A Lonely Soldier

In the early summer of 2012, an amateur photographer, Fay Stoker visited Belgium in the hopes of getting some landscape photographs for her College Portfolio. She shot the majority of her photos on a Russian Zenit EM film camera, using Ilford HP4 Black and White Film. Upon taking several photos, one stood out to her. She had taken many photos of the exterior of the Flander's Field Museum in Ypres, yet one stood out from the rest as she noticed something that seemed very peculiar and out of place. In the top left corner of the photograph, there stood an ominuous figure of a man. He stood upright and looked as if her were standing on the window-ledge itself. It seems on further analysis of the photograph that the figure appears to be staring down toward Stoker when she was taking the photograph. Stoker was quoted in saying that "I hadn't noticed anything strange or out-of-the-ordinary in the photo at the time I was taking it, and I must've had a good look around the town, yet I didn't see anything weird or out of place." Upon analysing the photograph herself, she realised that the man appeared to have been wearing the uniform that many German soldiers would have worn during 1914 to 1918.

It is still unknown who, or what is shown in the photo, whether it is meerly an illusion or someone, or something, is actually standing there is up for debate. It is unlikely that the photo was tampered with, as faking photographs which were taken on film is an incredibly difficult and skillful process.

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(After the Photograph was processed, it was scanned onto Stoker's computer and converted to a .JPEG file. This means that the quality is not as clear as the original photograph, and Fay Stoker is still finding a way to make the image clearer for you to see. We apologise for the poor quality of the .JPEG)=====