She took the boyfriend’s photograph on a cliffside and later noticed what appeared to be a ghost in the background of her picture. The Fictional StoryĪs noted above, viral content websites such as Upbeat News and Penguin MD published the narrative that a woman was hiking with her boyfriend at Dundas Peak in Hamilton, located in Ontario, Canada. Out of curiosity, we looked into the origins of this tall tale. The publishers of such stories often use misleading advertisements to lure in readers, and the stories themselves are often untrue - whether they’re about Alex Trebek’s net worth, an old camera from the Titanic, or a “heartbreaking” announcement from the Wendy’s fast food restaurant chain. Since at least June 2020, different versions of this story have been published across multiple viral content websites, touted by advertisements such as the following that promised quite the spooky story: “Mom Struggled to Understand Why Her Photo Went So Viral, Then Saw the Background.”Īn alternate version of the advertisement read: “She Doesn’t Understand Why Her Holiday Photo Went Viral Until She Took A Closer Look At It.” We also saw: “She Was Surprised That It Went So Viral, but Then She Saw the Background.” And: “Mom Has No Idea Why Vacation Photo Blew Up Until She Looked At The Background.”Īfter readers clicked the ads to read the story, they were presented with a lengthy slideshow that loaded multiple ads per page, a phenomenon known as advertising arbitrage, where the goal is to make more money on the ads displayed during the slideshow than it costs to place the ads that drive readers to the story in the first place. Rather, it appears that elements from at least two different stories from 20 were combined to make one dramatic narrative that took on different forms in 2020: Upbeat News published “Hiker Finds Something Unexplainable in Photos from Her Trip,” and Penguin MD posted a piece headlined, “Her Vacation Photo Went Viral and She Couldn’t Figure Out Why.” When she later returned to the abandoned car, the missing woman emerged from the woods, alive and well. After she began her search for the missing driver, police told her about a woman who had gone missing in the area, and she found out through additional research that the missing woman’s husband had an abusive past. Walking back to the parking lot, she located a matching abandoned car. She returned to the location where she snapped the picture and found a set of car keys. Later that night, she looked closely at the photograph and noticed a person - perhaps even a ghost - standing far in the background.
The story was an intriguing one right from the start: A woman hiking with her boyfriend took his picture at a popular Canadian cliffside that overlooked the wilderness below.
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