Jock McKie's "ghost" in Rye hospital photo

[Moonraker]

On Tuesday I posted a link to

this old thread

 

with a curious figure in the background of a modern photo. (See posts  1 & 18.)

 

Today I met up with the ex (now best friend) who divides her time between Torquay and Hastings and brings along newspaper cuttings that she thinks (nearly always accurately) may interest me. One today came from the Hastings Observer of March 22 this year. Happily it's available on-line

 

here

 

Just realised that the link is a bit hit & miss; sometimes the article is fully readable, other times I get a blocking message: "Oh No, you have your ad blocker switched on!" with an invitation to register, which seems feasible via Facebook and similar accounts.

 

Briefly, Edward Hillsworth was taking photographs at The Old Hospital, Rye, some featuring a young girl in a white dress,when he noticed a blank space to the right of the front door. When he processed the image, he noticed  “a very definite shadow shape”. When he showed the photo to some friends, one thought the shadow was like a soldier with his pack on his back and a little dog at his heels. When Hillsworth re-visited  the house and showed the photo to two women, one of whom declared the figure to be that of Jock McKie, a soldier from a Scottish regiment billeted in Rye and whom the women had befriended prior to his leaving for the Dardanelles - but was unable to say goodbye. They heard later that he had been killed at Gallipoli, and they believed that the shadow was Jock and his little dog, who always accompanied him, come back to take his farewell.

 

A watermarked copy of the photo is

 

here

 

I'm not that convinced myself.

 

("The original glass plates are no longer in existence and the family story says that they were disposed of in the Basingstoke Canal after his death " [AGH!])

 

Moonraker

[Kath]

Re. old thread posts 1 & 18

 

2 hours ago, Moonraker said:

curious figure in the background of a modern photo

 Kath.

[Moonraker]

Thanks, Kath. As the old thread says, the photo was taken 12 years ago in a nursing-home that during the Great War was a mansion house that provided recreational facilities for Australian soldiers. Perhaps the headgear in your crop could be taken to be an Australian slouch hat, but the blue clothes are not authentic.

 

Of course I didn't really think it was a ghost ...

 

Moonraker

[Kath]

27 minutes ago, Moonraker said:

Of course I didn't really think it was a ghost ...

I believe you.........

[BullerTurner]

Blue clothes?? Clearly a wounded soldier in hospital dress but missing his red tie?  Bloody colonials, eh??

[Moonraker]

Don't! You nearly started me off thinking that perhaps it was a ghost, after all.. But of course it wasn't... Though I do wish I'd actually seen the person in the flesh, as it were. Presumably a member of the staff.

 

The hat does look like an Australian soldier's, turned up on the left side.On the other hand, all the Australian soldiers in the 1918 booklet I have of  Greenhill House (where the photograph on which Kath's crop is based was taken) show soldiers wearing puttees and long-sleeved jackets.

 

Moonraker

 

 

[Keith Brannen]

On 05/04/2019 at 16:35, Kath said:

Re. old thread posts 1 & 18

 

 Kath.

 

Moonraker, are you sure it wasn't Montbrehain standing there? Blow-ups of the other two photos, one looks like he is wearing a similar hat, and the other looks like he is wearing similar colour shirt and pants (took his jacket off prior to the photo?)

 

 

[Moonraker]

Keith

 

I think that you are correct!  One might quibble at differences in the shade of the shirt, but the stance is similar in all three crops.

 

A classic case of someone re-visiting a situation (in my case, eight years after the event) and forgetting the exact circumstances of what had happened. And now, of course, it's 12 years later. Montbrehain was obviously replicating the position of the soldiers in the original photo.

 

I wouldn't have had the nerve on my own, but he knocked on the door of the nursing-home and explained our interest, whereupon we were invited in. I was also uncomfortable because it was a Sunday morning and from my recollection of my parents' nursing-home just two years before I knew how pressed the staff can be at that time. But we were hospitably received, and Montbrehain must have asked one of them to take the photo.

 

And in relation to the photo that was the initial subject of this thread, I nearly commented patronisingly about the other eerie photographs that have been in the news:

 

The Cottingley fairy hoax of 1917 is a case study in how smart people lose control of the truth

 

Not that I would claim to be smart, but I did think to myself how on earth anyone - especially Conan Doyle - could have been fooled.  But as the article remarks: "during and after World War I, spiritualism and mysticism gained increased influence over a grieving British public."

 

The photos have just been put up for auction:

 

Antique Trades Gazette

 

A Theosophical View of the First World War

 

Moonraker