mystifying oracle
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Space Ghost
Alright, I'm tired of your threats, so I'm finally going to show this picture. But first I'll give the history of the photo.
I first saw this a few years ago when Chris Kemple and I were housemates in Chapel Hill. It was taken by his aunt, Renee Mikolajczyk (and no, if you trick her into saying her name backwards, she won't return to her own dimension. That reference is for the comic book folks...) of Chicago. In 1988 Renee was touring the old Mission Control Center at Cape Canaveral, which is now a top-notch space museum that you should visit. But then it was a pretty bland walking and bus tour that showed you where things used to happen. You could go look at the largest building/hangar in the world where they work on shuttles, and see the Crawler that moves the Shuttle to the launchpad. This was in the Center itself. Renee was pretty intrepid about poking into rooms and snapping photos, and this picture came from that.
She didn't see anything odd when taking the shot, just the flight suits hanging in the room. But when it was developed, the thing on the right was suddenly in the picture. Renee sent a copy of the picture to NASA (I don't know what department in particular) asking if that was something they had in the room, and they said they had no idea or explanation for it.
I think you'll see why I've made such a deal out of it. It doesn't look like what you usually see in "ghost photos", it doesn't look like an effect or is transparent, in fact it looks really solid. It doesn't look like a person either, but it's hard to not read what you're seeing as a torso. My first thought was that it looked like some kind of underwear you might have on with a flight suit, but why is it standing up and the "arm" twisting off like taffy into the air? I'm not saying it's the ghost of an astronaut or even a lab tech, but it is at least weird. It's pretty confounding is what it is, but maybe the reach of the blogosphere will finally yield an answer to this riddle, so spread it around, people.
I'll put it up in just a little while, I have to go eat lunch. And I'll briefly, just for this, add Comments to the posting.
I first saw this a few years ago when Chris Kemple and I were housemates in Chapel Hill. It was taken by his aunt, Renee Mikolajczyk (and no, if you trick her into saying her name backwards, she won't return to her own dimension. That reference is for the comic book folks...) of Chicago. In 1988 Renee was touring the old Mission Control Center at Cape Canaveral, which is now a top-notch space museum that you should visit. But then it was a pretty bland walking and bus tour that showed you where things used to happen. You could go look at the largest building/hangar in the world where they work on shuttles, and see the Crawler that moves the Shuttle to the launchpad. This was in the Center itself. Renee was pretty intrepid about poking into rooms and snapping photos, and this picture came from that.
She didn't see anything odd when taking the shot, just the flight suits hanging in the room. But when it was developed, the thing on the right was suddenly in the picture. Renee sent a copy of the picture to NASA (I don't know what department in particular) asking if that was something they had in the room, and they said they had no idea or explanation for it.
I think you'll see why I've made such a deal out of it. It doesn't look like what you usually see in "ghost photos", it doesn't look like an effect or is transparent, in fact it looks really solid. It doesn't look like a person either, but it's hard to not read what you're seeing as a torso. My first thought was that it looked like some kind of underwear you might have on with a flight suit, but why is it standing up and the "arm" twisting off like taffy into the air? I'm not saying it's the ghost of an astronaut or even a lab tech, but it is at least weird. It's pretty confounding is what it is, but maybe the reach of the blogosphere will finally yield an answer to this riddle, so spread it around, people.
I'll put it up in just a little while, I have to go eat lunch. And I'll briefly, just for this, add Comments to the posting.
