At photo exhibits, I look for images that especially grab me. If I find one and the photographer is around, I’ll ask if the photo holds stories that aren’t immediately obvious. Stories that might even lie outside the frame in space or time.
Sometimes, I’ll get a blank stare. But others, I’ll hear a book. And if you happened to attend one of my exhibits and asked about the above image, this is what I’d tell you. I took the photo in the 1950s with my first camera, a Kodak Duaflex. In it, my younger brother Byron admires one of mom’s lilies in one hand while holding a balsa-wood model plane in the other.
This staged image seems normal and innocent. But there’d be far stranger stories to come (both within and beyond the frame) than our family could have ever imagined when I tripped that shutter.
STORY 1: A House with an Attitude
Byron and I were in the front yard of our family’s home on Sharon Avenue, in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve mentioned the house in other 35mmc articles, but in short, it turned out to be the most haunted place I’ve ever lived. If I find my Duaflex photo of it, I’ll share more about that. But for now, here are some “high”lights:
- Our entire family was weirded out by our first TV (as described here).
- Then late one night, dad “watched” as invisible footsteps descended the second-floor stairs and “walked” right past him in a cold breeze. The next morning, we found him in his living-room chair, still awake and frozen in fear.
- My two sisters once saw columns of lights floating around the upstairs hall… and woke us with their screams.
- And time and again, I received the house’s extra special physical attentions.
The haunts eventually drove us out. And just over a year later, we visited our old neighbors and asked how the new owners were doing. Knowing our history with the place, they frowned and replied “Oh. They aren’t. They moved out six months ago.”
But while we lived there, it also became clear that the entire neighborhood was just a bit off-kilter!
STORY 2: The Psychic on the Corner
For instance, see that house in the background? The one to the left of Byron’s head? It anchored the corner of Sharon Avenue and Glenburn Place, and mom said its owner – whom I’ll call “Mrs. G” – was “a famous psychic to the Presidents and Hollywood stars.” I soon came to believe it.
I only met Mrs. G once, when mom asked me to bring her a book. She invited me into her living room and offered a seat on her couch.
I think mom may have told her about our surreal lives across the street, because Mrs. G apparently had an agenda. She explained that she specialized in “psychometry” – the art of holding something a person owned (or owns… like their hands) and “telling them things about themselves.” She asked if I’d like her to read my hands, and curious, I said “sure.”
Taking my hands in hers, she promised that no matter how difficult my childhood would be, I’d “survive it victoriously.” She added that I was “psychically highly sensitive” and “would experience many unbelievable — even terrifying — things.” But she commanded me to never allow myself to be scared. “For fear is your greatest enemy,” she explained, and even the most terrifying things would happen for reasons that I’d “come to understand.”
She was spectacularly correct on all counts. But she also proved to be tragically correct about something else.
STORY 3: “Louis… DON’T!!!”
I never actually saw our neighborhood psychic again. But on a cold December night a couple years later, she demonstrated her abilities beyond all doubting.
Outside the left edge of the above photo were the homes of our three closest neighbors. I’ll call them the J’s, B’s and D’s. Mr. D was a retired civil engineer, and on the rare occasions when dad wasn’t home and I could escape into the outdoors, I’d see if Mr. D was home. If he was, we’d sit on his back steps and talk about math and science. He was like a second father.
But one cold December night, his sweet wife died of pneumonia. And over the following 12 months, he gave some of her clothes and jewelry to mom, Mrs. J, and Mrs. B.
Then the very next December — one year to the NIGHT after Mrs. D’s death — our psychic neighbor phoned mom, Mrs. J and Mrs. B in a panic. She had been awakened by Mrs. D screaming “Louis… DON’T!!!”
The four ladies threw robes over their pajamas and ran through the snow to Mr. D’s house. His front door was unlocked, but they were too late. He had just shot himself with his Army service revolver.
Mom never shared details, and we didn’t ask. But the morning after they found Mr. D, she strangely exclaimed that “he was such a nice man he’d always be welcome in our home.” And he may have taken her up on that, because the house soon became paranormally electric (as mentioned in STORY 1).
STORY 4: The Vanishing
Next, if you could peek just beyond the photo’s right edge, in the distance, you’d see within the trees a mid-century brick ranch where one of my few friends lived. I envied that “Harry” was an only child, because every Easter, he’d receive five baskets to my one – each basket filled with a different candy. Chocolates in one, taffies in another, jellies/gummies in a third, and so on. (I didn’t even want to hear about his Christmases!)
But one day, both of his parents died in an accident. And after that (crazy as it sounds) he continued to live in the house alone. Sometimes, he threw noisy all-night parties for classmates. Until months later, when Harry simply disappeared. Never to be heard from again.
At least that’s what mom told me. Every so often, I search the web for information about him, but haven’t yet found anything to contradict her.
STORY 5: My Brother Byron
But the hidden stories don’t end there. After I took that photo, my brother gradually succumbed to what was later diagnosed as schizophrenia.
Over the years, he grew progressively worse. And immediately after receiving a degree in particle physics from Case Western Reserve (in Cleveland, Ohio), he suffered a full schizophrenic breakdown. It hit on his way to his very first job (in a garden center). And trying to keep his car on a straight road that– to him– slithered like a snake, Byron forced a police car off of it. It took four men to subdue him and take him to the State Hospital.
