On March 22, 1959, in the town of Ipswitch in Suffolk,
England, Mrs. Mabel Chinnery and her husband drove to the graveyard in which
her mother had been buried - Mrs. Ellen Hammell, who had died a week previously
- to take pictures of Mrs. Hammell's grave. As Mrs. Chinnery returned to the
car, she decided to use her last remaining shot to take a candid picture of her
husband, waiting in the vehicle. When the pictures were developed, one of Mrs.
Chinnery's friends pointed out that Mrs. Hammell appeared to be in the back
seat of the car, behind Mrs. Chinnery's husband.
The strange event and picture were first published in the English newspaper Sunday Pictorial of April 19, 1959, and the story hit American newspapers by April 20, but the photograph itself wasn't seen in the United States until the story got a whole page in the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade for June 28, 1959 (from which the image above has been retrieved).
