A few years back, when I was visiting Aberdeen for a friend’s wedding I was staying at my friends flat. After watching The Grudge I thought it would be laugh to venture up into his old attic.
My ghost photo
I’m not lying, but it was pretty terrifying, pitch black, cold, creaking staircase, old wooden door…the works. I peeked my head in and couldn’t see a thing, so I took a photo with my camera phone. After getting locked out in the landing in the dark and a panicked battering of the front door I went to bed without thinking anything of it.
When I got home I put the photo on my PC and brightened it a bit photoshop. It looked as haunted as anything I’ve ever seen. Except for one major flaw, no ghost.
So one day on my lunch break I googled a photo of a victorian girl and whipped it all together, took about 5 mins.
I initially did it for a joke for a few people in work and decided to show them. They all believed it. I then decided to try it on my ever-sceptic father, he believed it too!
Straight away I posted the photo in as many ghost forums as I could and in ghost photo galleries, just to see if anyone else would believe it. I started getting comments left right and centre and amazingly one day I got an email from a film maker form America. Christopher Saint Booth from Spooked productions was making a documentary on child ghosts called Children of the Grave and asked if he could use my photo in the doc, i jumped at the chance when he said it was to be shown on the Sci-Fi channel in America & UK. I sent him the pic and waited.
In the mean time as a favour to a work friend in the East Kilbride News, I allowed him to write about how my photo hoaxed thousands of people on the internet and how I made it on to TV.
When the documentary came out I managed to get a quick viewing of it, my photo appeared for about 6-7 seconds and they managed to get my name wrong lol. You can view the clip here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3PD00XOFNY
That, I though was about all I could get out of the photo, but recently out of the blue I got an email from the Fortean Times (famous paranormal magazine). They are going to be writing an article on the craze of ghost hoaxes and asked if they could use my photo for the magazine. Fingers crossed it all comes out ok.
Now all I need is a phone call from Most Haunted and Derek Acorah 
Phew, this post is a long explanation on how 5 mins of mucking around can get you in the news, on TV, DVD and in magazines…and make you out to be recognised hoaxer lol.
Scott
