Photographer Captures Mysterious Figure at Old Pioneer Cemetery

Last month, Nathan Ziegler was out testing his new camera at Old Pioneer Cemetery in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. He’d placed it on a tripod to capture a time-lapse of the sunset on the hill, a nice shot of some tombstones, the horizon, and a tree off in the distance.

Starting at 8:13 p.m., Ziegler left the camera to take shots every 30 seconds, and didn’t return until around 10:00 p.m. Everything seemed fine, undisturbed. In fact, there was no particular reason anyone else would have been on the hill.

But while he was reviewing the time-lapse back at home, he came upon something rather interesting: in just one frame, a mysterious figure appeared to the right of the tree.

Ziegler was curious enough about the anomaly to do a little investigating. Could it have just been a person? That would seem the simplest explanation, but according to Ziegler himself, that’d be “unlikely.” The cemetery is “in the middle of a wheat field — not a high traffic place.” Why would anyone be walking up there at night?

He did, however, conclude that a person could walk the distance of the hill (as seen in the picture) in about 30 seconds. That would have given the individual a full 60 seconds to walk across and only be caught in one frame of the time-lapse. You can see his entire analysis of the photo at his blog. He also shared the following video, which includes the timelapse footage:

Well, as usual, there are plenty of normal explanations for what we see in the photograph. Not really bothered by that.

Instead, I found this photo interesting because the figure (whatever/whoever it is) reminds me of a weird sketch I made in 2002 called “Death Walking,” back when I was working on one of my first websites (a fiction site, based on Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark). Something odd about the shape of its head. I don’t know…