Vision of the Gods

[Cartoonist]

There's more to this story. Found on:



The essential new details are that the female was an attractive girl dancing on a moonstone, and that when the music she was dancing to stopped, she vanished suddenly... but not suddenly enough to disturb the cameramen. They continued to tour the temple, but found themselves obsessed with the girl they had filmed, so they asked the Sinhalese assistant (Mr. De Zilwa) to ask the worshipers who she was; but everyone he asked quietly and quickly avoided him.

Eventually the four men cornered a native and questioned him about the girl; shaking, he said he knew of no girl... but there was 'death woman' who appeared and danced on the steps each year, and all who saw her were accursed. The men felt that the locals were just being either ignorant or just avoiding telling them who the girl was... but it was also very clear that by now they were being watched very closely by the crowd, so they decided they should depart before anything nasty happened.

http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/pre-1940-dancing-girl-ceylon

[Layzeebeaver]

1. "Stop talking and start cranking..."

I think this says it all.

[3Hotdogs]

2. + 1 to the 10th power.

[3Hotdogs]

3. "I say, where did she go?"

I like that one, too.

[edhopper]

4. On a side note

this was drawn by Everett Raymond Kinstler an illustrator and comic artist who became one of the top Portrait Artists in America. Painting celebrities and people of power. Including every president from Carter to Trump.

http://everettraymondkinstler.com/wordpress/

Ray passed away last year at the age of 94.

[Cartoonist]

6. A very fine artist.

His work was too good for comics. He used fine lines that reproduced poorly in that medium. His best work would be found on the inside front cover, where it would be printed on gloss stock.

[edhopper]

7. Yes

He wanted to be a great illustrator like James M. Flagg or Gibson. He figured out in the 50s that the day of the great illustrator was vanishing and moved to portraiture. And became great. He adopted the style of artists like Sargent and Chase.
Here is a nice one of his dear friend Tony Bennett.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. "We're not balmy, are we?" "What are you giving him a balm for? It might bite him!"

"Well, there is an animal called a balm ... or did I dream it?"

I note that while seeing the "death woman" cursed the viewer, the link goes on to mention Charles Brooke Farrar survived more than 40 years after this, to the age of 80.

[Bretton Garcia]

8. Slowed film stock missed moving figures in poor light?

1) Early film was not too sensitive. And what with 2) a moving figure, 3) in veils, 4) indoors, 5) in changing weather conditions, a dancing figure did not appear on the film. But immobile architecture did.

What was 6) a dancing girl doing there? Many ancient temples were in part filled with prostitutes, sex workers. 7) Though some didn't want this to be known.

[Bretton Garcia]

9. Old photographic sensitivity to light was low, slow

Often you had to open the shutter, and expose the photographic material to light for some time. Even for more than a full minute. As in modern "time exposures."

And so if anything moved in that period, it blurred, faded. Or if it moved pretty fast? It would never appear in the negatives or final pictures at all.

[Act_of_Reparation]

10. So much photographic "evidence" of the supernatural...

...are just cases of people not knowing how cameras work.

[Bretton Garcia]

11. Absolutely

Most religious ideas in fact, may come about from people failing to more precisely understand complicated things in nature, technology, psychology. As naturalistic theories tell us.

As far as the old film-based photography goes? Consider what you can get from a "double exposure." If you took 1) a picture of a temple in India, 2) and then forgot to advance the film, you might shoot a picture of your Aunt Mildred on top of the temple picture. And get a print of a ghostly Mildred, hovering above the temple.