Seeing Things: Ghost Polaroids

Our old friends at Drkrm, the gallery that hosted horror-themed showings such as Haunted Hacienda and Nevermore, are at it again, with an exhibition scheduled for this month that will feature allegedly authentic photographs from a haunted house. There will be an opening night reception from 7:00pm to midnight on Saturday, October 27, with the exhibition running through November 4.

Here is the press release for the event:

• After years of dismissing inexplicable sounds, fleeting images and  broken crockery, owners of a modest Mt. Washington (Los Angeles) home  began to suspect that their house may be haunted. They began taking  Polaroid pictures of cold spots and places in the house where their  Saint Bernard refused to tread. What they got back were snapshots  that were anything but ordinary. In fact, it changed their lives  forever.Drkrm. Gallery is hosting a special, limited-run, Halloween  retrospective called SEEING THINGS. It is the first public viewing of  this rare and unique collection  of paranormal photographs. As  featured on the TV shows SIGHTINGS and UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES, these  images are just a fraction of the hundreds of photos captured in the  last two decades, most never before seen by the public.Many of the photographs on display were taken before Photoshop,  digital imaging and cell phone cameras changed photography. Each  Polaroid is original and unique. They show familiar rooms with wispy,  feathery tendrils and misty tufts of white substances and, amazingly,  cloud-like writing. Even more extraordinary is the relevance of the  words to whatever questions had been asked. Usually a response came  in English, but sometimes it appeared in Latin. For example, after  questioning the identity of the answering spirit, a response came in  Latin; “Et alla Corpus delicti,” (among other things, a murder  victim). The words floating in midair were invisible when the photo  was taken.SEEING THINGS explores the boundary between the known and the  unknown. It asks whether something as simple and functional as  photographs of record — people at a party, an empty room, an open  door — can be a gateway to something more. These startling photographs challenge perceptions of reality and art. Is the image of  the room with the ghostly writing the way we see ghosts, or is it the  way ghosts see us? Who is seeing things, after all? Come explore  these strangely surreal photographs and decide for yourself.drkrm. gallery is an exhibition space dedicated to fine art and  documentary photography, cutting edge and alternative photographic  processes and the display and survey of popular cultural images.

Hours are from 11:00am to 5:00pm Tuesday through Saturday and 1:00pm through 4:00pm on Sunday; also by appointment.