This intriguing photo, taken in 1919, was first published in 1975 by Sir Victor Goddard, a retired R.A.F. officer. The photo is a group portrait of Goddard's squadron, which had served in World War I at the HMS Daedalus training facility. An extra ghostly face appears in the photo. In back of the airman positioned on the top row, fourth from the left, can clearly be seen the face of another man. It is said to be the face of Freddy Jackson, an air mechanic who had been accidentally killed by an airplane propeller two days earlier. His funeral had taken place on the day this photograph was snapped. Members of the squadron easily recognized the face as Jackson's. It has been suggested that Jackson, unaware of his death, decided to show up for the group photo.
Interesting side note: In 1935, Sir Victor Goddard, now a Wing Commander, had another brush with the unexplained. While on a flight from Edinburgh, Scotland to his home base in Andover, England, he encountered a strange storm that seemed to transport him through time into the future. You can read more about his experience in the article "Time Travelers" under the section "Flight Into the Future."
Who was Freddy Jackson?
One aspect of the story that seemed ripe for examination was whether there was indeed a Freddy Jackson who died just a few days before the end of the war. Both Capel and Goddard seem to agree on this. According to a Fortean Times article about the photo, Bobbie Capel had “no doubt that the face peeping out from the back row is Jackson.” She herself could think of no explanation for the anomalous image other than it being a ghost.
This is another one of those times when the amount of time, money and effort I put into an investigation probably exceeds what my family “investigation budget” should be. I bought access to several online geneology search engines, ultimately finding the right database to look for all the Brits with similar names who died in WWI. I found 26 similar names and only one direct match to “Freddie Jackson.” Here is a link to a spreadsheet with that data.
There is a Frederick William Jackson who died October 30, 1918. That is just a few days before the November 11, 1918 date of the photo. However, that particular Freddy Jackson died in an infirmary of heart failure after being discharged in March of 1918. And he was a marine artilleryman, not an airman of the RAF or RNAS.
It is not fair to say that this disproves the existence of a Freddy Jackson at HMS Daedalus, but it does make me wonder if the story is literally true. The military keep detailed records, and this incident happened at the very end of the war. If the story is accurate, then Freddy Jackson should be listed in the records I pulled.
Of course it could be that both Capel and Goddard got “Jackson’s” name wrong. I have not been able to find an online source that lets me see the general personnel records of HMS Daedalus such that I could search for specific death dates at the base, but that would be the kind of resource needed to definitively say whether or not any Freddy Jackson (or other name for that matter) walked into a moving propeller within a week of the end of the war. If such a person did exist, I suspect based on my research that he was not named Freddy Jackson.
Short Video of the photo
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