It’s a topic where almost everyone has an opinion. Ghosts, do they or don’t they exist?

Barwon Park Mansion is situated in Winchelsea, an hour and a half west of Melbourne. Built in the mid 1800′s for the Austin family, its rich in tradition and history. And now, after the events of one cold night last August, it’s considered haunted.

19-year-old Adam Harris and 15 others were on a tour of the mansion, the tour included sceptics and paranormal investigators. Armed with digital thermometers, cameras and torches, they entered the barn at the back of the property.

“I was taking photos because I felt a presence coming towards me, as in dark figures. So I got my camera out and took three to five photos up there and my camera went dead, just turned off, I couldn’t turn it back on. I tried and tried and tried,” said Adam.

“It was a five degree night, everyone was wearing scarves and jackets, and it was freezing cold and we wanted to get out of there. We wanted to get back into the warm mansion so somebody said, ‘No, I feel something in that corner’. So this lady took this temperature gauge that we have we give them to play with and took a reading and it came up to 22 degrees and we thought that was quite strange. Then we had Adam take some photos in that area and I saw him take the photos and then his camera failed.”

By the time the group made it outside, Adam’s camera turned back on and what he discovered has left “believers” in a spin and sceptics scratching their heads.

“There was an image of a girl in the top left hand corner of my screen, just a real faint picture,” said Adam.

Apart from being the best looking ghost ever, she appears out of a seemingly black digital photo, only revealing herself when you adjust the tone.

Today Tonight took the photo to Andrew Tauber (a photographer with Melbourne’s Herald Sun), and Anne Maree and Nick (Digital photography experts). Anne Marie was previously re-toucher at the National gallery.

If the photo was a fake, you’d assume they’d be able to tell.

They analysed the metadata attached to the photo (embedded information connected to every digital photo). It tells them when, where and how the photo was taken.

The inconsistencies had them baffled. The photo with the ghost shows no background, yet the next photo clearly does. The experts all agree the image hasn’t been tampered with, but they believe some aspects could be fingers and that the image appears to be a photo of a painting not a person.

The biggest flaw is with regards to the time difference. Adam claims to have taken five consecutive photos, with the third one capturing the ghost. The meta data tells a different story. The ghost photo is recorded as being taken two hours earlier. But mystery surrounds how it is planted in order among the others on the memory card.

“I did see it happen and I know it’s there but I can’t explain what it is,” Adam said.

[via: au.todaytonight.yahoo.com]

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