Ghostly Figure Caught on Camera

Nathan Ziegler a principal at Hope Academy in Minneapolis was visiting his hometown of Milton-Freewater, Washington in the Walla Walla Valley with his wife this summer when he decided to try out his new time-lapse camera.

Ziegler a camera enthusiast had just bought himself a GoPro Hero 3.

Fuzzy Figure captured.

He likes to photograph the valley’s beautiful sunsets so he chose Old Pioneer Cemetery, which sits high on a hill outside of town. He knew he would get a nice sweeping view from this hill.

Ziegler hiked a mile to reach this cemetery on July 23rd--the town’s oldest graveyard. This cemetery is along the Oregon Trail and the first graves are from 1868. It has a padlocked gate and is on private property today. The last time it was used for burials was in the early 1940s.

He placed his new camera on a tripod in front of a tombstone and started the 30-second time-lapse function at 8:13 p.m. He left it filming for 2 hours.

The following morning he downloaded the pictures he captured to his laptop--so he could share them on his blog. At first he did not notice anything strange. But when he was showing them to his father-in-law he saw something that surprised him.

He noticed a strange shadowy figure. He zoomed in to take a better look. It appeared at 9:08:30 p.m. and was a fuzzy humanoid shape behind the tree in the frame. He couldn’t determine if it was walking, leaning or standing still.

What makes this capture so unusual is the figure isn’t in the frame taken 30-seconds before or in the frame taken 30-seconds afterwards.

At 9:08:30 p.m.

Frame taken 30-seconds later

It appeared as if it literally just dropped in and then disappeared.

Ziegler first placed the photos on his Facebook page and asked for suggestions. Some felt it was an insect, others suggested it was a limb that fell from the tree.

Zeigler and his brother-in-law hiked back to the cemetery the next day on the 24^th but they found no limbs on the ground.

The two men checked to see whether a person could have walked across the exposed frame in 30 seconds or less. If a person was considerably closer to the camera in the foreground they could have but the figure captured was behind the tree.

Zeigler set up his camera once more but this time it revealed nothing.

News stations in Portland, Spokane and Walla Walla all covered this story.

Here is an update by Zeigler on his blog where he did further investigations the next day--the figure remains a mystery.

Here is a nice short video Zeigler did showing the figure only appeared in one frame.