A Shared Photo and Story.

I recently came into possession of a photograph, it's an old Polaroid style one. The person who gave me it wished to stay anonymous, but wanted me to share their story and the photo. The story, as told to me, goes like this:

​"Early one summer, my girlfriend and I decided that we'd visit the Botanical Gardens in San Antonio. It's always been one of those places that you see advertised alongside the Alamo as places to visit if you want to sight-see. It's got a lot of different types of plants, flowers, and a trail that you can walk along. We went while the heat was still somewhat bearable, and there was a decent amount of people walking around.

​My girlfriend (wife now) and I are big “people watchers” and like to comment to each other when we see something that we might find humorous about a person. We had not been there long, and were standing near a wood pavilion towards the front of the gardens. As people were walking past to head along the trail that looped around the entire gardens, we saw a pair of girls. They looked to be no older than 15 or 16, and were dressed like how you picture someone from the late '80s or early '90s. That's actually why I pointed them out, because I thought that they looked out of place for modern teens. They had on a lot of neon colors, feathered hair, and lots of bracelets and things like that. We both had a laugh to each other because my wife had brought along an old Polaroid camera from the '80s to take pictures with. She collects cameras, and enjoys using the older ones. We quickly forgot about the girls as we made our own way through the gardens a couple of minutes after them.

The trail that you follow starts up high, and goes down and circles around a few different pools of water in the middle of the gardens. You have to walk down, and then it takes you back up to the very top. It's actually a bit of a hike, and you don't realize how long it takes to get to the top until you're finally up there. There is a nice view of downtown San Antonio once you make it up there, so it's worth the walk. We were taking our time, and my girlfriend was taking pictures of flowers and the scenery as we went. After going along the path for a bit, you reach a waterfall that drains into one of the pools of water. The waterfall is at the very top of the path, and after the part that you can see the city from. It would take you a good 30 to 40 minutes walk the entire way.

She pointed her camera up and took a photograph of the waterfall. Since it's a Polaroid, it takes awhile for the photo to show. So we just kept walking along and looking at the flowers and the fish in the water. But once the photo had developed, she asked me to have a look. That's when we saw what is so odd about this picture. There is what looks to be a girl looking down from the top of the waterfall at us. And the girl looked just like one of the two teens we had seen at the start just a few minutes before. It still hadn't really set in yet, because we didn't realize how long of a walk it really was to the top of the gardens and that spot she had to have been in.

But after reaching the top 30 minutes later, that's when things started not to add up. The two girls had only left minutes before us, and we weren't walking that slowly through the gardens. There was no way that she could have made it through the entire path in that amount of time before my girlfriend snapped that picture. And what was even more unusual was that the top of the waterfall was actually sort of far off the path, and roped off. There was even a sign warning people about going near it, since it was a pretty far fall to the bottom and could be dangerous to stand on because of the flowing water.

We also couldn't remember seeing the girls again at all, and made an effort to spot them back at the end of the trail, but had no luck. It was a pretty weird thing to have happen in the middle of the day, but we couldn't really explain just how they could have gotten up there so fast, why she would have been that far close to the edge of the waterfall, and where they went to afterwards."

I was able to share a picture of the Polaroid itself, as well as scanning and uploading it for a closer look. It's a bit hard to make out, since the film quality isn't the best to begin with, but you can see what seems to be the head and shoulders of a girl with long brown hair peering over the edge of the waterfall. I can't really claim to know much more about it, or the validity of it, but none of the trees or bushes around the shape that is similar to a person look anything like her. The white coloring in front of her is part of that bush, but you can see that the object in the photo is behind that plant.

Something that I want to point out, that the person who gave me the photo missed, is that you can see the top of another girls head just to the left of the girl that is looking over the edge. Did the couple capture a photo of the two girls they saw? If so, how did they get to the top of the waterfall so quickly? What would the odds be that two other girls who looked similar would be up there and standing at the end of a dangerous waterfall?

It's an odd picture and story, regardless. (Click Photos to see them full size)