had moved her arm, it would be clearer. Sorry to burst your bubble. It has a natural explanation and not a supernatural one.”

It wouldn’t be the first time that photos allegedly depicting ghosts have been explained by other means. In fact, many folks over the years have been outed as frauds for producing pictures that fake bizarre phenomena. But even so, snaps that supposedly depict the paranormal still get people talking – on the internet and beyond.

And when it comes to the photo of the Belfast linen workers and the ghostly hand, maybe we should draw our own conclusions. After all, few would argue that the pic isn’t at the very least to be considered creepy. So, is it really the result of the supernatural – or just something much more mundane? Well, it’s up to you to decide...