I took the top photograph on Sunday 23 February during the afternoon, purely as a photograph of the inside of the castle dungeon for this web site. At the time of taking it, I stood just inside the doorway to the dungeon, which was in almost total darkness, so dark in fact that it took my eyes quite some time to adjust so that I could see anything at all. I shone a powerful beam of light onto the back wall in order to focus the camera which was held by tripod, turned out the light and shot the photograph, using an Olympus E-10 camera with lens partially zoomed in to the area I wanted to cover (so I am actually standing about 15 feet from the haze). I used the camera's built in flash and both the camera's 'ASO' setting and exposure setting were set to automatic. I did not notice anything unusual at the time, other than the natural chill of a castle dungeon and only saw the 'ghostly haze' when I got home and looked at the results of my afternoon photographing the whole of the castle.

Having taken about three thousand photographs using this camera over the past year, I know exactly what to expect of it, so I was aware on seeing the first photograph that I had captured something unusual, but still needed to prove this to myself. With this in mind, I returned to the dungeon yesterday afternoon, (Saturday 1 March 2003) set up in exactly the same way and took another 49 photographs inside the dungeon. I also video filmed the the whole return visit, using infra red light so as not to be visible to the naked eye. None of the photographs show anything unusual and neither does the video film. Above you can see two of yesterday's photographs, the first taken using flash in exactly the same circumstances as the one showing the haze and the second taken without flash, using an exposure of 30 seconds in virtually total darkness other than the tiny amount of light entering through the tiny entrance behind me. You can see where the main light is cast, which is really very little indeed and only actually shows due to the longevity of the exposure. None of the photographs are enhanced in any way whatsoever, the only editing being to reduce them from 2240 x 1680 pixels to 750 x 562 pixels and compress the data by 40% in order to make Internet loading time possible for those using dial-up connections. My usual web address is also added in the bottom right hand corner. I do, of course still have the originals, not edited in any way at all, for making prints.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the misty haze did exist at the time I took the first photograph and is not an anomaly of the camera. Also that on thorough inspection of the dungeon since, there is nothing physical inside which could have caused it other than perhaps the invisible man smoking a cigarette. If you have any serious theories yourself as to its cause, I would be interested to hear from you.

Update: 28th August 2010: Voice of the Goodrich Ghost?

See the rest of the castle: [Goodrich Castle 2003] * [Goodrich Castle 2004].

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