Sunday, June 12, 2011

Wem Town Hall Ghost on Wikipedia

Here is another example of working backwards.

Never heard of this place or the ghost but while reading through a Skeptical Inquirer article I found this really great investigation into the ghost photo of a burned out building in the town of Wem. The investigation felt that the ghost girl might have been edited into the picture as a hoax but didn't have the final proof. A sharp eyed reader of their local newspaper saw a resemblance of the ghost girl to an postcard from 1922 of the city street that had a young girl (very alive in 1922) standing on the sidewalk.

Investigator Blake Smith did an awesome job comparing the two images and there is no doubt that the ghost photo was a fake. All this appears in Skeptical Inquirer Magazine along with all the photo evidence needed.

The Wem Town Hall
Wikipedia page was not without skeptical comment when I started editing. Someone had already posted a blurb and citation about the newspaper article reporting on the ghost and a investigation. I added to the blurb and included the citation to the article in SI.

No one has bothered to edit the page or comment. But it was a simple edit on a topic I would have probably forgotten about. Sometimes Guerrilla Skepticism is just that easy.

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