The Image On Glass (Sophia Clayton)

## Legend Summary

(warning, this Entry contains descriptions of death and racism)

The legend of the Image On Glass typically contains three elements: a lightning flash, a pane of glass, and the image of a human face. The Image on Glass story typically goes as follows: a person dies during a thunderstorm, and at the same time as their death, there is a flash of lightning. The lightning creates the image of the deceased person’s face, sometimes called a "lightning daguerreotype" typically on a window or a mirror that the deceased person was next to. (Woodyard, 2019.) The presence of "photographic lightning" in stories is often what qualifies it to be under the umbrella of "The Image on Glass." (Brunvand, 1986) It is common that the image created can never be removed. The tale considered as the origin goes as follows: In Carrollton, Alabama in the year 1870, a black man was charged with a crime he did not commit by the very racist community around him. The man, who was taken to a courthouse, watched an angry mob outside from a window in the midst of a storm. He was unfairly killed for this crime he did not commit, and afterwards, his image had been captured on the window he had been watching from, caused by the lightning of the storm. The image created was to serve as a reminder to the people who killed the man of their immoral and unjust actions. (Allen, 1982) This conflict of morality is present in many iterations of the Image on Glass, however they do not always include racism as the conflict.

## Legend History

The earliest known story with the common elements of the image on glass takes place in 1876, in Carrollton, Alabama. The legend traces back to when photography was first invented, meaning the process of taking a picture was considerably more complex. Unhelpfully, photographers at the time wanted photography to seem even more confusing than it was, posing themselves as magicians of some sort who were performing a kind of magic trick. (Allen, 1982)The confusion as to how photography was performed then likely led to the development of the image on glass. The photography process required bright light and glass, which are key elements to this urban legend, seeing as lightning and either a mirror or window is present in most iterations of the tale. The moral conflict in the original tale is also specific to its setting in the South United states during 1870. Morality is a strong central theme in cases of “The Image on Glass” and in the original tale, the morality, or lack thereof, is found in the racist actions of white southern Americans, with the printed image on the glass serving as a symbol to them that their actions were unacceptable. While racism is not present in all adaptations of the legend, it is present in more than one, and likely stemmed from this original story.

## Adaptations

In one adaptation, there was a teenage girl who wanted to go to a school dance event, but there was a terrible storm that night, and this caused the girl’s father to refuse to let her go to the dance. She was very angry, and immediately stormed off into her room. She stood in front of the window from where she could see the storm, and, in a fit of anger, said a lot of curse words. Suddenly, the girl was struck by lightning and instantly killed. In that instant, an image of her face appeared on the window she stood next to. The image could not be removed by any possible means.  (Allen, 1982)

In another, an old lady was sleeping when, in the middle of the night, it began storming. A particularly loud lightning strike startled the old woman severely. She fainted at the sound, and it had such a great effect on her body that she died in her bed. The lightning that had killed her created a perfect image of her face on the window that was next to her bed. (Allen, 1982)

Lastly, there is a tale of an old woman who frequently visited a hotel, and upon noticing she had not been moving from a certain window, people in the area began to ask about her, checking if she was alright. Upon asking, they discovered that she had actually been dead for quite some time, and what they were seeing was not the woman herself, but a picture of her etched on the glass where she had been watching a thunderstorm before her death. (Woodyard, 2019)

## Adaptation Analysis

In the first adaptation, it is apparent that the teenage girl has been seemingly punished for her immoral actions. Instead of being understanding of her father, she goes to her room and gets angry and curses. The lightning kills her and her image is left on the window, seemingly to show others that she died because of her unacceptable behavior. The girl acts in the stereotypical teenage way, acting troublesome and rebelling against her parents who only want to protect her. Thus, the moral of the story could be a simple warning to teenagers to respect their elders and to have a good attitude. It could also be a message telling people to always be patient and see where others are coming from; if the girl had come to an understanding with her father, she would not have cursed herself to death.

This second adaptation of The Image on Glass seems to defy the moral message of most other adaptations while still retaining the key elements: a person dies, and their face is seemingly photographed into the nearest pane of glass. The old woman in this particular tale does not have many details of her life stated, it is only clear that she has died in her sleep. Considering that the ghostly glass images often serve as reminders or warning to others, it could be that the woman has been forgotten by her family and neighbors and left to die alone of old age, and thus her image has been printed to show the people around her that they should have been caring for her at this stage in her life.

The last adaptation is similar to the second in that it features the death of an old woman, however there were several differences as well. Instead of having the woman be forgotten, the neighbors around her hotel room seemed to care for her and asked about her whenever they felt something was wrong. The image also seems less to serve as a sort of moral message overall. It seems the creation of the image in this case lead to confusion, had the image not been there, the people around would have known she had not, in fact, been dead. Thus, rather than serving as a reminder of the woman’s life, it seems to create a mystery about her in the eyes of her community instead.

## Works Cited

Allen, Barbara. “‘The Image on Glass’ Technology, Tradition, and the Emergence of Folklore.”

  Western Folklore, vol. 41, pp. 85–103, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1499784.pdf.

Brunvand, Jan Harold. “The Choking Doberman and other ‘New’ Urban Legends”

New York, W.W. Norton, 1986

Woodyard, Chris. “Lightning Daguerreotypes.” Haunted Ohio Books, 19 Aug. 2019,

hauntedohiobooks.com/news/lightning-daguerretotypes/.