This image was shot by Ken Rathburn in 2000 as the two of us were investigating the Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City, MD. It is one of the most intriguing mist photos I have ever seen. Everywhere you look there seems to be faces in the image. It wasn’t until we were done picking out all the details within the image that we noticed the “big picture”. The whole image appears to be that of a woman with long hair and a flowing gown holding a baby in her out stretched arms. Some believe this to be the image of Annie Van Derlot, a young girl that died from pneumonia during the years the PFI was a school for girls. This doesn’t explain what appears to be a baby in the picture. I have never seen any mention of Annie having a baby or even a miscarriage. Whoever or whatever this is, it is still quite an amazing picture.
Wow, that’s really cool. I live near the PFI and I didn’t know it had this kind of reputation. I think the image looks less like a woman with long hair holding a baby and more like woman in a veil possibly holding flowers. Perhaps a wedding gown. There almost appears to be a train. It wouldn’t have been normal for women in that time period to wear a train on a gown accepting a bridal gown.
The reason we started going there was because we saw this site on the Fox tv show, America’s most haunted places. We have two different mist photos from this place. The one you saw was taken out on the front lawn and the other we have was taken from the window looking into the building. We have many orb photos as well which are probably just dust but the odd thing was that the orbs would always show up in specific locations and at the same times each night.