If you checked my Facebook feed earlier today, you may have seen a story I linked being reported by Russia Today.. It is bizarre to say the least..
Old photos have always caused me to pause and stare.. I so often wonder what the often expressionless faces in the photo-documentation of time were thinking.. But the story of the Siberian phantom girl sort of takes the cake in the creepy department..
As published in RT, some interesting story highlights:
Museum workers in Krasnoyarsk were astonished when they digitalized local photos from the early 1900s only to find an identical figure in all of them – a solemn girl, dressed in all white, striking an identical pose.
So far, the mystery girl has been found in at least 20 photos and four glass negatives, which researchers at the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum of Local Lore believe were taken between 1906 and 1908, judging from the state of the buildings in the photos.
And if those two paragraphs don’t systematically creep out your system and give you chills, I don’t really know what will ..
THE LOGICAL IDEA.
As the story goes, she plays no obvious role in most of the shots she is in.. almost a background bystander, someone who is just there at the right place and the right time.. The museum studying and asking questions thinks the girl is related to the photographer in some way. That makes some logical sense.. the picture taker bringing his kin with him to go do photoshoots in old century Russia.
RT again:
The most logical start would be identifying the name of the photographer. However, most photos have no identifying text, while a few are marked with the initials F.E.A. Photography was only practiced by a select few at the time, but that signature does not match up with any of the city’s well-known professionals or hobbyists.
No one has come forward to explain anything about this girl.. no one has claimed credit or family history of knowledge of who she is..
Some came to the museum from a collection of Nikolai Grigorovskiy, owner of a Krasnoyarsk bookshop before the Communist revolution.
A glass negative featuring the girl also came from renowned photographer Ludwig Yulyevich Wonago. Might he be the mystery photograher? Yet then why the initials F. E. A.? The feeling is that the photographer for whom the girl posed is an amateur – at a time when this was a hobby of the well-to-do – rather than a professional, but who was the hidden star?
‘We think that the girl could be the photographer’s daughter, or his neice, but we do not know for sure, as we do not even know the photographer’s name,’ said Ilya Kuklinsky.
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THE MYSTERY
This is a mystery–and it is amplified by the creepy factor..
There seems to be a common thread in her garb: There is wealth. She is from wealth.. there are riches when she stands next to others who are dressed in garb of dire circumstances.. She obviously was ‘seeing the world’ in a sense just by the fact she ended up in so many places. One theory is that she may have been from a rich local family, which could have escaped eastward from the advancing Communist tyranny, and that the answer to the intriguing secret of her identity may lie abroad in Europe or America.
Being the internet and such, some are actually claiming the images are ‘photoshopped.’ Photoshop, being a useful product of recent times, was tougher way back before the 1917 revolution. Nonetheless, I suppose things like this are possible during the reign of Nicholas.
And there are paranormal theories, too.. she is a ghost.. she is a haunting figure because, well, she’s not real! Maybe a time traveler!? Maybe not.
THE TRUTH MAY BE SIMPLE AND SAD.
Maybe the truth is even sadder and more hopeless than any theory.. maybe the truth is this: She, and her family and whoever took these photos, were destroyed in time by the revolution that killed so many about ten years after the pictures were taken..? Maybe that’s it. Period and done.
And the only thing left are stark reminders of innocence prior to bloodbaths.
But those eyes..
There is something seemingly haunting in those eyes. Like a ‘knowing’ of the misery to come..
