Photo Credit: Mike Hutmacher, The Wichita Eagle
No, today's post isn't about Polaroid introducing new film unfortunately. This story comes out of Kansas, where a Wichita boy found an unexpected bonus with the purchase of a Polaroid camera at a garage sale. While futzing about with the camera, he discovered a picture of a man sitting with a girl inside it's cartridge. This wasn't some random couple...when his grandmother saw the picture, she gasped. It was her long deceased son and his old girlfriend! The article states that the boy bought the camera a mile away from his grandmother's house and that the man who sold it to him wasn't sure where he acquired the camera. They have no connection with the seller and the woman in the photograph moved long ago. Strange indeed. The family sees it as a sign of some supernatural act...Although I hate to pick apart a fluff article, I'm going to put on my mythbusters cap.
The camera shown in the article is a Polaroid Impulse, which was released in 1988. According to the article the man in the photo died 23 years ago and the picture was apparently taken around 78 or 79...My math isn't all that great, but something doesn't add up. Polaroid 600 film has been around since 81, which would mean that the photo wasn't taken with that camera, unless this camera travels back in time along with communicating with lost souls. Sorry to cry fowl, but this camera of the dead seems a little too fishy to be real. Although I'd like to believe that this boy found a long lost memento by some strange twist of fate, my spidey sense says otherwise. Who knows, maybe it could all be a really bizarre coincidence, but if this wasn't a hoax there are still so many unanswered questions: Why would someone use an old camera to store an even older photo? Is the grandmother losing it, or is she just denying that she knows the man who sold it? (Scandalous!) How does the woman feel about the 70's coming back to haunt her? And finally...Why is this national news?
What do you think? Was this just a slow day at the Wichita Eagle or is this really a message from beyond the grave?
Polaroid's Spectral Spectra Film