Ghosts at Cape Spear?
The photograph shown here to the left was taken in July of 1997 by a female visitor at Cape Spear, Newfoundland, using a Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom camera. The woman had taken three other pictures in the same bunker just before this one, and at the time noticed nothing unusual on the walls other than random salt and mineral deposits which can also be seen in the pictures. It wasn't until the pictures were developed that the woman saw the other image.
Up until the new year she was working for an advertising agency in Toronto, and there was a professional photographer on staff. Upon being showed the picture he thought that it may have been a "clip" in the negative, but after examining the negative he said that he could offer no explanation because the image is there also. The woman who took the image had been present in the photoshop while the film was being fed into the machine, so it could not have been tampered with in the shop.
The picture seemed to include a ghostly face emerging from a halo of light above the boy's head. This face was clearly there especially when enlarged on both the woman's scanner and the one at the agency in which she worked. The image shows a man's face, with nose, high cheekbones, and recessed eyes visible. The face seems to be wearing a helmet or cap.
The woman's first impression was that the figure bore a striking similarity to a man wearing a circa World War II leather aviator's cap, similar to the one show below, belonging to Mr. Rennie Sullivan of Pouch Cove, Newfoundland. The figure in the photograph even seems to have a slightly darker circle at the lower right, corresponding to where a headset would be attached to an aviator's cap.
During the Second World War a coastal battery of two ten inch guns was constructed at Cape Spear to protect the approach to St. John's harbour. In 1941, two gun emplacements and underground passages connecting the gun sites to men's barracks were constructed at the tip of the cape. The bunkers and massive gun barrels of this battery still exist. It was in one of these bunkers that the photograph was taken. The Cape Spear battery was constructed by Canada for the defense of Newfoundland, even though this was at a time when Newfoundland was still not a part a Canada. Allied forces used the bunkers to protect against U-boat attack, a very real threat in the North Atlantic. A German U-boat did fire two torpedoes into St. John's Harbour in 1942, but no serious damage resulted. Most of the military site was destroyed after the war, but the tunnels and gun emplacements have been stablized, plaques erected, and walkways constructed to help interpret the history of the site. 
So what is this ghostly image? Is it perhaps the spirit of some Second World War aviator emerging from the mists of time, materializing out of solid concrete? Cape Spear certainly has a strong military history. Could it be the ghostly visage of a departed pilot, doomed to wander the abandoned base for all eternity? A visitor from beyond, unaware that the skies overhead are now quiet, the war long since past?
The Ghost Revealled...
In February of 1998, shortly after a copy of this photograph was sent to our attention, it was decided to go to the site where the photograph was taken, and to determine for ourselves if the mystery of the spirit photograph could be solved. On February 6th, 1998, a trip was made to Cape Spear National Historic Site to visit the old abandoned bunkers. The bunker was located, and using a Sony Mavica digital camera with flash, a series of photographs were taken of the interior. Our investigation yielded almost immediate proof that the earlier photograph had captured a somewhat less than paranormal find.
With better lighting, the image in the earlier photograph was proven to be the remains of an old stove-pipe hole, discoloured by rust and stains from minerals leaching through the surrounding concrete. The mineral deposits in this photograph shown here clearly match the pattern of the halo of light in 
the detail from the original photograph shown above. This mineral leaching has left deposits throughout the site, with the concrete in many locations accumulating large ripples or waves of calcium or calcium-like deposits.
The curve of what could be interpreted as the aviator's cap is the curve of the corrugated metal of which the stove pipe was constructed. The hole probably dates from the time that the rooms were used to house soldiers, with a stove providing much needed warmth on the exposed and windy cape. Close examination of the battery complex proved that this stove pipe hole was found in the exact same location in each of the three underground bunkers. Much to our sorrow, the "ghost" we had hoped to document seemed to have vanished.