AFTER SATURDAY’S PHOBLOG WHERE I ASKED WHO SENT THIS FIRST PHOTO TO ME OF ‘SPIRIT WING’ TO email me… MANY OF YOU ASKED FOR ME TO REPOST THE ‘HORSE GHOST’ POST, SO HERE IT IS!

Horse Ghosts?  What do you think of these photos?

A reader sent this photo to me…

She said that her friend was taking a photo of the sun through the trees in her pasture – and when she looked at the photo, she saw this foreign image in the frame. It wasn’t there when she took the photo.

To the photographer, this image had to be her horse who had passed the week before.  She was sure of it because her horse always stood right in that spot when she came to feed him.  She knows it was him.

The reader who sent this to me insists it wasn’t altered in any way. What do you think?….

This subject made me pull up a post I wrote a few years ago on the subject.  I’d love to hear your horse ghost stories!  Please send them!

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2010

I was having a few ghost nightmares last night which made me think of my childhood dogs.   Weird segue, I know…  But, when I was little, I remember hearing my dogs run up and down the hallways after they had passed.  It seemed fine to me to hear them, until someone told me that it wasn’t.   Hence the “eww, that was weird”, nightmare connection.

Anyway, as I was lying awake and thinking about ghosts and my ghost dogs, I came up with the topic for today.  Horse Ghosts. However upon reflection, I realized that there are really two topics here.  Horse Ghost photos and Horse Ghost stories.

Today we are going to go into Horse Ghost Photos.

HORSE GHOST PHOTOS or GHOST HORSE PHOTOS (I don’t know which is correct…)

I searched around to see if anyone had actually captured a photo of a horse ghost.   To my surprise, there were several!  Hmmmmmmm.  I spent some time trying to debunk them. Of course, I’m no professional horse  ghost photo debunker, so I decided to pass them onto you so that you could debunk them — or not.

FIRST UP, ROLLING GHOST

OK, this one blew my pajamas off. For me, I immediately saw the image.  One real live horse is rolling, and so is his ghost companion. I’m sure all of you Photoshop geniuses can tell us how this is done.  But, I read the photographer’s story and she said she was simply taking a photo of her silly horse rolling in his stall.  There was nothing else there.  When she downloaded the image, the ghost appeared.  The girl had no idea who this horse might be but she was sure she didn’t create the image on her photograph. The one reason I believe her is that it looks just about exactly like where you would stand to take a photo of a rolling horse.  You wouldn’t get any closer.  So, the object (her horse) is in the center of her safely zone.  It doesn’t look like she was purposefully leaving room for a ghost to appear on her photoshop. And, why bother faking it?  Unless there is some cult following… why create horse ghosts?  There doesn’t seem to be any market for that. If it was smoke, as another suggested, someone would be running at this point.  I mean, if that much smoke was in a wood barn, you should drop the camera and RUN!

PHOTO # 2, THE BABY MAMMA GHOST OK, I love this one.  To me, either grandam or some mare buddy (or stud/gelding) was attending the birth.  After all, a birth is monumental to a new Mamma mare.  So, perhaps a few long lost friends came to help out.

PHOTO #3, CIVIL WAR GHOST HORSE This one is kinda sketchy for me… I mean, I see the horse image in the background, but I could also consider it a shadow of some sort.  Here is what the photographer said: I am a Civil War re-enactor and was visiting the Chickamauga battlefield last year… I got home and developed the pictures there was one apparition of a dismounted horse behind me in the brush. Ghost Photo submited by Rick Kanan.

PHOTO #4, EEEEEEE, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?! This one gave me the willies, if it is indeed true what the girls said.  As you can see, there is a faint image of a man riding a Paint horse right in front of the camera. My first thought was that this had to be a horse and rider that had passed in front of the camera quickly so the digital image was “ghosted” because there wasn’t enough light to snap the shutter in time to catch him clearly.  Then I read her description:

“This is the horse and rider photograph I took at the Stockyards in Fort Worth a couple years ago. It was taken with a digital camera sometime around 8 pm. The man appears to be right in front of me, when he wasn’t anywhere to be seen by either myself or my friend who was with me. You can actually see right through the man and the horse, and the horse has no feet. He appears to be floating off the ground. My friend and I looked all around the arena that night for this rider and horse and he did not exist. There was no one in front of me when I took that picture. I have shown it to others and they say that the Stockyards are very ‘haunted’. That maybe this was someone who rode with the rodeo who just didn’t want to leave. ????”

PHOTO #5, COULDA HAPPENED — OLD BARN AND ALL.. I have no fear around this one.  From the description, this is a very old (100+) barn.  It figures that some animals would be hanging about.  And, these two horses look rather friendly… if I was a ghost horse, I might pick them to haunt.  What do you think?  Here is what the photographer had to say:

Erica of Eureka Township, MN –  The  picture could have ecto mist, but as it was so cold, the breath of the horses could also have shown up in the picture…you decide.  “I took this picture in the 100 year old or so horse barn I board my horse at, it was about 10 degrees above 0 that day so it was cold everywhere.  There are orbs in probably half the pictures I take on this property, but not at any other locations that I take pictures.”

PHOTO #6 – LOOKS LIKE THOR TO ME. OK, well, this is supposed to be a horse but I think it is Thor, the God of Thunder.  Can’t you see him leaning back ready to throw the lightening bolt in his outstretched arm?   Yup I see something, but I don’t see a horse. The person who sent this in, thinks it is a horse since this was taken in a horse barn.  I think it is Thor.

LASTLY… I wanted to show you a photo of Norma when she was sick and in the barn (founder).  I put her in Aladdin’s old stall.

Anyway, I took this photo, along with others, and posted it into my blog for that particular day. To my surprise, I received a landslide of emails telling me to look at all the “orbs” on the photo…  Huh?  Isn’t that just dust?  Or maybe a light refraction of some sort?  I really didn’t think much of it.  So I wrote back to all of them and said just about that. They all wrote back and asked if there were orbs in any other photo I took of that day?  Yes, in one.  When I compared the two shots, I see that one photo with orbs is inside with Norma, and one is facing outside with Tess (Aladdin’s fav).

I tried to justify why there would be dust spots or light refraction orbs in two completely different angles and light sources, yet there were no orbs in any other photo of that day.  Hmmmmm. So, I don’t know.

But, I’d like to think that it was Aladdin, checking in and sending some love and light to his old buddy, Norma.  And, Norma did recover…  So, if Aladdin helped, I’m grateful. Truth to tell, I feel Aladdin in the barn all the time.  Perhaps I just want to feel him there, because I loved him so much and miss him all the time.

Or, maybe I associate the barn with Aladdin because he was the only horse who ever resided in the barn.  I still walk to the barn and expect to see him emerging from his bedroom and venturing to the feed room as he anticipates my approach.

But, alas, if he does come to visit, he is in the shape of an orb that only my digital camera can see. Pity.

HORSE GHOST STORIES I found many horse ghost stories (or is it ghost horse stories…?).  I will compile those and relay them in another post. I actually have one of my own from Loma Rica Racetrack.  Stay Tuned! Do you have a ghost horse story??  If so, do tell!