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The Bedside Watcher


Here are three video stills, from an IR surveilance/monitoring camera, located in a hospital. Two of the three images show what looks to be a misty, child-like, human figure standing to the side of a hospital bed.

One of these video stills shows the figure almost perched on the railings, looking down at the patient. The other looks as though it is making contact with the person’s forehead.

These images proved quite popular a few years ago, when they started making the rounds through social media and although it is great that people show an interest, what it has done is caused a bit of a mix up with the story relating to the photos.

In a good example of ‘social media chinese whispers’, with each posting of the image the story has been changed, so that now, when trying to find information, you will stumble across quite a few variants.

However, there are three main variants that are talked about the most:

The first does not give a place for the hospital/medical center, but tells us it was part of a sleep analysis experiment. The man in the bed had been suffering from waking dreams, that involved people coming through his bedroom walls in an attempt to get to him.

These terrors were so bad that his waking life was suffering, as he was being severely sleep deprived due to an anxiety of going to bed. It was during the experiments to monitor him and determine what was happening in his brain during these waking nightmares, that the cameras picked up the images.

Was the ‘ghost’ one of the people who would attack him in his ‘waking dreams’?

The second places the hospital in Osaka, Japan. The person in the bed is an elderly person who was soon to pass away. No explanation is given as for why there was a monitoring camera set up.

It was at a time just before death that the image was captured. Many speculated that maybe it was one of their close relatives coming to help them make the crossing to the other side, or maybe it was their own spirit taking one last look at their body before leaving it behind.

The final story places the location as a children’s hospital. The person in the bed is a young boy who was terminally ill. He had been battling with illness for a long time, and the night the footage was taken was the first night of many he would spend in the hospital under care, before he finally lost his fight.

Although this image was captured a long time before he died, many believe that it is perhaps a guardian angel, a friendly spirit who would look over the sick children in the hospital.

Then of course maybe it was not a spirit at all but something else… dust or an insect etc on the lens?

What do you think?
Have you heard other stories about this picture?
If so please share


Ashley Hall 2012

Photos: All are stills from the surveilance/monitoring video. The total time of video these stills were taken from is only a few seconds.

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