coopers falling body

Having researched this kind of stuff for many years, I’m quite familiar with the most infamous spooky snaps that one can find in books and dotted around the internet, this one, however, had eluded me until now. In fact, I first saw it yesterday on Imgur.

The details are thin on the ground. About half way through the last century (judging by the clothes), the Cooper family moved into a new home somewhere in Texas. They took a photograph to mark this occasion and this thing appeared in the left of the frame upon development. Another source has said that, instead of the figure only coming to light upon development, the photograph actually captured the moment a dead body fell through the ceiling. If this was the case I’d have expected the sitters to have reacted to the movement to some degree but they appear to be entirely unaware of any presence to their right.

I’m told that the original snap has been cropped a little, which explains why the family is now not centred as one would expect them to be. Some people argue that the degree ofvignetting present points towards the photograph being uncropped but I think the vignetting is unequal with more appearing on the left border than the right. It seems possible then that the right-hand side of the photograph could have lost a centimetre or two at some point.

One non-paranormal explanation for the figure is that it is a doll being dangled in front of the camera to make sure the boys looked into the lens, but would anyone really let such an object invade the frame so much? Surely it’d be just as easy to dangle the doll well above the lens. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be noticed by anyone in the picture and the figure’s details don’t really lend themselves to this idea.

Lightened.

Enlarged.

Even freakier upside-down.

Another thing that bothers me: why is the figure’s clothing illuminated yet the flesh unnaturally dark?

Also, what’s with the strangely black void in this section?

I’ve had a quick Google, with a variety of keywords, but more details than the above evade me, so if anyone can squirrel more information it would be very enlightening to read. Furthermore, the farthest back it seems to appear online is 14/11/2009 – although I can’t find an explanation of it other than its title which is Family Gathering and its filename which is 1_familywithhangingman. I’ve seen it said that the photo was first uploaded to the internet in the year 2000 but no proof accompanied the statement.