The Ghost Under the Bed
Netlore Archive: Email chain letter claims that a ghost depicted in the attached image will 'collect your soul' if you don't forward it to at least five people.
Description: Chain letter w/image
Circulating since: Oct. 2004
Status: False (see details below)
Example:
Email contributed by A. Riner, Oct. 28, 2004:
|
This photo was taken in a hospital after the patient was in an accident where he was responsible for a young woman's death. It is said that when you receive this image and do not send it to at least five people, the woman will look for you during the night to collect your soul. People in Laredo, Texas, received this image and did not send it and were killed outside a bar; it looked as if this woman killed them. Send it to five people or the woman will look for you. |
Analysis: Chain letters promising dire consequences for those who fail to pass them along are old news, but variants accompanied by "ghost" photos such as the one above are a relatively new phenomenon and unique to the Internet, so far as I'm aware.
To those who will inevitably write and demand to know how I can "prove" that the chain letter and accompanying image are fake, I can only respond that if you really believe such proof is necessary, no logic or evidence is likely to convince you otherwise.
For the rest, suffice it to say that: 1) photos like the above are easily fabricated using double exposure or digital manipulation, 2) chain letters do not exercise magical powers over their recipients, and 3) ghosts — dare I say it? — simply do not exist.
Update: Alex Boese of The Museum of Hoaxes informs me that this image was ripped from a 2003 Thai horror film (see sample DVD cover image at right) known variously as "The Unborn" or "The Mother."
Boese adds that he first received the image attached to a similar, yet different, ghost story quoted as follows:
"This picture was taken in one of the rooms of 'Our Lady of Charity' hospital in Toluca, Mexico while one of the patients was asleep, the patient had been involved in a multiple car accident and the lady under the bed was the only one person who died in the same accident and taken to the morgue, the brother's patient captured this image with his own camera and the picture has been seen around the world and has been authenticated by the research center in Chicago, Illinois."
Share This Article
Last updated: 11/15/04
