Part III: The Ghosts of Christmas Past: In Search of Goodwin’s Ghost
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You know, I thought that this would happen—the paranormal just does that to you—when you are looking for one particular presence and you find a plethora of other intriguing phantoms! I’ve found a red wraith that has the appearance of a dragon (or dragons—oftentimes ghosts will move so fast that their image doubles on the capture—even if the shutterspeed is only a fraction of a second, so I can’t be sure if it’s multiple ghosts or one caught in movement), I’ve found a youth choir dressed in white robes, and now I’ve found something equally as intriguing. I have no definitive explanations for the appearance of this ghost, but what I will offer is several possibilities for why this ghost appears as if it’s a GIANT.
In my book Haunted Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography I published several photos of gigantic red orbs—anywhere from 50 to 100 feet (over 30 meters) in diameter. Two of them, one at the Mathew’s Baptist Church (on page 201 you can see only ¼ of two giant red orbs that dwarf the church steeple) and one at the Hunter Millinery (page 193 on the far right of the page you can see the edge of a giant red orb that is at least two times the size of the I ½ story millinery), had a round shape, and the apparitions at the Wren Building at the College of William and Mary had hexagon shapes (page 99 and also on the back cover of the book you can see multiple red hexagon-shaped apparitions that vary in size from a basketball size to the faint outline of two orbs that are twice the size of the three-story Wren Building). It would stand to reason that if a ghost’s electromagnetic field is that large, then surely it must be capable of recreating an apparition that is large—perhaps as large as the field itself—but I have never seen an overly large recreation of a human ghost before. I use the word recreation because I believe that ghosts make holograms of themselves out of light because they are now just an electromagnetic field, and they must not be able to regulate or control color, so they are usually white. So now, in the midst of my search for Dr. Goodwin’s ghost, I have come across what appears to be a giant ghost. Not enormous, like some of the orbs that I spoke about, but nevertheless a giant in comparison to the surrounding real people. Whether this is a former human of a normal size who is capable of generating a much larger ghost, or an actual giant, I do not know.
Perhaps you have read or heard about a race of giants that once roamed the earth. You may have heard it through the Bible (a race of hybrid humans—the Nephilim—that were the result of what Genesis calls the “sons of God” or what some call angels came to the earth and had sex with human women: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4) Greek mythology refers to this same group of hybrid humans as the Titans and a later group as Gigantes, along with many other references to large, humanlike monsters like the Cyclops. I would be remiss not to mention Heracles (or Hercules), best known as the strongest of all the human/angel hybrids. Although not regarded as a giant, he was not only stronger than all of the other giants and some of their angelic or godlike fathers, but also he was the deciding factor in the victory of the “gods” over the giants. Here in North America there are also references to and fossil records of giants. The Paiute tribe, that lived in the area that is now the Southwestern states of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, have an oral tradition of a race of red-haired, white giants that were about 12 feet tall (about 4 meters). They were a vicious group of cannibals that preyed on the Native American tribes in the area until they all banded together to defeat the giants. Fossil records of these giants exist in the Southwest as well as throughout North America have been disappearing as if there is conscious effort to coverup the existence of the giants, but if you look in newspapers from the past you can read about the recovered skeletons of giants that have since disappeared.
Whether you believe in the giants or not, you have to admit that this next photo, taken in a crowd of people warming themselves around a torch set in the Governor’s Green right next to Bruton Parish Church, contains the apparition of a gigantic ghost apparition in human form—the largest that I have ever photographed. Whether this is the ghost of a giant from the distant past or just the over-sized apparition of a perhaps bigger-than-life character from Williamsburg’s past I cannot say. The irony of the situation is that I wonder how many of these same people (or even you for that matter) would still be standing there warming themselves if they could only see the ominous apparition looming overhead? Dare I say that the warm feeling of the fire would change to a cold chill down their spine? Dare I say that some of them, regardless of the shape that they are in, would break off in a full sprint back to their cars? I have cropped the photo so that you can only see the backs of the people standing around the fire, and I blurred the face of a woman standing near me (because I do not have the written permission of anyone in the photo to use their likeness in a public blog post).
This giant ghost appears to stand at least 4—5 feet higher than any of the humans warming themselves around him. The ghost is right next to the torch the people are standing around.
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This next photo was taken at the doorway of the Bruton Parish Church after an evening concert. I have blacked out the faces of two people leaving the church. Notice that behind them is a tall ghost, perhaps well over 6 feet in height. If you look between the two people whose faces I blacked out you can see that once again the shoe and the pant-leg are plain to see, but as you look to the upper body and the face, it has faded to a white, mist-like form that is not definable. (For those of you that have not read my blog before, the appearance of a shoe and pant-leg with just an ephemeral mist for the rest of the ghost’s body has happened before—both at the Boxwood Inn and outside the Courthouse of 1770.) The Rev. Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin was a tall man with a robust, if not athletic build—could this be Goodwin’s ghost at the doorway of his church—perhaps to see off all of the guests who came to hear the evening concert? I wonder what the pressed pants with a cuff and the shoe state about the time period that the ghost lived in?
Could the tall ghost standing behind the 2 people with the blacked out faces be the Rev. Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin? Notice that you can see his pant-leg and the shoe quite plainly (between the 2 people), while the rest of the ghost appears like a white mist?
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My quest for Goodwin’s ghost will continue nevertheless, hoping for a more definitive capture of the engaging, charismatic former rector of Bruton Parish Church; so stay tuned for Part IV!
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After 2 years of research, a lot of experimentation, and over 10,000 photographs, check out the world’s first groundbreaking photographic study of ghosts: Haunted, Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography available at both Schiffer Publishing and at Amazon:
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Amazon: http://amzn.com/0764350609
Tim Scullion is a published author, photographer, and musician. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree Cum Laude. In addition to the book mentioned above, Tim has written a novel, a series of instruction books on the guitar, a children’s book (all available on Amazon) and has a photo-essay published by the University of Virginia in the book Troubled Times Companion, Vol. III.
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