The Brown Lady is one of the earliest and most famous ghost photos in existence. More than that, it was the first ghost photo Isabel and I saw as kids. While I don’t remember the name of the book, I do remember the impact this photo had on us. The idea that it was possible, albeit difficult, to capture ghosts on film may have been the spark that ignited our lifelong interest in photography.
“The Brown Lady” by Hubert C. Provand & Indre Shira is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Carl Sagan, when discussing the famous Pale Blue Dot image, famously said, “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” He believed as strongly in that image as Isabel and I believed in The Brown Lady photograph. In fact Sagan seemed to have the closest thing to a spiritual experience the man ever had when waxing on poetically about that image: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.”
“Pale Blue Dot” by NASA is in the public domain.
Where some see wonder and insight in statements like this, others see nihilism. The idea of being on a rock floating in nothingness, guided by nothing, with no meaning in life is not comfort for most people. It is true horror.
However, that’s not what we are here to talk about today. Rather, I want to discuss the very nature of photographic evidence by looking at the similarities and differences between The Brown Lady photograph and The Pale Blue Dot image.
The Brown Lady Negative
When we discuss The Brown Lady we are talking about an actual, analog, photograph that was taken using actual film and an optical camera. The film was developed in the normal manner and the negative has been independently examined, as we can see below.
Kodak technicians – Examined the original negative and found no signs of deliberate double exposure or retouching. Source
Society for Psychical Research (SPR) – Researchers from the SPR examined the negative and found no sign of double exposure or deliberate alteration. Source
C.V.C. Herbert (SPR Research Officer) – Compiled a detailed report dated 14 January 1937 after interviewing both photographers and examining the camera and negatives. The original investigation file is held in the Cambridge University Library archives. Source
Harry Price – The noted paranormal investigator examined the negative and concluded it was genuine, stating that “the negative is entirely innocent of any faking” and finding no evidence of double exposure or trickery. Source 1 | Source 2
Royal Photographic Society – Later inspected the original negative, and no signs of double exposure or manipulation appeared. Source
Whether or not the photograph shows an actual ghost or not can be debated. What cannot be debated is the authenticity of what is shown on that negative, and all subsequent prints made from that negative.
The full process for obtaining this image was as follows:
| Phase | Step | Exact Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Photographic Session | Date & Time | September 19, 1936, ~4:00 PM |
| Location | Raynham Hall, Norfolk – ground floor, aiming up the grand oak staircase | |
| Photographers | Indre Shira (fired flash) & Captain Hubert C. Provand (operated lens) | |
| Camera | “Old stand camera” (large-format) on tripod | |
| Lens | Rapid-Rectilinear (R.R.) type | |
| Film / Plate | Kodak S.S. Ortho (orthochromatic – sensitive to blue/green, not red) | |
| Exposure Time | ~6 seconds | |
| Lighting | Large Sasha flashbulb (manually triggered by Shira) | |
| Sighting | Shira saw an “ethereal, veiled form” descending; alerted Provand to uncap the lens | |
| Second Flash | Shira fired a second flash during the long exposure | |
| 2. Development Process | Location | Photographers’ studio in London |
| Witness | Colleague Benjamin Jones invited to witness development for authenticity | |
| Process | Plates developed in darkroom in front of Jones | |
| Result | Ghostly female figure emerged on the negative as it developed | |
| 3. Printing & Publication | First Print | Made from the developed negative |
| Expert Endorsement | Harry Price (paranormal investigator) examined negative; declared it “entirely innocent of any faking” | |
| First Publication | Country Life – December 26, 1936 | |
| US Publication | Life magazine – January 4, 1937 | |
| Printing Artifacts | Many reproductions printed very dark, hiding artifacts; misaligned banisters (indicating double exposure) often cropped out | |
| 4. Forensic Analysis (1980s) | Examiner | Dr. Vernon Harrison – ex-president of the Royal Photographic Society |
| Method | Densitometry (measuring light density across the image) | |
| Purpose | Detect signs of manipulation, double exposure, or retouching |
Any normal person would recognize this as they typical set of steps used to capture, develop, and print a photograph. Calling this image a photograph is correct in every sense of the word, because it represents exactly what the public thinks when the word photograph is used.
