Hollow Face - Ghost Illusion (Video)

Hollow Face - Ghost Optical Illusions by Sir Richard Gregory

Optical Illusions

Will and Guy ponder how Celtic Druids used illusions at times like Halloween to impress and manipulate their worshipers.  We conjecture that witches could also manipulate ghostly images to frighten relatives of the dead.  The effect works because illusions prey on the brain.  Our central nervous system processes images in the present, but gets confused by pictorial memories of the past. 

In modern times, it was Hermann von Helmholtz, who first described illusions as unconscious inferences from sensory data and knowledge derived from an earlier time.  Von Helmholtz's discoveries have been developed by Sir Richard Gregory to create the illusion in the video below.

Stage one of the optical Illusion - The plaster cast.  (See video below)

Stage two - Sir Richard Gregory flips the cast so we see the reverse side

We now see a ghostly picture.

Stage 3 - As the picture / cast turns so the face appears to change its expression

Stage 4 - Sir Richard move the cast slightly and we get a different ghostly illusion

Ghostly Illusion - Spooky Story

Martha's phone rang one Halloween eve.  All she could hear on the line was moaning and groaning which sounded like her deceased husband Albert.   More calls torment her all night.  The next morning, All Hallows Day, she asked her son Norman to drive her to the graveyard where Albert was laid to rest.

They discover that recently, a telegraph line line had fallen down ...........and was lying across Albert's grave! Martha thought 'Could it be the phone calls she received the night before were made from beyond the grave by Albert?

See more Halloween ghost stories

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