Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal

33. Jesus Among the Clouds

~ Chapter 33 According to a Texas newspaper, a Fort Worth woman has obtained a remarkable photograph of Jesus. As reported in the Arlington (Texas) Morning News, the woman, a University of Dallas student, took the picture in 1992. She claims she was fleeing an abusive husband, traveling with her two-year-old son on a flight between Albuquerque and Seattle. Soon storm clouds appeared and a voice instructed her to take a photograph through the airplane window. Later, when her film was processed, there was a cloudlike shape of a robed figure. "I knew it was Christ," declared the religious woman. Curiously, she seems not to have been very impressed with the picture at the time but rather put it away in a locked jewelry box on a closet shelf. However, she claims the photo recently fell to the floor (from within a locked box?) while she was rummaging in the closet for something else. Since then she has been telling others-including newspaper, radio, and television reporters-about her experiences (Fields 1997). I spotted the distinctive picture in some clippings a staff member was sorting for me, and it was (as the saying goes) deja vu all over again. That is because the robed-and headless!-figure in the clouds is ubiquitous . I have seen it in one photo after another over the years, like a visual urban legend. In my opinion, supported by a CSICOP computer comparison, each ofthe photos is a derivative ofa common source. Small differences are explainable by the contrast effects of multigenerational copying. In one incarnation, the picture was labeled "Cloud Angel" and circulated by Betty Malz, author of several religious books. It was accompanied by the following brief narrative: .Jesus Among the Clouds Figurc 33.1. Figure-in-the-douds photograph has had a lengthy history, as "Jesus," an "angel" and (as early as 1974) a "ghost." A couple flying for theiT first airplane ride, on their honeymoon, took a whole roll of photos out the window of the plane. They were fascinated by the topside douds, so much like Cool Whip, or Dairy Queen ice cream! The pilot announced on the intercom that they were flying into turbulence that would last about twenty minutes. Bi!! and his wife prayed aloud, "Oh Lord, protect us, send the Angels of the Lord to hold this plane upright and keep us safe." Almost immediately the choppy wind subsided. The second officer got on the intercom and 201 'V 202 ~ Real-Life X-Files announced,"It is amazing. The monitor showed turbulence for twenty minutes and it was over in two minutes." Returning home they found this photo when they picked up their prints at Anderson Pharmacy. Unfortunately, Ms. Malz had "not kept background material" on her publications, and the alleged honeymooning couple remain unidentified . The date is unknown as well, but the event and picture are referred to in Malz's Angels Watching Over Me, first printed in 1986. The photo is also consistent with verbal descriptions of a "Hugo Christ" picture of 1990. (We have been unable to locate a single copy of this picture, although itwas reproduced by the hundreds in the Gastonia, North Carolina, area-over a thousand copies reportedly being circulated byWal-Mart's photo lab alone.) It was described as "a robed figure, arms outstretched, floating among sinister dark clouds" and was alleged to have been taken at the peak of Hurricane Hugo ("Experts" 1990). On the other hand, a computer imaging expert said of it at the time: "It's a picture we've seen many, many times before. It was made in a darkroom:' He explained that the image he examined lacked the three-dimensional qualities of a genuine photograph ("Experts" 1990). Moreover, after the picture was shown on the television program A Current Affair, a Montgomery ' Alabama, woman stated that twenty years previously, her sister in New Bern, North Carolina, had given her a photo exactly like it. "I knew what they were saying on TV was a lie:'the woman declared ("Jesus in Clouds" 1990). And the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer ran an article questioning the photo's authenticity, reporting that "experts said it was a fake and had been circulating throughout the United States for decades" ("Images" 1990). What is clearly the same figure as the one published in the Arlington Morning News appeared as a frontispiece in Peter Haining's 1974 Ghosts...