K8 the GR8

There are certain books that can read you better than you can read them.

A prime example of this would be your typical Medical Dictionary.  Every single time you open this book, it always flicks onto the same page.  The one with the large blown-up colour photograph of anal warts.  Yeaauch.

I have a book that gets me every single time.  It’s called Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers.  It’s a fascinating book where Mr. C examines various supernatural anomalies, and gathers evidence or material fact to support them with regards to their authenticity.  For example, he rates under ‘highly probable’ things like Maledictions (voodoo), Apparitions, Firewalking  and Stigmata.  Under the heading ‘Almost certainly untrue’, he groups Survival after death, and Reincarnation.

Anyway, whenever I open this book, I always come across the page with this photograph first:

The story behind the picture:

There are a few photographs, apparently of ghosts, taken by reputable people, which have not been explained away.  One was snapped by the Rev. Kenneth Lord in Newby Church in North Yorkshire in the summer of 1954.  The church is in an exceptionally picturesque setting in the leafy grounds of one of England’s stately homes, Newby Hall, near Ripon.
Mr Lord had been appointed vicar of the parish and wanted some photographs of his church to send to some friends.  Of the 12 photographs Kenneth Lord took with his Rolleicord 4 that day, the most striking was frame 5, which showed the inside of the church and, by the altar, something else: a tall cloaked and hooded figure with a skull-like face.  The Rev. Lord is certain that there was no one else in the church during the photo session and that the place appeared quite normal through the viewfinder.  When he found the weird apparition on the printed film, he sought the opinions of experts.  ‘The film went to Kodak,’ said his wife, ‘because it was a Kodak film.  It went to an independent photographer - and various other bodies - and they could find no possible way in which it could have been faked.’

Creepy, isn’t it?  I’m a realist, and a skeptic, so I know there must be some explanation for it, but nonetheless… *shudder*