The Pale Blue Dot
Now, let’s take a look at the process of creating the Pale Blue Dot image.
| Stage | Date(s) | Algorithm / Mechanism | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planning & Command | Command sent: Feb 13, 1990 | N/A | Carl Sagan’s concept; commands computed by JPL scientists Candy Hansen and Carolyn Porco |
| Image Capture | Feb 14, 1990, at 4:48 GMT | N/A | Voyager 1’s Narrow-Angle Camera took 3 images (green, blue, violet filters) |
| Onboard Storage | Feb 14, 1990 | “FAST” Compression | Reduce image data by ~60% for downlink |
| Camera Shutdown | 34 minutes after capture (~5:22 GMT, Feb 14, 1990) | N/A | Cameras powered off forever to conserve power |
| Transmission to Earth | March – May 1, 1990 | Reed-Solomon (255, 223) + Convolutional Coding | Downlinked at 160 bits/sec; protect against noise; correct up to 16 byte errors/block |
| Ground Reception | Ongoing during transmission | Telemetry Decoding | Reverse error-correction to reconstruct raw 800×800, 8-bit frames |
| Ground (Radiometric) | Post-reception, 1990 | Dark Current Subtraction | Remove electronic noise from vidicon readout |
| Ground (Radiometric) | Post-reception, 1990 | Flat-Field Correction | Normalize non-uniform pixel sensitivity |
| Ground (Radiometric) | Post-reception, 1990 | voycal | Convert raw DNs to physical radiance (I/F) |
| Ground (Geometric) | Post-reception, 1990 | RESLOC / GEOMA | Locate reseau marks & warp image to remove distortion |
| Ground (Geometric) | Post-reception, 1990 | REMRX / RESSAR77 | Interpolate over reseau marks to clean the image |
| Ground (Color) | Post-reception, 1990 | Color Balancing | Combine 3 filtered images into false-color composite; balance RGB channels so sunbeam appears white |
| Public Release | 1990 (original) | N/A | NASA publishes original “Pale Blue Dot” image |
| 2020 Reprocessing | Released Feb 12, 2020 | ISIS3 + custom software + Photoshop + Lightroom | Modern reprocessing from raw data by JPL engineer Kevin M. Gill; final resolution 666 × 659 pixels |
A key piece of information that is often glossed over in discussions of the Voyager images is that the signal reaching Earth was below watt. This puts the signal far below the noise floor and requires special instruments to detect the signal and pull it out from the noise floor.
| Stage | Date(s) | Algorithm / Mechanism | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground Reception | Ongoing during transmission | Cryogenically-cooled Maser Amplifier (~4 K) + Telemetry Decoding | Amplify the <1 attowatt signal, burying it below the noise floor; reverse error-correction to reconstruct raw 800×800, 8-bit frames |
What NASA got back from Voyager was data below the noise floor that required special algorithms to even get a signal. These algorithms employed error correction mechanisms. This is before any image processing was done.
Another problem is that the image shown by NASA presents a round dot. However, the actual size of the “Earth” in that raw data is 0.12 of a pixel. This means scientists had to feed a Richardson–Lucy deconvolution algorithm a Point Spread Function (PSF) so that the imaging algorithm would process that sub-pixel point of light as a round object.
Cost
The Pale Blue Dot image cost the American tax payers roughly $2,400,000. Compare this to the cost of about $2000 (in 1990s dollars) for the Brown Lady photo. This fee was not charged to taxpayer, but was handled either by Lady Townshend or Country Life Magazine.
Putting it All Together
The Brown Lady photo has been independently verified as genuinely containing an anomaly on the negative itself. This does not mean it’s definitely a photo of a ghost, but something is very obviously there.
The Pale Blue Dot image is not a photograph at all. It is a digital reconstruction of binary data at a resolution of pixels that shows a point of light that is 0.12 pixels in size. Moreover, this data went through fifteen or more algorithms and artists renderings before being shown to the public.
The uncomfortable truth for many in the scientific community is that there is far more photographic evidence for The Brown Lady than there is for the Pale Blue Dot simply because The Brown Lady photograph is actually a photograph rather than reconstructed, error corrected, and artist rendered binary data.