Baffled by strange "ghost" pictures on cellphone

I need opinions from all you fine folks here at ATS.

Long story short, tonight my boyfriend took 3 different pictures of our youngest son on his cellphone.
When you try to view the photos in the gallery, they aren't there.
What is there however, are 3 pictures neither of us have seen or remember taking, which I refer to as the "ghost" photos.
What's even weirder, is if you select one of the ghost photos from the thumbnails, and then zoom in, it actually changes over to the picture of our son. Then when you zoom out, it goes back to the ghost photo.

I have no idea if I can embed a screenshot or short video from my phone, so I'll just describe these as best I can til I figure that out.

Ghost photo #1: The first one creeped me out the most. It's a very bizzare blurry picture of what looks like someone (or something) standing in a doorway. To me, it looks like the doorway of our oldest sons room in the house we lived in 4 years ago.

Ghost photo #2: a close up of someone's left hand in the bedroom of our house we moved out of last year.

Ghost photo #3: a random picture of the same room as pic #2, just showing my computer desk and the dirty clothes pile.

I have to note that my boyfriend didn't even buy this phone until about 6 months ago, and that's why we're completely baffled as to how these pictures ended up on it.

Also, I had him try to send me the first ghost photo in a txt message. It ended up sending the picture of my son.

Is it possible for cellphones to have weird glitches like that, where you view a pic, zoom in and it changes?
Im hoping for a logical explanation so I can stop being creeped out now

I'm interested to see the images tbh

Baffling.
And too weird of a story to be made up.
I'm not sure if it will work, but maybe you could try to make a picture of the photos with another camera or phone?

I'm glad I get to reply before too many crazies respond.

Yes, it's entirely possible for this to happen. Especially if photos have been taken or placed on to the phone, and then later deleted. When viewing the thumbnails on your phone, you're usually viewing a lower resolution, and entirely separate file to the photo itself.

If there has been some form of corruption or error on the phone when photos have been deleted; then it's likely the thumbnail file associated to that photo was not deleted. The thumbnails will generally be numbered, and when you took the photos of your son; those photos were assigned the same numbers as those old thumbnails. When you view the photos themselves, the phone then reads and displays the actual photo file.

That's why they're showing up under different thumbnails, but when viewed; appear correctly.

Edited to make more sense.

a reply to: SaganTheGreat

thank you! I was hoping someone would say that
although I still feel something's off with that 1st picture. Even my boyfriend said something like, "this is like how one of those bad horror movies starts... and I don't want to be that guy" haha.

a reply to: Movhisattva
That's what I was wanting to do. Film the photo gallery with my phone so I could
show what it did when I zoomed in and out. Its better to see it, I don't feel I described well enough.

originally posted by: casijones
although I still feel something's off with that 1st picture. Even my boyfriend said something like, "this is like how one of those bad horror movies starts... and I don't want to be that guy" haha.

Your boyfriend has a good sense of humour!

By the sounds of it, the photos seem like the kind of thing that was taken by accident in the past and then deleted without much thought. You generally don't think at the time that they'll resurface as creepy photos out of context.

For the record, this has happened to me in the past. I went to Europe and took a bunch of photos on my phone. When going through them all, the thumbnails were all mixed up and even showed up photos of friends or places I had been to before that time, and did show the thumbnails from previously deleted photos (including accidental pocket photos). Was a nightmare to go through them all. But it happens!

originally posted by: Movhisattva
Baffling.
And too weird of a story to be made up.
I'm not sure if it will work, but maybe you could try to make a picture of the photos with another camera or phone?

To weird of a story to be made up? I've never heard of abovetopsecret.com either.

a reply to: Antipathy17


True.
Forgot about the context there for a moment.

Anyway, it looks like SaganTheGreat cleared the enigma.

I know you said it was a new phone purchased about 6 months ago, and the photos at least a few are of a place from years ago. Did you or he by chance use an old memory card from the previous phone that could have contained the pictures you are seeing? Thats about the only logical explanation I would have for this.

originally posted by: jaynkeel
I know you said it was a new phone purchased about 6 months ago, and the photos at least a few are of a place from years ago. Did you or he by chance use an old memory card from the previous phone that could have contained the pictures you are seeing? Thats about the only logical explanation I would have for this.

Yes, I agree. how would you have pics that are years old on a phone thats 6 months old, unless you have a sim card or an old sd card in it.

a reply to: casijones

What phone are we talking about here? Try to be specific.
iPhones don't have SD card or so

a reply to: casijones

Can you use another cell phone or camera to get a shot of these images? It's difficult to know what to think without seeing them.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes
Yeah. He may as well try to make a screenshot

It could be lighting, or a dirty camera. But in all reality it can be realistic as camera's capture light and thus can capture other lightly manifested particles

a reply to: Necrose

I know I would, if there was any way to do so. Even if it's a technical glitch, it's odd enough I'd want to preserve it. This being a newer phone, that seems less likely. Weird, in any case!

a reply to: casijones

Sounds like corruption. Jpeg images can have an embedded thumbnail separate from the main image this makes it very fast to scroll through thumbnails. When you zoom in the image will switch from the thumbnail to the main image.

It's sounds suspiciously to me like a corruption of your images where they have picked up an embedded thumbnail from a.n.other image.

If you were to edit the photos, very slightly and re-save a new thumbnail will be created based on the original (full size) image.

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes
a reply to: Necrose

I know I would, if there was any way to do so. Even if it's a technical glitch, it's odd enough I'd want to preserve it. This being a newer phone, that seems less likely. Weird, in any case!

So there is no use in making screenshots as it doesn't seem to appear on them? That's strange.
If so, why don't you use any other phone to take a photo of your display so we can see the thing you are talking about here? Hm...
This would be the first thing I would do.

sounds like a corrupt micro sd card that has been placed in the phone from his old phone.
the new phone has picked these up as being corrupted.

BTW way someone suggested sim card, sim cards can not hold photos.

originally posted by: amraks
sounds like a corrupt micro sd card that has been placed in the phone from his old phone.
the new phone has picked these up as being corrupted.

BTW way someone suggested sim card, sim cards can not hold photos.

yeah, sim-cards do not hold anything these days, not even contacts, as we have iCloud or other cloud services...