A PHOTOGRAPH MYSTERY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 440, 25 January 1890, Page 6

A PHOTOGRAPH MYSTERY.

A Most Singular Story Told by an English Photographer. A well-known photographer, says the •London Tablet,’ will vouch for the following facts : He was called in one day to take a photograph of a young girl of about 20, who had died a few days before. The corpse was laid out upon a bed with the hands clasped over the breast. Death had come very gently to her, and, except for tne stillness, she lay there as if in sleep. Some flowers had been strewn over the body, and on the floor by the side of the bed, and standing out in black relief against it, was the coffin. The photographer silently adjusted his lens and took the photograph. During the ten minutes needed for the exposure, the photographer paced up and down in the long corridor outside the room where the dead girl lay. When he returned he saw that on the lid of the coffin was a flower, which was not so before. How did that flower come there ? No one had entered the room, the windows were closed and there was not a breath of air stirring. Why was the flower now lying on the coffin, when a few minutes before it was on the bed between the hands of the corpse ? The photographer listened, but he could hear no sound except the beating of bis own heart. In a few moments, however, he determined to dismiss the question from his mind and busied himself with packing up his instrument. Then he paused —possibly the falling flower had left a trace on the negative, or as the day was gloomy, the photograph might not be quite successful. He would try again. A second photograph was taken and the artist returned home. That night, sitting up late in his studio, he developed the two negatives. The position of the corpse was not the same in the two negatives. The photographer strained his eyes, half disbelieving the evidence of his own senses, but there were the two negatives before him, telling him in the'r silent, unmistakable truthfulness, that between the taking of the two photographs the arm of the dead girl had distinctly moved. The 1 mystery’ of the flower on the coffin was i solved, but it was succeeded by a mystery j more terrible etilL : "’-'H