A Guide To The Ghosts Of Lincoln - Nebraska Photographer

Yay! Finally got my copy of "A Guide To The Ghosts Of Lincoln" by Alan Boye.  Guess who made the photo for the cover?  Yours truly!  Most kids who grew up in Lincoln have read this book, looking for their neighborhood wondering if they'll maybe find a story about their very own house.  Creepy stories about Robber's Cave, the Capitol Building and Penitentiary. The story about how the photograph came to be isn't in there, but I thought I'd share it here.  I took it last winter riding my bike home from visiting my parents at their house near East High.  I hate riding my bike in the snow; it's cold, slippery, and... cold.  I was trying to get home as soon as possible, before I froze or slipped, and decided to cut through the Holmes Lake area.  Well, this was when I had my skinny tire bike with no gears, so my idea was stupid and I had to push my bike through the snow to get to the road that led to my "short cut".  I thought I heard footsteps and started to get freaked out, some creep-o was following me or crawling through the bushes or something.  I just kept pushing my bike through the snow, hearing a second set of footsteps as I slipped around in my traction-free cowboy boots.  I was really freaked out.  Then I had my second bright idea - if someone wanted to murder me, maybe I could scare them off with the possibility of getting a photo of them, or at least give the detectives a clue to who murdered me.  Since I had my camera in my bag, (as photographers like to do) I took it out, shouted something like "Ok string-of-bad-words! I'm going to take your photo if you come any closer!" Which is really threatening.  I stood there for a minute, I didn't see anyone or hear the footsteps again, but I took a photo anyways and somehow adrenaline got me home at Lance Armstrong on steroids speeds.  When I got home, I told myself how foolish I was to be scared, and that the footsteps were an echo of my own and I went to bed and forgot about it.  A few days later, when I downloaded the card from my camera, I almost deleted the photo from Holmes Lake.  On closer inspection there was a ghostly figure in the trees who was invisible to my eyes, and only my camera could see.

My friend Nate Putens happened to be working on the design for the new book, and thought the photo of the mysterious apparition would work for the cover.

Is it a ghost story, or just a strange photo?  We'll never know...