The Ghost Barn

Here’s one for you “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” fans.

It was a beautiful fall morning in 2007 and I was on my way to work in Circleville. It was very early and there was a chill in the air. I stopped to get gas at the Marathon at Tarleton Road and Kingston Pike. The sun was rising over the foggy field and everything was glowing with a warm hue. I put the nozzle on auto and got my camera. 

I took the picture you see here and went back to top off the tank, then on to work. I saved the image on my computer and forgot about it. More than a year later I was looking through my images to make prints for an art show and noticed the sunrise photo. I ordered an enlargement from the professional lab I’ve used for years.

I was in the gas station at Tarleton Road and Kingston Pike several months later and was talking to the station owner. I told him I had made a nice photo of the barn out in the field. He said “What barn?” I said the barn out in the field. He said “There’s no barn in the field”. We walked out of the station and looked at the field. It was empty. When I asked what happened to the barn, he told me that he had owned the station for years and there had never been a barn there.

He asked if I could bring the photo to show him. I did and he asked to keep it a while to show the field’s owner. I stopped by a few days later and asked if the owner had seen the photo. He said that he had and that he had said “That’s my barn; I tore it down in 1979.” 

I have no explanation for the photo, but I promise that I didn’t do any Photo Shop or other work on it. I can tell you one thing…I pass that corner twice a day, four to five times a week during the school year and there is not a single drive-by that I don’t check to see if the barn is back.