Featured
item for year
July 2005
Artifact
or Phenomena? Kathy Caton, member of the “A Sanctuary of Infinite Spirit”
church in Long Island, took this picture at Lily Dale. She said that the
negative does not show the figures, however the print does. The object of our
attention is the three bright areas just about in the middle of the frame and
just above the insert. The inserted picture shows an enlargement of the three
figures with miner adjustments in contrast. You will have to extrapolate what
the figures are because they are not well detailed.
We are comfortable that the figures were not physically in the scene when the
picture was taken. They could be a contact transfer of information during the
development process from an adjacent photograph, but if that were the case, then
the figures could as easily be superimposed over the tree. Is it likely that a
random artifact would come out looking like people standing on the ice?
The left figure looks like a standing man, holding something under an arm.
The center figure appears to be kneeling, and the right figure looks a little
like a woman holding a child. That is our extrapolation of the information.
Cathy offered her insight: “Since Lily Dale is on sacred Native American soil,
it does not surprise me that the three figures could be that of their
ancestors—some kind of