From the mailbox -- Ghost Photos, drkrm Gallery

After several years of dismissing inexplicable sounds, fleeting shadows and broken crockery, owners of a modest home in the Los Angeles hills began to suspect their house may be haunted. They started taking Polaroid pictures of cold spots and places in the house where their Saint Bernard refused to tread. What they got back were snapshots that were astonishing.

drkrm.gallery is again hosting a special Halloween retrospective of this unique collection of paranormal photographs. As featured on the television shows SIGHTINGS, UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES and A&E’s BIOGRAPHY, these strange images are just a fraction of the hundreds captured.

Taken in the 1990s before Photoshop, digital imaging and cell phone cameras changed photography forever, each Polaroid is original and distinctive. They show familiar rooms with wispy, feathery tendrils and misty tufts of white substances and, amazingly, cloud-like ectoplasmic writing; answers to whatever questions had been asked of the enitity. Usually the response came in English, but sometimes it appeared in Latin. When asked “Did you die in this house?” the answering spirit responded in Latin:“Et alla Corpus delicti,” (which translates among other things, a murder victim). The words floating in midair were invisible when the photograph was taken.

Seeing Things: Ghost Polaroids explores the boundary between the known and the unknown. It asks whether something as simple and functional as photographs of record—people at a party, an empty room, an open door—can be a gateway to something more. These startling photographs challenge perceptions of reality and art. Is the image of the room with the ghostly writing the way we see ghosts, or is it the way ghosts see us? Who is seeing things, after all? Come explore these strangely surreal photographs and decide for yourself.

drkrm. gallery is an exhibition space dedicated to fine art and documentary photography, cutting edge and alternative photographic processes and the display and survey of popular cultural images. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 5 pm. Sunday 1-4pm.

All gallery events are free and open to the public.

drkrm. gallery is located at 2121 N. San Fernando Road, Suite 3 in the Capitol Studios Building in the Glassell Park section of Northeast Los Angeles, just minutes from Chinatown and down the road from The Brewery Art Complex. Drkrm. is about a mile from the San Fernando Road exit off the Glendale Freeway (Interstate 2) or the Figueroa Street Exit off the 110 (Pasadena Freeway) North.