The Phantom Photographer

An occasional curious event noted by forteans is the appearance of Phantom Photographers, unknown people who apparently take pictures of people and/or their houses during a UFO or monster flap.  John Keel wrote of them in The Mothman Prophecies.

I once worked with people in charge of foreclosures at the Bank of Oklahoma.  Their files were full of photographs of houses from which the unfortunate residents were to be evicted.  I noticed that all the pictures had been taken on the move, so to speak, from inside automobiles.  Maybe some of these phantom photographers come from financial institutions.

A number of reports describe, not an obvious camera, but a burst of light as from a flashgun.  Jim Keith, in his book on MIBs, mentions a secret government “light weapon” meant to temporarily blind the enemy.  I suspect this concept eventually became the memory-erasing “flashy-thingy” from Will Smith’s Men in Black movies.

Anyway, I used to think of myself as the guy fortean/paranormal events avoided at all costs, but maybe I once ran into a phantom photographer.

Decades ago a used book store opened at 10th St. and Boston in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It was the largest book store I've ever seen -- almost the largest store, period.  Walking through its irregularly placed walls was like wandering through the Carlsbad Caverns -- but all its walls were covered with books, stretching up beyond human reach.

I only visited it a few times.  I think it was open only a year before it was gutted by fire.  I walked past it not long after the fire; the shell of the building remained, but the interior was all charred shelves, timbers, and ashes.

Strangely enough, the floor was strewn with books that looked untouched by the flames.  Bibliomaniac that I am, I actually considered climbing in through the shattered picture window and seeing what was there.  I argued with myself that even if they weren't burnt, the volumes had to be sodden by fire hoses; there could be sharp nasty things under the rubble; maybe I'd even fall through the floor.  So I didn't enter.

Before I could walk away, however, a figure came picking its way through the blackened rubble from the depths of the store.  It proved to be a skinny young man, maybe in his mid-20s, with scraggly black hair and a black mustache and beard.  He wore (to the best of my memory) a pale tan shirt or pullover and blue jeans.  He climbed out the broken front window to the sidewalk.  He carried a camera of some sort that he kept turning over and over in his hands.

"Hi!" he said.  "Can I interest you in a camera?"

And he gave me this long spiel about what kind of camera it was and how good it was and how it was almost new (don't ask me what sort of camera; I long ago forgot).  And he only wanted $20.00 for it.

At one point in his turning and rolling the camera (he held it about stomach level), he paused and pointed the lens right at my face and snapped the button.  He apparently took my picture, and he gave a funny grin like he knew I knew.  Anyway, $20.00 was a lot to college student me, and I declined his offer.  The bearded man didn't press the matter and sauntered off down the sidewalk.

The first thing I thought of was the Phantom Photographers chapter of Mothman Prophecies, but I didn't really assign any significance to the encounter.  I assumed he was just a hustler trying to make a quick buck with a probably-stolen camera.  But it was weird seeing him clamber into view from way back in the lightless depths of the burned-out store.  Any why did he take my picture?