Princess Comes Home for Christmas
Submitted by Chuck Westbrook
Submitted by Chuck Westbrook
Princess was born 12/19/94 and was a pure bred yellow lab. Her name was Princess of Arden...but we just called her Princess.
I had moved to an apartment where I could not have Princess with me so my mother took care of her for me. She made an excellent watch dog and companion for my mother and grandmother.
In about August 2005, Princess was just over 10 1/2 years old when she began to have hip problems for a 3rd time and she started slowing down. She was not getting up as quickly, not going out and running around the yard as much as usual. More importantly, she was not eating as much as usual and would occasionally skip a meal. In September, she stopped eating. My mother could not get her to eat anything at all....Rice, chicken, treats, nothing...just a little water here and there. She would just lay around and move slow as if she were in pain. When someone came in she would sit up and look like she wanted to greet them but within about a minute or two, she would just lay down as if she were too tired to do anything.
The Vet said we could do some blood tests but that would not necessarily find the problem and would take another week or more for the results. These tests were very expensive and not guaranteed to find anything wrong. By the time I could get her to the vet for the tests and the results got back, she would have been 5 weeks without any meals at all. On 10/05/05...After 4 weeks of not eating anything, and not moving around much because it appeared to be painful, I decided to have her put to sleep rather than let her suffer in hip pain or starve herself to death. She went quietly and I stayed in the room with her till she was gone.
For the next few months, my mother kept hearing her around the house. She would be in the living room and hear a car door and then hear the dog give the usual woof (Not a full bark and seemingly clear as if she were actually there). She would turn to tell her to shut up like she always did and realize the dog was not there any more. Princess would sleep along side of my mothers bed. When she came in, she would flop on the floor and up against the bed shaking the bed. After she was gone, there were a few times where my mother felt the bed shake and heard a noise like the dog made when she flopped down beside the bed.
In December 2005, when I put my mothers Christmas tree up and decorated it I decided to take a few pictures. I was zooming in on a picture in the camera to see if it was in focus or not since it was dark and when I got to the top...Princess was looking back at me! When I looked up at that spot on the tree...I could see it plain as day. It looked like she was peeking around the top of the tree and looking right at me. You could only see it from that one spot but she was there, two eyes, a nose, her right ear and the crease line in her forehead.
I think it must have been an optical illusion created by a red hat ornament that was on the tree. My mother joined the Red Hat Society and she got this lacy red hat Christmas tree ornament. It was hanging in just the right position and the light shined through it in just the right way, that it looked like a ghost image of the dog peaking around the tree and looking right at you. It sure was funny how it came out that way without trying to do it. It looked just like her. Between that and the noises mom was hearing, it was like Princess was still there watching over her.
I had moved to an apartment where I could not have Princess with me so my mother took care of her for me. She made an excellent watch dog and companion for my mother and grandmother.
In about August 2005, Princess was just over 10 1/2 years old when she began to have hip problems for a 3rd time and she started slowing down. She was not getting up as quickly, not going out and running around the yard as much as usual. More importantly, she was not eating as much as usual and would occasionally skip a meal. In September, she stopped eating. My mother could not get her to eat anything at all....Rice, chicken, treats, nothing...just a little water here and there. She would just lay around and move slow as if she were in pain. When someone came in she would sit up and look like she wanted to greet them but within about a minute or two, she would just lay down as if she were too tired to do anything.
The Vet said we could do some blood tests but that would not necessarily find the problem and would take another week or more for the results. These tests were very expensive and not guaranteed to find anything wrong. By the time I could get her to the vet for the tests and the results got back, she would have been 5 weeks without any meals at all. On 10/05/05...After 4 weeks of not eating anything, and not moving around much because it appeared to be painful, I decided to have her put to sleep rather than let her suffer in hip pain or starve herself to death. She went quietly and I stayed in the room with her till she was gone.
For the next few months, my mother kept hearing her around the house. She would be in the living room and hear a car door and then hear the dog give the usual woof (Not a full bark and seemingly clear as if she were actually there). She would turn to tell her to shut up like she always did and realize the dog was not there any more. Princess would sleep along side of my mothers bed. When she came in, she would flop on the floor and up against the bed shaking the bed. After she was gone, there were a few times where my mother felt the bed shake and heard a noise like the dog made when she flopped down beside the bed.
