‘Strange Days’: the cursed photo of Jim Morrison’s ghost
On first glance, it could be any other rock ‘n’ roll tourist snap in the world. I’m sure that it wasn’t the only photo taken of the grave of Jim Morrison by some starry-eyed fan that minute, let alone that day.
However, when Brett Meisner looked closer at the photo in 2002, a full five years after it was taken in 1997, something truly bizarre happened. The rock critic looked closer at the photo taken of him by the grave of the Doors’ legendary frontman by his friend on their visit to Père Lachaise in Paris, and saw another person in the picture. Again, not outside the realm of possibility. It’s the grave of Jim Morrison; there’s no shortage of people queueing up to pay respects to the lizard king, except this person was, and there really is no other way of putting it, translucent.
They were more of a shape than a figure, with only their torso and the faintest outline of their legs to go on. Which will be easy for skeptics to dismiss. After all, photos have strange smudges and tricks of the light in them all the time. Except for one key distinction here. The torso is very much in focus and is in the exact same position as arguably the most iconic photo of Jim Morrison of all, chest bare, staring at the camera, arms out to the sides in a Jesus Christ pose.
Ok, cute, you might think. Meisner got in touch with someone who was a dab hand at Photoshop and put a shape that looked like the ghost of Morrison in the background for some attention. Well done, good craic, pull the other one, it’s got bells on, right?
Except that Meisner sent the original photo to the Daily Express of the UK, daring them to find any hint of Photoshop or any other kind of trickery in the photo. They found none of the sort, theorising that if it was a fake, it was the highest quality fake they’d ever seen.
What’s more, if you think that this was done for attention (and, putting aside all my “I want to believe” bullshit, it almost certainly was, even if it’s real), Meisner spent the next couple of years talking about the non-stop bad luck he’d faced ever since he’d gone public with the photo.
The writer, who kept an extensive blog on his website, spoke openly about how, since 2002, his marriage had hit the rocks and led to a divorce, his career as a writer in Hollywood had stalled beyond repair, and one of his best friends had died of a drug overdose in circumstances eerily similar to Morrison’s.
Meisner himself died in 2010, though before you get too caught up in this mystery, it’s worth mentioning that, alongside being a writer and a critic, Meisner was, first and foremost, a humorist. He wrote several rock ‘n’ roll-themed comedy blogs, including the quite marvellously titled CSI: CSNY.
If anyone was going to commit to a bit, he was. However, if anyone was going to appreciate the commitment to a bit of ookum-spookums, it’s Jim Morrison himself, who maintained while he was alive that his life was changed by encountering the ghost of a Native American who he’d seen die in a car crash.
It sounds like Morrison would adore something like this, so why take it away from him? He might be watching us from beyond the grave, after all.