Emmy’s Ghostly Photograph

  Novelist, screenwriter, television scriptwriter, playwright, columnist and lecturer, John Pinkney, was one of Australia’s foremost authors on the paranormal. Pinkney wrote the ‘Haunted’ series, the ‘Unsolved’ Series and the ‘Mysteries’ series.
   In 1982, he was approached by Emmy Barnes in Adelaide with a ghost story regarding her deceased husband. Emmy stated that as her husband Jimmy lay dying, he predicted she would remarry after his death. Jimmy stated she would marry a man with the initials B.B.
 Just a few months after Jimmy’s death, Emmy met Bernard Barnes, whom she married. After their wedding, their photos from the day were printed

  In 1982, an Adelaide woman told paranormal writer John Pinkney about how her deceased husband appeared in a photo a year after his death. While Emmy Barnes' husband, Jimmy, lay dying, he predicted she would remarry and that her new husband's initials would be BB. Emmy stated to Pinkney,

‘While my husband Jimmy lay dying,' Mrs Barnes recalled, ‘he made several predictions to me – predictions which later came true in considerable detail. Jimmy's first prediction was that I’d marry again, and that my new husband’s initials would be B.B.  Jimmy said I’d make my first contact with him after being introduced to an Irish woman born in India. I’d know who that woman was, because within moments of meeting her, she'd invited me to look at her new lounge suite which would be covered in bottle green fabric.’^[1]

 Emmy said that her husband promised to be present when she remarried,

 ‘I didn't take much notice. I was too grieved, and anyway, I imagined his forecasts were the wanderings of a dying man. But the following year it all began happening. A friend at the hospital where I worked invited me to a party. I was hardly inside the door when the hostess, whom I’d never met, urged me to the next room to see what her husband had bought her. ‘It was a three-piece lounge suite, covered in bottle green. That was only the start. When we began to talk, I found my new acquaintance was of Irish descent, but had been born in Delhi, India – just as Jimmy had foretold. ‘At that party, Jimmy's dying forecasts kept falling into place. I met a man there named Bernard Barnes and within a few months I was to accept his marriage proposal.'

  As a wedding present, several of Emmy’s friends paid for a professionally shot family portrait. Within the family portrait, a silhouette of Jimmy could be seen in the sideboard mirror. Emmy stated that, ‘I knew then Jimmy had kept his promise.’

 Pinkney inspected the negative of the photograph for tampering or trickery. He said of the photograph,

 ‘I didn't doubt my correspondent's sincerity, but I reserved judgement until the following month, when I was able to study the picture for myself. As an analysis of the negative would subsequently confirm, the dead man's image was indeed prominent in the photograph.’

 

Story and images: John Pinkney's "A Paranormal File" (2000).

Image 1: Emmy Barnes holding wedding photo showing silhouette of deceased former husband Jimmy in mirror.

Image 2: close-up of Jimmy's silhouette in the mirror.

Image 3: Jimmy before his death.

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[1] John Pinkney, ‘A Paranormal File.’, (2000).