The Ghosts of the Santa Barbara Mission

I don't know how much you know about California history, but I'll make a long story short so it won't be too boring. The first European country to claim California was Spain. After claiming it, missionaries immediately headed out there to convert the California natives to Christianity. Well, many of them did have good intentions. Not all were good though, and some were very, very bad.

You have to wonder what group of people would risk their lives heading out on a ship to California in the 1700s, leaving behind everything for good, their families, their friends, and almost everything they owned. Yes, you either had the very pious, or sick and twisted criminals trying to get away from the law. There were often reports of severe sadism done to the Indians at some of these missions. And because of the evilness, some of the missions supposebly are haunted.

Hundreds of years later, after California passed to Mexico then to the United States, a family of Zombieslayers came to visit the Santa Barbara mission. We had no idea at the time that people have claimed to see ghosts there on many occasions, and strange things happened at night. Like a family of naive tourists, we came to visit a piece of American history.

The mission itself is up in the Santa Barbara hills. It's gorgeous country. Santa Barbara, for those who have never seen it, is one of the best looking cities in America. They coded the entire city to look Spanish - white buildings with clay tile roofs. If it weren't for the cars and brand name stores, you'd think you walked back in time.

So, Pappa Zombieslayer (my Dad) goes up to a monk and asks if he could take a picture of the family with mission in the background. Sure, no problem. The monk smiles, takes the picture, and hands it back to Pappa Zombieslayer. Then Pappa Zombieslayer takes the camera back from the monk and asks if he could get a picture of the monk with the Zombieslayer family. No problem. The monk was actually standing in back of me slightly to the side.

A few weeks later, back in the San Francisco Bay Area where we lived at the time, we get the pictures back. There's one of the Zombieslayer family with the mission in the background. Then the 2nd picture sans Pappa Zombieslayer.
"That's strange."
"What?"
"The monk's not in the picture."
"Huh?"

Sure enough, no monk in the second picture.

Now, I don't believe in ghosts. To this day, it baffles me. I try to come up with a logical explanation of why the monk didn't show up in the picture. We all remember the monk was there. There was space in the picture on both sides of the family so there's no way we squeezed him out of the picture. Besides, he was slightly behind me, so even if we did squeeze him out, me being a little kid at the time would not have blocked the entire body of an adult monk. So why did he not show up in the picture?

Any of you believe in ghosts?