In December 2005, when I put my mothers Christmas tree up and decorated it I decided to take a few pictures. I was zooming in on a picture in the camera to see if it was in focus or not since it was dark and when I got to the top...Princess was looking back at me! When I looked up at that spot on the tree...I could see it plain as day. It looked like she was peeking around the top of the tree and looking right at me. You could only see it from that one spot but she was there, two eyes, a nose, her right ear and the crease line in her forehead.
I think it must have been an optical illusion created by a red hat ornament that was on the tree. My mother joined the Red Hat Society and she got this lacy red hat Christmas tree ornament. It was hanging in just the right position and the light shined through it in just the right way, that it looked like a ghost image of the dog peaking around the tree and looking right at you. It sure was funny how it came out that way without trying to do it. It looked just like her. Between that and the noises mom was hearing, it was like Princess was still there watching over her.
ESP's Perspective
This submission is very credible for a number of reasons. First, Chuck is an acquaintance and coworker of Stacey's who has an interest in and respect for the paranormal. He definitely wouldn't make up something like this, or attempt to fabricate a photo to perpetrate some kind of hoax. Second, he didn't ask us to post his email - he just wanted to share his experience and sent it to Stacey's personal email address. Finally, his conclusion was that the dog in the photo was an optical illusion, not an apparition.
We weren't so sure, so we decided to do a bit of research on our own to see what we could determine about the photo.
Our first step was to run the photo though the "hoaxchecker" program on the Spirit Society web site (www.spiritsociety.org). This is something that we routinely do with every photo that's submitted to us. As we anticipated, the program detected no photo editor alterations. Then we began our own examination.
Next we enlarged the photo and cropped out all but the dog image and the surrounding parts of the Christmas tree.
We weren't so sure, so we decided to do a bit of research on our own to see what we could determine about the photo.
Our first step was to run the photo though the "hoaxchecker" program on the Spirit Society web site (www.spiritsociety.org). This is something that we routinely do with every photo that's submitted to us. As we anticipated, the program detected no photo editor alterations. Then we began our own examination.
Next we enlarged the photo and cropped out all but the dog image and the surrounding parts of the Christmas tree.
Since the original photo had too much red we adjusted the color channel mix based on the known colors of the green Christmas tree and the white lights. At this point the dog image took on a more brownish hue, and the lighter areas above and around the eyes became more defined. (Note the color similarity between the color balanced Christmas photo and Chuck's earlier photo of princess)
To it's lower left was part of the brim of the red hat that Chuck had mentioned, and what appears to be a purple ribbon crossing it and hanging down from the left edge of the brim.
To it's lower left was part of the brim of the red hat that Chuck had mentioned, and what appears to be a purple ribbon crossing it and hanging down from the left edge of the brim.
Then we made a second adjustment to simulate natural sunlight, and the hat brim and ribbon took on slightly different hues and became clearer and more separate from the dog image. The dog's image also became more subtle and less defined than in the original photo.
Next we changed the image to grayscale to eliminate any optical illusions that might be caused by color variances.
Then we increased both the brightness and the contrast by 50%. While the hat brim and the ribbon appeared basically unchanged, the dog image took on more of a translucent appearance.
When we increased the brightness by an additional 25% and the contrast by an additional 50% we could begin to see that the top of the dog's head wasn't solid at all. It was composed of what appeared to be a wispy mist. At this point we could begin to see some of the scrollwork from the objects behind the tree and some of the tree branch features that were behind the head. This wasn't true of the area behind the hat brim.
Next we increased both brightness and contrast by an additional 25%. At that point you could clearly see the scrollwork behind the upper part of the dog's head, but not behind the lower part, which is where the rest of the hat ornament would have been.
In our final enhancement it become very clear that the dog's image is not solid. We suspect that the area where you can't see the scrollwork is the area occupied by the red hat ornament. Most likely the Christmas lights reflecting off or shining through the ornament gave the dog's image it's reddish hue. We also believe that the reason the image was visible from only one spot was because without the red hat behind it, it was indistinguishable against the random patterns of the Christmas tree branches, needles and lights.
Conclusion: You had a visitor, Chuck. Princess obviously missed you and your mother as much the two of you missed her.
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