Ghosts in the Carolina Hills

[mvigor]

Good morning everybody-

I heard from a friend of mine today that doesn't email me often. He had been working out in the back woods on a surveying project.

Hey, sorry for the mass email, I've been working pretty much non stop out of town, surveying a 1500 acre tract of woodlands in the mountains, its hard work, but very interesting, we found an old abandoned mining camp today (there was a big gold rush here in the 1800's from what the locals say) I took some pics but they didnt turn out, the fog was rolling in pretty thick, and it was actually pretty creepy, we found some bones too, looks too big to be deer I'll have to do some research, maybe bear or ????? My crew and I got creeped out , everyones been on edge all day and its wearing on my nerves, so we hiked out of the site (its a good 6 miles in) and drove to town( which isnt much of a town) Anyway, my digital camera is about ruined, but I've attached a few pics from today and yesterday.
The work is pretty rough and I rarely have phone access, but i found a hotel with wireless internet access, and am "borrowing" their signal from the parking lot....we are going to stay here the night, since we are allready here. Normally we just camp out on site since its such a long hike in and out, so it was worth the walk out!!! Can't wait to check out the mine tommorrow in the Daylight!!!!!!!

And as a side note, NO we arent just assing around investigating the mine (well a little) but we are required to locate and map it, as its not on anyones map...which is actually kind of odd..... maybe we'll find some ore

Ahhh okay this is getting too long, I'll be in touch when I can
hope you all are doing well!!!

He sent these photos:

Most of them seem normal at first, but then I saw this one:

FULL SIZE VERSION

...AND LOOK AT WHAT YOU SEE WHEN YOU ZOOM IN...

Now I did not Photoshop this and respectfully I don't think he has the ability to do it. If someone looking at the unaltered full size picture could confirm for me that it HAS been photoshopped I would like to know.

 

[tai95]

It doesn't look like a photoshop picture, It looks like they used the windows paint program. The grey figures are definatley on top of the original picture, and the bottom looks like the spray paint option was used.

I made one myself so you can compare the two.

 

[mvigor]

Yes, I totally see what you mean. And it's a lot more believeable that this was edited if it can be done using "Paint". Apparently that program has come a long way since the last time I used it. I believe the last time I opened MSPaint was in Windows 3.1 or possibly Win95.

NOW I did notice that in the directory of files he sent us, this anomoly of dating. The January dates could easily be explained by a camera with the date set wrong. However the last two timestamps could really only be explained by editing last night. But I don't see any "ghosts" in the other late-night altered pic. It's also a bit unclear why the file names are so inconsistent. There are 4 different naming schemes going on here.

 

[tai95]

The file names could be explained by the editing. You can't save the same file name twice.