Mysterious 'ghostly' face of child appears in mobile phone photo of teen pals

But look more carefully and there appears to be an extraordinary, ghostly presence among them.

Peeping out between the knees of two of the girls is the face of a child.

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Ghostly: A ghoulish child stares back as a little girl cries in Matthew Summers' photo

The eerie image - clear enough to show a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth and hair - was captured by 17-year-old Matthew Summers on his mobile phone as he and his friends were preparing to go out.

"I zoomed in to my sister's mate's little sister who was crying and I saw a face,"

Matthew said. "You can see all the facial expressions and everything.

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"Usually when you see pictures like that it's a blur but this one is really weird.

"I was really shocked because I don't believe in that stuff."

Matthew took the picture in his sister's friend's front room in Billingham, Teesside.

"I've sent it to my girlfriend and she thinks it's a bit weird," he added.

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Haunted: Matthew Summers took the mysterious photo on his camera phone

His photo joins a long line of apparently paranormal snaps. The most memorable in recent times was a cloaked figure photographed standing in a doorway at Hampton Court Palace in 2003.

However, Ciaran O'Keeffe, a parapsychologist on Living TV's Most Haunted show, has a more down-to-earth explanation for the "child" in Matthew's photograph.

Dr O'Keeffe said: "As human beings we're very good at finding a pattern in randomness and related to that we're good at finding faces in randomness. The term for this is pareidolia.

"First it was ink blots, then things like clouds in the sky and now mobile phone pictures.

"There is no ghost in this picture, just the coincidental effect of pixelation and darkness and light which combine together."