The Atlantic

Why Do People Believe in Ghosts?

Across the world, ideas of the paranormal persist.

In June, Sheila Sillery-Walsh, a British tourist visiting the historic island prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco, claimed that she captured an image of a ghost in a picture she snapped on her iPhone. In the frame of what was otherwise supposed to be a picture of an empty prison cell was a blurry black-and-white image of a woman. The story, which was printed in the British tabloid the Daily Mail, featured on the Bay Area’s local KRON4 TV station and mocked by SFist, isn’t the first time the Daily Mail has claimed that strange images have come up on smart devices.

Normally, a paranormal story wouldn’t catch my attention, but a few months before the story came out, a Spanish friend of mine named Laura showed me a weird image she found on her phone while I was traveling in Madrid. The photo, taken on her iPhone while on a

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