Our Perception of Haunted “A place without meaning is no place to be.� -Wayne Gerard Trotman
Introduction A “haunted” place is usually a house/building or place believed to be inhabited by ghosts or spirits. Our perception of “haunted” includes misinterpreting noises, waking dreams, suggestibility, and/or hallucinations. For my photo essay, I chose to photograph places that are documented as “haunted”. Each place I photographed possesses its own unique story and characteristics. They all have some kind of spiritual memory of the past that just won’t leave. I captured some shadows and reflections to add to our perceptions of “haunted”. I added captions to each photography, to give you the story behind each paranormal activity that was once documented at those places. I traveled around Southern, New Jersey to find different “haunted” places. I researched so-called “haunted” places but most ideas came from my own experiences. I chose to focus on old looking buildings, cemeteries, the town of Greenwich, NJ, and Pea Patch Island. I also used a filter on my iPhone 6s to make each photo look as “haunted” as possible. The following series of photographs are all of “haunted” places that each have their own unique story and meaning behind them.
Pea Patch Island (1864)- This was a confederate prison. It has since been turned into an "attraction" with ghost tours and costumed reenactors.
Aunts house in LAC Township, NJ. My cousins have told me they've heard noises in their backyard by where the basketball net is.
Alloway, NJ. The lady that used to live here has been seen in the upstairs window. Also, people have heard a little girl’s screams outside.
Alloway, NJ
Greenwich, NJ
East Greenwich, Eglington Cemetery- the oldest operating burial ground in the United States. This has been investigated by several paranormal groups and is reported to be very active with ghostly globes and lights.
Greenwich, NJ
Greenwich, NJ
Pittsgrove, Ye Olde Centerton Inn- the crying of a little girl who met an untimely demise can sometimes be heard in the upstairs dining room. Cold spots are often felt in this dining room. These cold spots are attributed to the spirit of a part Maitre De, for whom the room is named after.
Greenwich, NJ
Greenwich, NJ
Greenwich, NJ
Muttontown Woods, Penton, NJ- if you go out at night and turn your headlights off, you will see a little girl in the middle of the intersection.
Greenwich, NJ
Richland, Railroad Tracks- if you go there at night and flash your lights 3 times, and on the 4th time you leave them on you will see a boy with a baseball and a glove. If you get out, he will throw the ball to you, but he and the ball will disappear before you can catch it. I added props to make it look more scary.
Greenwich, NJ - road where little girls screams have been heard. Again, I added props to make it look scary.
“Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted.” - Robert Louis Stevenson
The photographs in my essay all have one thing in common: paranormal activity. My goal was to take photographs that look creepy and “haunted” and that has had documented paranormal activity. Susan Sontag states that, “photography means that we can see something before we experience it.” Photographs enhance a story and can be used as the primary tool for telling that story. Our perception of “haunted” is usually creepy, scary and/or old broken down or abandoned houses. But, someone had to have resided there before. So, does our perception of “haunted” change if a photograph says something different? Just because one person says that they’ve heard noises, does that mean that it is haunted? I chose not to use any type of saran wrap or material over my lens of my iPhone 6s because I felt like blurry or distorted pictures would be too cliche for my theme of “haunted” places. Instead, I depended mostly on the time of day, location and weather. The time of day that the pictures in my essay were taken was from about 3 p.m until about 5 p.m. At this time of day, the sun is almost setting so the light is at the perfect angle. In most of my pictures, I was lucky enough to photograph on beautiful weather days, being 55-67 degrees. These gorgeous sunny days helped with the lighting but also with the use of clouds. I also chose the black and white filter, Noir, on a majority of my photographs because it
makes the images look more creepy and scary. Black and white filters suit almost any type of photographs. They adapt really well to all lighting situations. I chose black and white because colors can be too distracting at times and can take the focus away from my subject. Martin Lister states in Extracts From Introduction to the Photographic Image in Digital Culture, “the question of how our belief in the special veracity and evidential force of the photographic image gets attached to the material itself can be approached by considering the photographic image in more historical and sociological ways(220-221)”. No one really knows if a place is “haunted” or not because “hauntedness” cannot be reliably proven. Most people just assume based on a photograph. Ghosts represent history and legacies. They are often tied to a specific location and produce repeated sightings over time, either from periods of a few days to several decades. Hauntings are usually only reported from certain rooms or areas within a building. So footsteps may only be heard in one room, scratching sounds in another and an apparition might only be seen in a hall. Cold spots are generally restricted to one very specific place and do not move about (as at the Ye Olde Centerton Inn). But, what about the misperception of natural phenomena? For instance, the way a shadow falls a certain way (in my Muttontown Woods photo), a door that opens and closes on its own, or the wind that makes a moaning sound on the roof? These may be experienced by people and can be easily misinterpreted as paranormal activities. Once a place gets a reputation for being haunted, other natural phenomena will start to get interpreted in the
same way. Just because my images appear to be “haunted”, are they really haunted? I chose to photograph them because of research I did on “haunted” places. Annette Kuhn states in “Remembrance” that, “a photograph can be material for interpretation- evidence, in that sense: to be solved, like a riddle; read and decoded, like clues left behind at the scene of a crime(p. 395)”. There are many signs showing that a house/place can be “haunted”. But, there is also many photographs that are so called “haunted” that can be explained. Some of what we see just aren’t ghosts or spirits but can be scientifically explained.
“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.” - Joan Didion
I chose to analyze my first photo of Pea Patch Island: the Confederate Prison. Pea Patch Island is well known for its paranormal activity. It was once a confederate prison in 1864 and now is an attraction with ghost tours and costumed reenactors. I took this photography when we learned about this project a month ago. I took a ferry to Pea Patch Island and paid to walk around these old buildings. This is one of the first building you see when you walk into the prison. The rules of thirds composition is demonstrated here because the building is off center. It intersects with the horizontal and vertical lines (the first row of windows and the top of the fence). Another strong element composition shown is the use of leading lines. The white fence draws the viewer’s eyes towards the old building. It starts at the bottom of the frame and guides the eye upwards and even inwards, leading towards my main subject (the building). I was on the second floor of the opposite building when I took this photograph. I feel like that perceptive (point of view), created depth for my photo as well. The use of patterns is also a strong element used. I feel like the windows of the building capture the imagination one might have of what is “haunted”. The lighting in the upper 2 windows and one middle window could be interpreted as some kind of “spirit”.
Works Cited
Sontag, Susan. Photography. The New York Review of Books. 18 Oct 1973. Lister, Martin. Introduction to the Photographic Image in Digital Culture. London: Routledge, 1995. Chapter 21