Don't turn out the light! Terrifying photos of ghosts that will keep you up at night

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

StairMaster: This photograph was taken during the Civil War. A ghost, believed to be that of a dead soldier, was captured walking up these stairs

These are the things that go bump in the night.
From murdered slaves to tortured hospital patients to forgotten sailors, the sordid stories of the world's ghosts send shivers down most folks' spines.
But this collection of images will call into question everything you think you know about the spirit world... and how easy it may be to cross over.
Expert investigators of the paranormal have spent decades painfully researching each photograph, debunking some and failing to disprove others.

Lady in White: Taken at Corroboree Rock at Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia in 1959, this photograph appears to show a woman holding her hands toward her face, peering out into the distance

A Little to the Left: The woman pictured at right was visiting the Fleet Air Arm Center in Yelverton, Somerset, England in 1987. During the photo session, the woman said she felt strangely cold, though it was such a hot day. She also claims she was the only one in the aircraft

Take the tale of the white lady of the Philippines.
Locals of Quezon City steer clear of Balete Drive at night as they say that woman in white with long black tresses, face covered in blood, stands in the center of the road, staring at oncoming vehicles.
Drivers try to avoid the street at all costs, but if they must pass, they pack their backseat with passengers because if there is one empty seat, an uninvited guest just might take it.
In photographs, she appears as a bright, white light in the road, legs barely visible.
Or consider the story of Chloe the inquisitive slave.
Chloe lived at the house of Myrtle's Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Company: Diane and Peter Berthelot visited Worstead Church in Norfolk, U.K. in 1975. Peter snapped a photo of his wife praying silently in the pew. They didn't realize until later that she was not alone

Brother: Robert A. Ferguson, author of Psychic Telemetry, was speaking in Los Angeles, California, on November 16, 1968. He believed his brother Walter, who died in 1944 during World War II, was standing beside him

She would often listen in on conversations she wasn't supposed to, snooping in on her master's private talks.
One afternoon, Chloe was caught. According to legend, her master cut off her ear as punishment.
For revenge, Chloe baked a cake out of oleander leaves, which are poisonous.
She wanted her cruel master to taste it, but his wife and daughters beat him to it.
She fled the house, but was lynched by her fellow slaves. She still haunts the plantation to this day, listening in on the conversations of its visitors.
She can be seen hiding behind the doors, columns, or bushes on the residence.

Child of Mine: An Australian woman named Mrs Andrews was visiting the grave of her daughter in a cemetery in Queensland, in the 1940s when she took this photo. Her daughter Joyce had died the year before at the age of 17. She was shocked to find a child that she did not recognize sitting on top of the grave. Australian paranormal researcher Tony Healy visited the cemetery in the late 1990s to find out what had happened. He found that near Joyce's grave, two infant girls were buried

A commercial photographer in New York apparently took hold of the film once the ship docked.
Mr Blake consulted Joe Nickell, investigator with the Center for Inquiry about his opinion.
'That picture has a suspiciously hard edge to the (viewer’s) left side of the face on the left, and this ruler-straight line (the edge of a rope) extends all the way to the top of the (cropped) picture. This looks like some form of photographic skulldugg­ery (indicative of cutting and pasting, or possibly masking in conjunction with an airbrush).'
Despite his findings, he believes that one of the ghost faces may be real, the second added for effect.
'The photo does date from a time when bogus spirit photos were commonly produced,' he admits.

Ghost Ship: In 1924, the SS Watertown was en route to the Panama Canal from New York City when James Courtney and Michael Meehan were killed by gas fumes in a freak accident while cleaning a cargo tank. In the day's following their deaths, crew members began reporting seeing two faces in the water following the ship

source: dailymail