Did I Photograph a Ghost

Behind The Photograph

In the depths of Devon, betwixt Dartmoor and Exmoor, lies Black Dog, a small village perched on a prominent ridge line. Local myth suggests its name derives from a phantom dog that guarded a secret hidden tunnel that ran from a local well to a nearby iron age hill fort. Tales of black dogs are deeply woven into the folklore of Devon, from Dartmoor to Mid-Devon. These myths served as inspiration for the Hell Hound in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. Black Dog is isolated, the closest town is Crediton to the south, only six miles, but on the narrow lanes in reality that feels much further.

Exploration has always formed a large part of my photographic practice. I once cycled to Black Dog from Exeter, when I was much younger and fitter. But it was on one early summer evening, driving close to the village that I stumbled across an abandoned house. The house was heavily boarded up, but I managed to climb into one of the outbuildings through a broken window. The sun was close to setting behind the moor, so it took awhile for my eyes to get used to the dim light. The room was littered with old machine parts and the ceiling had started to collapse in one corner. No sooner than I had got my bearings, I felt a presence, a flash of white and something so close I could feel it.

It is usually a pigeon or a pheasant breaking the silence and startling me, but on this occasion it was a barn owl. It had flown right past me and out of the window. After the excitement wore off, I stood silently for a few minutes in the building and just listened. The last rays of light were making shapes in the darkness, but soon the light was gone. I didn’t stay long, not wanting to be in the owl’s space. A made a mental note of the house, as a location to return too. I was working on my series Vale at the time and I thought the house would be an ideal location to take portraits. In my early twenties I experienced a long period of ill health and Vale was made as a response to that time. Dan Cox wrote a wonderful essay for my book, an excerpt of which is below.

‘Vale is a result of this percolation and loss. It is the fictional space where Darch is able to relive and re-imagine a lost period in his life, journeys with friends both through physical spaces and through time. On one level its subjects could act as stand-ins, allowing him to explore winding rivers in late summer evenings, empty country roads and ancient English woodlands. But as the journey continues, multiple readings quickly become apparent. Despite possibly providing a positive escape from Darch’s ‘vale of despond’, it is the sense of the eerie which becomes unavoidable.’

I returned to the house a few weeks later with Pete and his girlfriend at the time, Jas. Pete was part of a group of young photographers which came to Macula, a collective I had started in 2012. It was a beautiful late summer afternoon, we had planned to head to another location after, so it was a bit earlier than I would have liked to photograph. Vale was predominately photographed during the golden hour, with some dawn and dusk pictures as well. Interestingly, other than my work with rural communities, it is the only series I have worked on during the summer months. I took a lot of pictures, of Pete and Jas separately, and of them together. At some point I got them to walk from the back of the outhouse into the frame, with the house as the backdrop, they did this several times. I always experiment with different ideas on these kind of shoots. My main aim is to get something that feels natural. We weren’t there too long before we headed off to the next location. I was confident that I had taken some interesting pictures, but it wasn’t until a few days later that I uploaded them to the computer to start editing.

I tend to edit the pictures that I think are the strongest first, in this instance it was the individual portraits. After that, I started looking at the sequences of them walking. I was a bit annoyed as had it been later, the light would have been softer. It is annoying that it’s only a golden ‘hour’ and even then it’s only an hour at the height of summer. As I was scanning through the pictures, something caught my eye so I zoomed into the image. In the window of the house was what appeared to be a figure. As I magnified the image, a chill went down my spine. Not only did it appear to be a figure, but I could make out a face as well. Had I photographed a ghost? What was this. A trick of the light, my mind playing tricks, or something more sinister, the face appeared demonic. I shuddered. I have had some strange experiences during my life, I have heard unexplained sounds and seen spontaneous ball lightning, but I haven’t seen a ghost. I was a big believer in ghosts and UFO’s, now, I am less so, but still open to the possibility. As a child I used my mum’s typewriter to copy chapters from a Peter Underwood book on ghosts. In my early teens, myself and three friends went to a UFO conference in Sheffield. One of the highlights was the world premiere of the now infamous Roswell alien autopsy footage.

Ghost or not, the image was a gift. I had several serendipitous moments as I worked on Vale, images, that I stumbled upon, that presented themselves to me, as if to say ‘hey wouldn’t this work great in your series’. I published the series as a book in 2020 and you can view all of the series on my website.