Hey Buddy, That Ain't No Ghost!
Someone at The Oldham Coliseum is telling porkies about that ghost photo...
Recently, The Oldham Times ran a story about a “ghost” caught on camera at Oldham Coliseum. The photo shows the inside of the theatre mid-refurbishment with scaffolding, harsh work lights, lots of dust and down in the lower left, there’s a faint little boy-shaped figure that people were invited to zoom in on and get spooked about.
I didn’t get spooked. I got déjà vu.
I recognised that “little boy ghost” instantly - not from a haunted theatre, but from my own photo taken in a park here in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. What are the chances that the same ghost, making the same pose, can appear in photos taken so far apart at different times?
Quite high, actually.
Because the little boy in question is one of the stock spectres in a ghost-photo app called Ghost Stickers - an app that lets you drop ready-made spooky transparent figures into your photos and pretend you’ve photographed the afterlife on a Thursday afternoon. I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love them because lol, I hate them because ugh.
I double checked the app, and there he was: same pose, same outline, same pressed collar, same wistful “I died but make it aesthetic” vibe. Click the images below to see the app screens in more detail:
What I can’t tell you is who added the ghost - that’s between whoever sent the photo to The Friends of Oldham Coliseum and their conscience. What I can say, with confidence, is that there is no genuine “spirit of a little boy” in that picture.
Here is a zoomed-in version of the original photo with the little boy sticker overlaid:
There are so many app-generated ghost photos floating around now that you couldn’t debunk them all if you tried. This one just happened to cross my feed, and I recognised the ghost on sight.
What? Did you think I was being cute when I called my blog The Ghost Geek?
Great detective work. The fact that these ghost sticker apps exist means every viral "ghost photo" now needs instant scrutiny before anyone gets excited. This reminds me of how easy deepfakes made video unreliable, except it happend way earlier with photos. The real lesson is that familiartiy with the tools of deception becomes its own defense.