Spider Gates: Photo Fakery & Photo Theft
Leicester Massachusetts
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Report: October 25,
2004 by Daniel V. Boudillion
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Updated January 2007
Photo Fakery & Photo Theft at Spider
Gates
In mid October 2004 I became aware that two of my
original pictures from my
Spider Gates
Cemetery webpage had been stolen, doctored with image
manipulation software, and re-posted without my permission on Brian Calvin
Anderson's www.spidergates.com
website. [Since removed - thank you.] The pictures appeared on his
Photo Evidence page with, at the time, the following text:
"Spider Gates: These first two pictures
were submitted to us anonymously. I have no information on when they were
taken. Click on the thumbnails for
the full size picture (all pictures open in a pop up window). This is the cave just a
short walk from the spidergates cemetery."
Photo 1 (below) is my original digital
photograph of Elliot Hill Burying Ground in
Leicester Massachusetts, taken on the morning
of January 3, 2004. As you can see in the stolen version that was until
recently posted on Anderson's webpage, that a white "ghostly" mist has been
introduced into the image. Its original placement in my website report is
at this
location.
Photo 2 (below) is my original digital
photograph of a culvert under a dirt road near Spider Gates in
Leicester Massachusetts, taken on the morning
of November 17, 2001. As you can see in the stolen version that was until
recently posted on Anderson's webpage, that a swirled light design has been
introduced into the image. Its original placement in my website report is
at this
location.
Photo 3 (below) was a
publicity poster for the spidergates.com website. It was created from my
stolen image of Elliot Hill and was posted until recently on the
www.spidergates.com website.
As you can see, from my original image its width has been significantly
narrowed, its height slightly increased, and image changed from color to black
and white. A ghostly skull has been introduced to the center of the image
and some text added.
In the below side-by-side
comparison, I have narrowed and slightly stretched my Elliot Hill image.
As you can see it exactly matches the poster, proving beyond a doubt that the
Spider Gates poster on Anderson's website was made from my stolen image.
According to the text of Anderson's
www.spidergates.com website:
"These first two pictures were submitted to us anonymously." This being
said, it would seem to cover Anderson and his website from any intentional
wrongdoing, other than perhaps a lapse of judgment. However, a closer look
at the Elliot Hill images revels something curious indeed.
Below is my original image, the
stolen image with the white "mist" introduced, and the same image manipulated
into the official www.spidergates.com
poster:
Interesting, in the poster image on
the right, although Anderson added quite a bit of "mist" in creating the skull
image, the mist from the faked image (middle picture) does not appear in the
poster picture. If you look closely at the middle faked image and the
shape of the mist, and compare it to the poster image on the right, it will be
apparent that none of this mist or mist design is in the poster image. In
fact, there are details of my original image that are visible in the poster,
while the same details are obscured in the fake by the mist.
For example, consider the above
three pictures. In my original on the left I have circled in red a
gravestone. In the faked picture in the middle you can see that the same
gravestone has been brushed out with a white "mist". Yet in Anderson's
poster on the right you can clearly see that the gravestone has miraculously
reappeared. This is even more clear in the negative full scale images
below:
While it is possible to introduce
large areas of whitish "mist" using image manipulation software, it is not
possible to remove the mist to expose the image beneath it. This is
because image manipulation software does not layer data over the image, but
replaces the image data with new data. This leads to a logical conclusion
that the poster could only have been generated from a non-doctored copy of my
original picture of Elliot Hill.
Brian Anderson and
www.spidergates.com maintain that the
two faked images were submitted to them anonymously. They do however take
credit for having made the poster. But it is obvious that the poster was
made from a non-doctored original of my image rather than from the faked "mist"
copy that was stolen from my website and supposedly submitted "anonymously" to
Anderson. Now how did Anderson get an original copy of my Elliot Hill
photo if the only copy he admits to is the faked "anonymous" photo?
Certainly this all casts doubt
on the veracity of Mr. Anderson of Watertown Massachusetts, who is the legal registered owner of
www.spidergates.com. One wonders
who the real photo thief and photo faker was. While I do not directly accuse him of
theft and lying, the images speak for themselves.
On October 15th of 2004 I emailed
Mr. Anderson that I was the photographer of the two images, and that the copies
of these two images on his website (www.spidergates.com)
were not only stolen from my website, but were also doctored and faked to appear
as proof of paranormal activity caught on film. I instructed Mr. Anderson
to either give me credit for the originals, put a link to my website, and label
the existing images as forgeries; or to remove them from the website. As
for the poster made from my original photograph, I kindly offered to sell him
the image for $20. After emailing several times, he declined my offer, and
by the 25th had removed all the images including the movie poster.
As a final note, the entire
www.spidergates.com website seems to us
to simply be a publicity stunt to sell Spider Gates horror comic books, which
Mr. Anderson apparently illustrates. There is no investigation into the
cemetery on the website, and the only pictures of the place are the two stolen
from my website. And, the cemetery image of the two - stolen, doctored,
and labeled as Spider Gates - is actually Elliot Hill Burying ground. The
other stolen and doctored image is a nearby culvert that Anderson labeled a
"cave".
One wonders if he has actually ever
been to Spider Gates, and if he has, why he was unable to tell the difference
between Spider Gates and Elliot Hill, two very distinctly different cemeteries.
Also, and perhaps significantly, the other member of the spidesgates.com Spider
Gates Investigation team, Dwight L. MacPherson, lives far away in Fort Bliss
Texas. And not surprisingly, he is also involved in the production and
selling of comic books.
As I mentioned above, the general consensus among
reputable paranormal investigators is that Anderson & Co. seem not to be true
investigators, but rather seem to be peddlers of juvenilia trying to generate publicity
for their comic books.
For my original and complete Spider Gates Field
Report click here.
2007 Update:
Anderson's spidergates.com website has folded and disappeared off the web.
The addy is available for anyone who wants it.
Email Daniel V.
Boudillion
Must. Fake. Picture.
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Copyright © 2004 by Daniel V. Boudillion
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