Check Point Charlie Ghost? Nah.

On Richard Wiseman's blog a photo showed up today. Checkpoint Charlie Ghost. Could that be a ghost in the window?

Here's the original photo:


Meh. Looks like a photo in the window to me, so I did what any self-respecting skeptic would do... Namely I wasted 10 minutes doing Google image searches until I found a similar photo from the same place which gave me the answer.

With a little enlargement you can see that there is in fact a dark-background photo in the window of both pictures. Without the blur it just appears to be a portrait photo.


It may even be the same guard (actor?) in the photo - it's a little blurry to be certain. But that's no ghost. Just a big photograph in a photograph.

UPDATE: May actually be a painting - just found a better photo:

Who's the dude in the photo? I'm GUESSING that it is Rainer Hildebrandt, former head of the museum at the Checkpoint Charlie site.

Here's his photo:

To be sure, I wrote the museum and asked - we'll see.

Update 4/29/09 - Received confirmation from the musem in following message:

Thank you for your email from April 28, 2009.

Yes, the painting in the guard house shows Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt, the founder of the Mauermuseum – Museum am Checkpoint Charlie.

With kind regards
Mauermuseum - Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie
Alexandra Hildebrandt
Chairwoman of the Board