The Mystery of the Cooper Family Falling Body Photo is Solved

The picture of the Cooper Family with a falling body has gone many rounds within paranormal communities. Many alleged ghost photos will remain a mystery, but perhaps this mystery behind the photo is now solved?

Although the final piece of evidence in this ongoing case with the photograph topping most haunted photographs lists was dropped in 2020, there are still stories about the creepy ghost story behind the picture, and those articles detailing the exposed hoax about it, rarely mentions the final part of it.

So let’s get into it, who were the Cooper family, what happened in the picture, and who is behind this enduring legend that has been passed around the internet for a long time now? Let’s get into the story behind the picture and the many twists and turns it took along the way.

The Story of the Cooper Family and the Falling Body

Although the details vary a lot on the different retelling, there is mostly one way to start the Cooper Family Falling Body. Sometime in the 1950s the Cooper family of Texas bought an old house and moved into it. On their first night there, the father took a photo of Mom and Grandma posing with the two kids at the dining room table. Everyone was happy and smiling. They were living the American dream.

But when the photo was developed, they saw, to their horror, that what looked like a body falling or hanging from the ceiling had materialized behind them. It hadn’t been there when the father took the photo.

The picture of the Cooper Family with a falling body has gone many rounds within paranormal communities. Many alleged ghost photos will remain a mystery, but perhaps this mystery behind the photo is now solved? — **The Ghost in the Photo:** The photo in question was this and caused a lot of debate over the years. Now, it seems the whole story is out.

So where did this thing come from? Was it an apparition of a deceased former tenant of the house? No one knew. Many theories has since been put forth, like that the house was built on top of a location were many black Americans were lynched and it was a ghost from that for example.

According to some variations of the legend, the little boys had nightmares for years because of this picture. Some versions ended with the family deciding to move out of the house because they couldn’t deal with the spooky haunting that was going on in the house.

The Truth Behind the Picture

So what really happened? Double exposures were not an uncommon thing in analog photographs before the digital age, but not all pictures garnered so much attention as this one. According to many “experts”, they deemed the picture legit. At least according to the posts without any sources. But the truth ended up being not like how the internet treated it.

The picture seems to have been passed around on lists like most mysterious photos, or scary ghost pictures since at least 2009 when it was posted on a fan site for the horror writer Thomas Ligotti. As for the story behind the picture, talking about showing the Cooper family from Texas appears to have been invented in 2013.

And what happened to the Cooper family? The fact is, that they weren’t even named Cooper, but Copper and someway along the way of copying and pasting, it was changed. One of the boys in the picture recognized himself when it went viral and he didn’t seem very amused by the picture.

He said: When my older brother sent me this link I was floored. We are the two boys in the picture. Well we were back in 1959. I have many picture like this one, but not this one. My mother had a habit of throwing away pictures that she didn’t like. Eventually the ones she kept were passed along to me. What annoys me is that somebody got hold of a family photograph. The story is almost entirely fiction. Our last name is Copper, not Cooper. Does anybody know who did this?

In 2015, photographers and others on Metabunk took a deep dive into the picture in the forum Robert Copper sent it to. Is it even a man in the picture? Some have pointed out that when turned around, it looks more like a woman striking a ballet pose, even going as far as identifying the person hanging from the ceiling as It’s the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn superimposed, upside down over the photograph among other women.

Thinking that this would be the end of it, people put the case to rest for a time. But it wasn’t solved yet.

The Perpetrator Comes Forward

There is a book written about it called “urban legend: the true story of the Cooper family photo.” By Richard Ramsdell. People started to question this publication so close to the Metabunk debate. In 2020 however, in the same thread where Robert Copper came forth as one of the boys in the picture, he now reappeared as Richard Ramsdell, the author of the book as well as and the one behind the photo as well as in the photo.

He wrote: I want to thank all of you for the many hours of entertainment. I am the younger boy in the photo and I am Richard Ramsdell.

I stumbled across this thread in May of 2015 and was shocked to see an early artwork of mine getting so much attention and speculation. (I was floored by the sheer number of websites that perpetuated the Cooper family story.)

I created this image in 1981, in the darkroom. I once had a website where it and others were displayed. Somebody must have snatched the image and created the Cooper family story. The original “hoax” story is not mine. But it is hilarious!

I am one of the 2 creators of the Bristel Goodman online ARG. We were just trying to make a webseries and stumbled into the ARG world. It was an accidental ARG. After that it seemed obvious to create Robert C. just to mess with you. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. The whole thing was just so crazy. (And yes, I was able to entertain friends for many nights at the pub.)

Very quickly I thought of writing the book. I had just made 2 Apple iBooks, so I had some skills there. (The Amazon books have been converted from the iBooks. I agree, they look like crap in comparison.)

Of course the book is total fiction (mostly), the truth just isn’t as challenging for me. Clearly I’m not a skilled author, but I hoped that the imagery combined with a fun story would help me make a couple of bucks. Thanks to those of you who bought it. It makes me smile to know that a couple of you enjoyed it (dierdre, Ray Von G).

So who is Richard Ramsdell? In addition to being the little boy in the picture, he now claims that he was behind the editing of the ghost in the photo. According to his IMDB he is: Richard G. Ramsdell, an editor, colorist and producer, known for Bristel Goodman (2014), and Speed of Love (2010). Born and raised in upstate NY he has graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Salzburg College and the University of Florida. He is a visual artist of over 30 years, with a number of fellowships, grants and international exhibitions to his name.

Worth noting that some of the photographs of him have a very artistic use of double exposure. Is the story behind this strange photo finally solved then, or are there still more layers to peel off? A hoax within the hoax as it were.