1943: The Little Girl with No Face

In 1943, a man in Hungary took a picture of his wife leaning against a signpost; but the picture captured a bit more than just that.

The 1943 Picture [Larger version here]

As you can see, There were other people there at the time; in particular, a young girl in a white dress. One with no arms or face.

Closer view [Larger version here]

This strange picture was first posted to the internet on the Paranormal 360 website on July 1, 2016 [Link Here]... as far as I know, that was the first public display of the image. According to Paranormal 360, the photo had been submitted to them by a man named Szigeti Gyöngyi, self-identified as a resident of Hungary, who told how the photo displayed his mother and had been taken by his father in Kaposfüred, Hungary [actually, about 2km away, according to the sign]. Gyöngyi claimed to have used 'Google Translate' to render his account into English to submit to the website, and that he mainly just wanted to share his "frightening discovery."

        If this is a real account of the matter -- and not just a story made up to explain a creepy found photo -- it would seem implied that Gyöngyi had only found the picture recently, and that he was unable to ask his parents about it (perhaps they were dead already). Kaposfüred is an extremely small town; in 1943, it would have had a population of just 1200 to 1300 people. I suspect that the story of a creepy photo taken there would be well known throughout town fairly quickly, and that if the figure in the back was just a local girl his parents might have heard; but again, it's implied Gyöngyi didn't ask them.

        The photo itself is extremely small, and has writing on the back... but no translation of the writing, or any attempt to even decipher it is given in the Paranormal 360 account, so the writing on the back is basically useless without a native Hungarian reader.

[Larger versions here]

        On base appearances, the photo does not seem to have been altered -- though that would have to be tested directly. If we assume the photo is in fact just what we are shown and that we have no story past the assertion that it is actually from 1943, then the question is: what are we looking at? Gyöngyi didn't directly state what he thought the figure was; instead, he gave the rather conditional statement "A little girl standing in the background, she has no arms, no face, it’s like a ghost or a demon." The people commenting on the article had a lot more opinions on the matter, some practical -- and some not.

        Let's start with the "and some not" category, namely this intriguing analysis: "Ghosts do not cast shadows, and if you look closely this girl does." It's certainly an interesting thought because it A) states that the girl cannot be a ghost, B) states that ghosts exist, and C) states that ghosts have an identifiable and repeating behaviour -- a lack of shadows -- which justifies both other assertions. I'd love to know at what point someone proved that ghosts don't have shadows; because I suspect no one has.

        More thoughtful guesses came down to two speculations: the girl had her arms behind her back and either had her head bowed or the wind blowing her hair in her face... or the girl had her back to the camera with her arms extended in front of her, and the lightness of the heels of her shoes simply gives the illusion that we are looking at her toes. Or she's something creepier, but we won't know until more can be found out about the photo itself and its history.

A Brief Update...

        In one of those odd conveniences that seem to happen to me a lot, it turns out that a co-worker of mine has family from Hungary, and has seen similar photos -- same size and outer trim, which she told me was a going style for pictures in Hungary right around the 1940's -- and she had a relative visiting that could look at the text on the back of the photo for me.

        Unfortunately, the overall conclusion was about what I expected: they couldn't read the sloppy handwriting. So toss out that possible clue... but it's confirmed that the style of the photo does relate to the given time and place claimed for it.