From that point on, he never enjoyed another day of freedom. And he died in his ‘50s after an entire adulthood of hospitalization. He had been, however, a brilliant artist, mathematician and scientist. And I’ll write more about that in the future.
STORY 6: An Angel at My Side
And finally, on the first day of my own post-collage job, I discovered that Mrs. B (our old neighbor from STORY 3 above) actually managed my new employer’s coin-op coffee room! While she and I caught up on old times, a woman walked in to buy a snack from one of the machines. And when she saw me, her coffee cup crashed to the floor.
Mortified, the woman explained that she was a psychic who “saw peoples’ auras.” And she said mine was “like nothing she’d ever experienced.” Apparently, it “filled the entire room” and (she claimed) was “shaped like wings.”
That wasn’t all. A “guardian angel” (whom I couldn’t see) had apparently entered the room beside me. And when the psychic described him as someone who “looked like the actor Yul Brenner,” I knew it was a great uncle I once saw in an old family photo… who looked remarkably like the “King and I” star.
I worked for that company for several more years, and visited the cafeteria several times each day. But I never again saw the psychic lady.
And though I try to not let that whole “wings” thing go to my head, I came to believe her about a guardian angel at my side. For something once shielded me from a house fire that char-broiled the room around me, and (on two occasions) barked orders in my ear that helped me avoid potentially deadly auto accidents.
I learned to listen… and obey!
Epilogue
The entire neighborhood in that photo held still more stories within and beyond its frame– distanced in both space and time. That’s why I ask photographers if any hidden stories “lurk within or beyond” their images. And sometimes, while their photos may be worth a thousand words, our conversations will grow to ten-thousand.
–Dave Powell is a Westford, Mass. writer and avid amateur photographer.
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Geoff Chaplin on Beyond the Frame – One Shot, Six Stories
Comment posted: 07/09/2024
I have seen two ghosts, and felt one. The first ghost scared me (someone in the room?) until I realised I could see through it. The second occurred alongside "sleep paralysis". The one I felt did scare me - and I didn't open my eyes until it went away. But no related photographs.
Comment posted: 07/09/2024
Comment posted: 07/09/2024
Comment posted: 07/09/2024
Jeffery Luhn on Beyond the Frame – One Shot, Six Stories
Comment posted: 07/09/2024
I've had a few extraordinary unexplained experiences. Who hasn't? The most dramatic was at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem about seven years ago. As a friend was driving me to the entrance of the old city, he jokingly warned me not to fall prey to "Jerusalem Syndrome" which manifests itself in many ways. Usually an unsuspecting male tourist experiences visions, visitations, extremely intense emotional feelings, often of a religious nature. Some people think they are a reborn person from ancient history. I'd read that about 60 people per year are briefly hospitalized every year for a day or two until the symptoms disappear. I laughed off the notion, since I'm usually the least religious person in the room.
While standing at the wailing wall, I put a little piece of paper into a crack in the wall, like many tourists do. Mine was a hope for world peace. Suddenly I felt dizzy and had the most amazing vision that I could see out to the event horizon in all directions. I saw us humans as meaningless specks that would drift away. It was an intensely peaceful vision that seemed to last several minutes. I 'awoke' while some men were settling me into a chair and encouraging me to take a drink of water. It seems that I had fainted. There were five other men being administered to in chairs around me. A couple had to be restrained and the others were drowsy like me. I heard a man, the on-duty doctor, say, "Today has been especially severe for the syndrome."
While I thought I'd been out for several minutes, because my 'visions' had been so detailed and intense, I was told that I'd been out for just a split second. After about 20 minutes, I was able to stand on my own. I spent that night writing my impressions down. I returned to Jerusalem, hoping to have a similar experience, but no luck. It was just a flash-in-the-pan beautiful happening. It didn't make me into a believer in anything except that sometimes things are just right for our brains to be affected by electromagnetic fields, excitement, fear, joy, elevated levels of chemicals in our food or environment, or whatever. The conclusions we come away with are always influenced by how we process the event. Just like any event in our lives, we interpret them through the filters that are built into our heads. So if you or I experience paranormal events, they are true to us.
Comment posted: 07/09/2024
Huss on Beyond the Frame – One Shot, Six Stories
Comment posted: 08/09/2024
@Hamish recently every page has been covered with pop-ups which you need to close to be able to read the page easily. And they then appear again when you navigate to another page. Makes for a very poor user experience.
Viewing with an ipad.
Comment posted: 08/09/2024
Dave Powell on Beyond the Frame – One Shot, Six Stories
Comment posted: 08/09/2024
I enjoy the reactions I sometimes see when someone tells me that an experience was "all in your head" and I reply that EVERYTHING we perceive as "normal" every day is also "all in our heads." But that doesn't imply that all perceptions are "fictitious" in some sense... especially when cameras also confirm them!
David James on Beyond the Frame – One Shot, Six Stories
Comment posted: 09/09/2024
Comment posted: 09/09/2024
Comment posted: 09/09/2024
Comment posted: 09/09/2024