A mysterious photo, taken by a hiker in Dundas Peak in Ontario, Canada has gone viral as people are convinced that they can see a ghost.
This stems back to five years ago when Reddit user SlicedUpBeef started posting pictures of the picturesque Canadian region on the social media site.
According to SlicedUpBeef, the original photo came courtesy of their friend’s cousin who had shared a picture of himself on one of the region’s peaks on Instagram.
However, eagle-eyed viewers noticed something suspicious going on in the distance of the picture. If you look to the left of the man in the picture you can see what appears to be a figure with two dark marks between a white square.
It might be easier to see in an enhanced version of the pic.
Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter
“Way below the edge of the trail, where the slope is too steep to stand on, there appears to be a thin person standing unnaturally straight with no visible face,” SlicedUpBeef explained on Reddit. “I know you’re probably thinking that is probably just a brave hiker, but trust me, that spot is completely inaccessible”
An archived comment on the original post, however, argues differently and even claims that it could have been them in the picture. “So that might be me. I’ve been to Dundas Peak and the surrounding area several times in the past two months. One of the times I went was about 5-6 weeks ago, the weather and lack of leaves looked the same as in your pic OP, and I was wearing a grey dress shirt and dark jeans,” wrote TheArchitect42. “This pic is kind of what I imagine I would have looked like from far away.I know you said it was inaccessible but there really are a lot of spots along that trail between the peak and Tew’s Falls where you can go down closer to the edge. (Disclaimer: not the safest thing to do, especially if you’re unsure or there’s bad weather) At work right now but will comb through pics later and see if there’s any relevant.”
Since then these photos appear to have taken on a life of their own with numerous reports linking them with a real missing person case in Canada. The myth-busting fact-checker website Snopes did a conclusive investigation into the viral phenomenon surrounding these pictures and concluded that the two stories had been combined in order to conflate the issue further.
Most of the original post has been archived but you can still see the original photos on Reddit.
Regardless of what’s going on in the picture (it’s probably just a bunch of rocks) there is no denying that the internet loves to conflate a story.
