Here’s one for fans of the late, great Unsolved Mysteries (and the still-crankin’, not quite as great Ghost Hunters): A photograph taken in 1997 at the French cemetery where Doors frontman Jim Morrison is buried features a ghostly apparition that appears to be Morrison. Are you with us? We may lose you here: [...]]]>

Here’s one for fans of the late, great Unsolved Mysteries (and the still-crankin’, not quite as great Ghost Hunters): A photograph taken in 1997 at the French cemetery where Doors frontman Jim Morrison is buried features a ghostly apparition that appears to be Morrison. Are you with us? We may lose you here: the photo has been deemed authentic, the U.K.’s Daily Express reports (via Spinner). The snapshot shows rock historian Brett Meisner standing next to Morrison’s grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, and in the background, there’s a white figure with its arms seemingly outstretched. Apparently, Morrison did break on through to the other side.

The Doors’ lasting legacy: photos.

The ghostly image went unnoticed by Meisner until 2002, when he spotted the strange blur and had the photo analyzed. In a book called Ghosts Caught on Film 2: Photographs of the Unexplained, researchers say the photo was in no way manipulated, and also rule out any possibility that it’s merely a trick of the light. The image itself is “unexplainable,” researchers said.

Meisner says now that he regrets going to the Pere Lachaise cemetery because he’s been plagued by eerie events ever since. Meisner tells the Daily Express that his marriage broke down and a close friend died of a drug overdose, and now he’s haunted by people who approach him to say that Morrison’s ghost is haunting them. “At first it was sort of interesting to see how many people felt a spiritual bond with Jim and the photo, but now the whole vibe seems negative,” Meisner said.

As anyone who read one of the many books on Morrison or saw Oliver Stone’s The Doors would tell you, Morrison believed he encountered the ghost of a Native American after witnessing a car accident in his youth in an incident that deeply impacted the singer. In fact, the lyrics to “Peace Frog” feature the lines, “Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding, ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind,” which was Morrison’s account of the encounter. So it’s fitting that nearly three decades after his death, Morrison would appear as a specter in a photograph.

OK, OK, there’s absolutely no way to prove whether Morrison’s ghost is actually traipsing around his grave site, but we predict the Lizard King’s resting place is about to get a lot more visitors in the next few months.

Related Stories:

• Jim Morrison’s Death May Be Reinvestigated
• Doors’ Final New York Concerts Emerge as Six-Disc Collection
• The Doors Owe $5 Million to Densmore, Morrison Estate

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After spending the last decade posting the symphonic Soft Bulletin, fighting Pink Robots and waving “The W.A.N.D.,” the Flaming Lips return their acid-soaked roots with their 12th album Embryonic, out today. A double-disc affair of Miles Davis-inspired skronk jazz, sludge riffs and intergalactic electronics, Wayne Coyne and gang are at their most off-the-wall [...]]]>

After spending the last decade posting the symphonic Soft Bulletin, fighting Pink Robots and waving “The W.A.N.D.,” the Flaming Lips return their acid-soaked roots with their 12th album Embryonic, out today. A double-disc affair of Miles Davis-inspired skronk jazz, sludge riffs and intergalactic electronics, Wayne Coyne and gang are at their most off-the-wall in decades. “Despite tons of studio chaff (five songs are fragments named after zodiac signs), a theme emerges, something about keying into the cosmos by relinquishing control,” Jon Dolan says in his three-star Rolling Stone review. “Hippie hokum? Maybe. But the Lips have always been able to subvert pie-eyed whimsy with a sense of homespun beauty, and there’s plenty of that here too.”

Also this week, Christmas comes early as Bob Dylan’s collection of yuletide greetings, Christmas in the Heart, hits shelves two months before Santa Claus hits chimneys. To anyone expecting Blood on the Snowy Tracks or The Free-Sledding Bob Dylan, this album of Christmas classics might seem like a lump of coal, but Dylan’s take on “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and other “Little Drummer Boy” make for nice eggnog companions. Plus, all proceeds go to Feeding America. “Dylan’s singing is often nimble and clear — he goes high in ‘The First Noel’ without a hint of gravel,” David Fricke writes in his three-star review of Christmas in the Heart. “The effect is like a Woodstock snowfall with the defiance of 1970’s Self Portrait: another way of saying his roots are everywhere.”

Two more noteworthy releases are out this week: First, there’s Harper Simon’s eponymous debut album, which earned a three-and-a-half star RS review. Simon’s father Paul (yes, that Paul Simon) co-writes two of the songs on Harper Simon, a well-crafted collection of catchy songs. Also new in stores is Dead by Sunrise’s Out of Ashes. The side project of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, Ashes “is a grim affair, with hackneyed post-grunge arrangements propping up pity-poor-me sentiments,” Jody Rosen writes in his two-and-a-half star review.

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