When a couple of new landowners in Cambridge, New York, set up a camera deep within the forest they had just bought, they had no idea the footage they’d soon capture would become the talk of the town – and later – the world.
According to Cambridge Police Chief George Bell, who spoke to ABC affiliate News 10, the new landowners were hoping to use the woods as a hunting area and before doing so, set up a camera to ensure the local population didn’t go through them.
However, when they went back through the footage, they stumbled upon an image of a young girl playing between the trees.
Chief Bell said at first, the owners simply wanted to inform the girl’s family.
“The idea originally was just to identify who the child was," he told the news outlet.
However, after a few weeks searching for both the little girl and her family to no avail, town folk began to consider the idea that the young girl was in fact a ghost.
TV stations lined the streets, with vox pops asking town folk their opinion. Paranormal enthusiasts even decided to descend on the town to uncover the truth.
After weeks of speculation, the mystery had quite an odd - and still particularly unverifiable - conclusion, with someone finally coming forward to identify the young girl and shatter many paranormal theories.
According to Police Chief Bell, he received a call from a man saying he is the little girl’s grandfather, and that both took a walk in the woods at about the time the image was captured.
“I don’t want to give a name until we verify it, but it’s a local businessman in southern Washington County who says, around the time frame that this picture was taken, that he and his granddaughter were walking a four-wheeler path,” Bell told WTEN-TV.
Interestingly, the grandfather wasn't captured in the footage alongside his granddaughter.
Not only were the dreams of ghost hunters shattered, but probably those too of the landowners, who now must consider whether they can still hunt in an area inhabited by locals.