When I first started this website, finding material to write about was pretty easy, especially when it came to this site’s most popular category, Ghostly Pics.
From years of casual paranormal reading, I had a mental list of the infamous purported paranormal photos I wanted to write about: The Toys R Us Ghost, The Tulip Staircase Ghosts, The strange figure captured on CCTV from Hampton Court and of course, the photograph this site has become most ‘famous’ for covering, The Amityville Ghost Boy.
However, one photograph, which happened to be one of the creepiest pics I had ever laid eyes on, eluded me. Not because it did not have a great story behind it or because the image was not available to me, but because News From The Spirit World has always taken a skeptical approach to the paranormal, albeit with a ‘I want to believe’ attitude as well.
Recently this photo appeared on Reddit’s /r/creepy sub, and it came with an explanation in the comments about a picture that still gives me the chills every time I look into the eyes of this almost demonic looking old woman.
It gets creepier when you realize this image may have been the last thing a man saw before he vanished off the face of the Earth.
The legend behind the picture says that Charlie Noonan, a folklore enthusiast who would travel across the Southern United States looking for strange and mysterious tales, once encountered a farmer around the start of the 20th century who told him a tale of a strange woman who lived not too far from his property in the panhandle of Oklahoma.
The farmer told Noonan that the woman did not seem ‘quite Human’ and was never seen without a large dog. Noonan set off to find this woman and was never heard from again.
Charlie Noonan’s disappearance made the papers and some time later Noonan’s camera showed up at a pawn shop, with Charlie Noonan’s name still etched onto the side. Recalling the stories about the disappearance, the Pawn shop owner got in contact with Charlie’s wife, Ellie Noonan and she developed the film that was still unexposed inside the camera.
If you want a bout of insomnia, then this pic is for you.
There was only one exposure used on the roll of film and it was the creepy and nightmare inducing snap shot above.
Of course, when I first saw this photo, as we were already in the age of Creepy Pastas and ‘Jump scare’ You Tube videos, I always thought there had to be more to this then met the eye.
Sure enough, in October of this year the blog MB Forbe published a piece that made more logical sense then a ghost/demon women living in rural America with glowing eyes and a scary looking German Shepard.
It seems that the first appearance of the photo was in 2009 on a website called Always Becoming, which focuses on stories about native people and the amazing lives they have lead.
The post where the picture appears is called: ‘Strong Women Part Two‘ and tells the life story of Virginia Romero, a Tiwa Indian living in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. Virginia lived off the land with her family and lead a hard working and simple life, and the post about this amazing woman is worth reading in its own right.
But the accompanying picture to the piece reveals that Noonan’s brush with something beyond the everyday world was more fiction then fact:
So someone took this photograph from this blog sometime after late November 2009, reversed the image (As MB Forbe’s points out, most likely to fool anyone trying to do a reverse image search online) and added in a scary looking dog and glowing eyes.
Add in an admittedly simple yet entrancing story about poor ol’ missing Charlie Noonan and his camera and there you have it, an internet legend is born.
Still, it is an amazingly apt example of why anyone working in the paranormal field or even those who just have a passion for reading about the strange and unusual should always keep a open mind in both directions, including the skeptical path.
–Thomas Spychalski
(Via MB Forbe/Always Becoming)
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