A Doppelgänger and Ghost Get a Traffic Ticket

James Hamburg of Mesa, Arizona died in the year 2000 - and so it was especially unusual when he was caught on a traffic camera running a red light on October 10th, 2005. Robrt L. Pela of the *Phoenix New Times* treated this story as a joke when he covered it on the first of December of that year, but if the story related within the contents of his article is to be believed, then something extremely anomalous took place on October 10th.

## The Incident

A car ran through a red light on the date in question, and was clearly photographed doing so by a traffic camera system. The Mesa Police Department issued a ticket, including the photo of the car committing the crime in question to the offender, James Hamburg. The only problem was that James Hamburg was six feet under, and had been since the year 2000. The Hamburg family recieved the ticket, and it turned out that the deceased nature of the driver was not the only problem with the photograph.

The photograph depicts both James Hamburg and his wife, Lorraine, in the vehicle in question. However, Lorraine was 80 years old at the time, and was certainly at home recovering from heart surgery. Upon seeing the ticket, Lorraine frantically dialled her son, Steven, who was a retired firefighter. She said '*I don't know if this is a cruel joke, or what*' before receiving the further-boggling news that Steven's wife had been driving the car on October 10th. Thus, the family was certain of the whereabouts of Lorraine, James and the car, and so the picture should've been totally impossible.

Steven Hamburg explained the situation to Terri Dorn, a detective, but she refused to drop the anomalous ticket until Hamburg had offered conclusive proof that his father was deceased. Thus, Hamburg faxed the detective his father's death certificate, but apparently heard nothing more of it. Presumably confused and frustrated, Hamburg next contacted the press - and when the press spoke to the police again, Sergeant Chuck Trapani insisted that Dorn had never received the death certificate the Steven certainly sent. Eventually the police did some digging of their own and found that James Hamburg was, in fact, most definitely deceased.

## Theories

Perhaps the photo issued with the ticket was five years old? This would certainly mean that Mesa's traffic cameras are seriously flawed, and would probably explain a picture of a dead person being spat out five years after he was dead and buried. However, the building in the background of the photograph hadn't been built at the time of James's death, and its building certificate had been issued in November of 2004 - when James was still certainly dead. As if to put the final nail in the coffin of this theory (pun intended), archieved tickets are destroyed by the Mesa traffic department after three years.

'There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the car was driven through the light on October 10. The only question is *who's* driving the vehicle' said Sergeant Trapani to the press. He thinks that someone else must have taken Mrs. Hamburg out for a drive, and that someone must have bore a suspicious resemblance to her late husband. However, this also seems unlikely - seeing as Lorraine Hamburg had just had heart surgery at the time, and was certainly not in any position to go out driving, 'and certainly not with strange men'. Steven Hamburg's wife had also been using the car all day, and so Lorraine couldn't have been in it even if she was healthy.

For all you Scooby Doo fans who are claiming that James might've had a twin brother or something like that - the *Phoenix New Times* has you covered, and they say that James didn't have a brother at all, twin or not.

So who was driving that car? Was it a vision from the past? A ghost and a doppelgänger doing carpool? I would classify this case as a 'glitch in the matrix' - moments when something that shouldn't happen by all known laws of the universe just happens anyway...

## Sources

http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/2005-october-10-very-strange-traffic-ticket

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/dead-man-driving-6399900