The auction house in Philadelphia had been closing estates for more than a century.
Its sales rooms filled each week with the accumulated possessions of the dead.
Furniture and jewelry and paintings and photographs that had once been treasured and were now being dispersed to strangers who would never know the stories behind them.
I had attended dozens of their sales over the years, picking through boxes of ephemerra and old documents for my work as an antiquarian book dealer, occasionally finding something valuable among the detritus, but more often coming away with nothing but dust on my hands, and a vague melancholy that seemed to cling to me for days afterward.
The photograph came from an estate that the catalog described only as property of a private collector, deceased.
Well, there was no name attached, no provenence beyond the bare fact of previous ownership, no story to explain why this particular image had been kept, while so many others had presumably been discarded over the years.
It was listed as lot 342, estimated value $50 to $75, described simply as family portrait circa 1895, mounted on cards stockck, some foxing and wear consistent with age.
I almost did not bid on it.
The photograph was not in my usual area of interest, and the catalog description suggested nothing remarkable about it, but something made me pause as I flipped through the pages of the auction preview, something that drew my eye back to the small black and white image that had been reproduced alongside the lot description.
I found myself staring at it for longer than the brief moment I usually gave to items I did not intend to purchase, studying the composition, the arrangement of figures, the quality of light that the photographer had captured more than a century ago.
And then I noticed the eyes.
The eldest daughter, a young woman who appeared to be in her late teens or early 20s, stood at the back of the family group, her position elevated slightly above the others by what must have been a small platform or step that the photographer had used to create visual interest in the composition.
She was dressed in the fashion of the 1890s, her hair piled high on her head, her dress dark and modest with a high collar and long sleeves.
Her face was beautiful in the severe way that Victorian portraits often captured, with strong features and a complexion that the camera had rendered in shades of gray that suggested porcelain or marble.
But it was her eyes that had stopped me, that had made me turn back to the page after I had already moved past it, that were now holding my attention with a force that I could not explain.
They were looking directly at the camera, which was not unusual for portraits of that era.
What was unusual was the quality of that gaze, the intensity of it, the way the eyes seemed to be focused not on the lens, but through it, as though the young woman were looking at something beyond the camera, beyond the photographer, beyond the moment of the photograph’s creation itself.
And there was something else, something that I did not fully register until I was sitting in the sales room 3 days later holding the actual photograph in my hands after winning the lot for $62.
The eyes followed me.
I noticed it first when I shifted the photograph to examine the back, tilting it slightly to catch the light.
The young woman’s gaze, which had been directed straight at me when I held the image at eye level, seemed to track the movement, to remain fixed on my face, even as the angle of the photograph changed.
I told myself it was an optical illusion, a trick of the lighting in the salesroom, the kind of effect that artists had been exploiting for centuries in paintings that seemed to watch the viewer no matter where they stood.
But the effect persisted when I took the photograph home, when I examined it in my study under the bright lamps I used for inspecting old documents, when I propped it against a stack of books and walked from one side of the room to the other, watching the young woman’s eyes follow me with an attention that felt almost conscious, almost aware.
I had seen paintings that produced this effect, most famously the Mona Lisa, whose eyes seemed to track viewers as they moved through the gallery.
The technique was well documented, a consequence of the way flat images interact with three-dimensional perception, creating an illusion of movement that was more pronounced in some works than in others.
But I had never seen it in a photograph.
Had never experienced the unsettling sensation of being watched by an image captured on paper and preserved in silver nitrate for more than a century.
I became obsessed with understanding what I was seeing, with finding an explanation that would account for the effect the photograph produced.
I consulted books on Victorian photography, studied the techniques that photographers of that era had used to compose their images, searched for any discussion of optical effects similar to what I was experiencing.
I found references to the following gaze phenomenon in paintings, extensive analysis of how it was achieved and why it worked, but nothing that explained how a photograph could produce the same effect with such intensity.
I showed the photograph to colleagues, to friends, to anyone who would look at it and tell me whether they experienced what I experienced.
The responses were mixed.
Some saw nothing unusual, dismissed my concerns as the product of an overactive imagination, suggested that I had been spending too much time alone with old documents and needed to get out more.
Others felt it immediately, recoiled from the photograph with expressions of unease or even fear, asked me to put it away, refused to look at it again.
One friend, a psychologist who studied perception and visual processing, offered a theory that I found compelling, but not entirely satisfying.
She suggested that the young woman’s eyes had been positioned by the photographer in such a way that they created an ambiguous focal point, appearing to look directly at the viewer from any angle because they were not in fact looking at anything specific at all.
The effect, she said, was probably accidental, a consequence of the long exposure times that early photography required, during which the subject might have shifted her gaze slightly and created an image that captured multiple points of focus simultaneously.
But when she looked at the photograph herself, she fell silent for a long moment.
And when she handed it back to me, her hand was trembling slightly.
There’s something wrong with it, she said.
I don’t know what it is, but there’s something wrong.
I could not let it go.
I needed to know who the young woman was, what had happened to her, why her eyes seemed to follow anyone who looked at her across the distance of more than a century.
I began to research the photograph, using every resource available to me, searching for any clue that might lead me to the identity of the family that had posed for this portrait, and the daughter whose gaze had become my obsession.
The photograph itself offered little information.
There was no inscription on the front, no studio mark or photographers’s name, no date or location that might have narrowed my search.
The back bore only a faint pencil marking that might have been a number or might have been meaningless scribbling too faded to read with certainty.
The clothing and setting suggested the 1890s, probably somewhere in the northeastern United States based on the style of the furniture visible in the background, but beyond that I had nothing to work with.
I turned to the auction house, hoping that the records of the estate sale might provide more information about where the photograph had come from.
The staff were helpful, but ultimately unable to assist.
The estate had been handled by a lawyer who had since retired.
The collector who had owned the photograph had left no inventory or documentation, and the photograph itself had been part of a large lot of miscellaneous items that had been cataloged quickly and without detailed examination.
The trail seemed to have ended before it had truly begun.
I had a photograph with no provenence, no identity, no story beyond the unsettling effect it produced on anyone who looked at it.
I was prepared to accept that I might never know who the young woman was or why her eyes seemed to follow me from within the frame.
And then I received a letter.
It arrived 3 months after the auction, addressed to me by name at my home address, which was not public information, and which I had certainly never provided to the auction house or anyone connected with it.
The envelope bore no return address, and the postmark was smudged beyond legibility.
Inside was a single sheet of paper covered in handwriting that was small and precise and somehow familiar, though I could not say why.
Dear Mr.
Ashworth, I understand that you have come into possession of a photograph that once belonged to my family.
The photograph shows my great-g grandandmother Violet with her parents and siblings taken in 1897 in their home in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
I am writing to ask if you would be willing to return it to me as it has great sentimental value and was never meant to leave the family’s possession.
I should explain that the photograph has a history that you may find relevant to your interest in it.
My great-g grandandmother Violet was known in her time for having what people called the sight, an ability to perceive things that others could not see and to communicate truths that others preferred not to hear.
She died young at the age of 23 under circumstances that the family has never fully explained, and the photograph you now possess was taken just 2 years before her death.
There is a reason why her eyes follow you.
There is a reason why you feel watched when you look at her image.
If you wish to understand, I’m prepared to tell you what I know.
But I must warn you that the knowledge may not bring you peace.
Some things are hidden for a reason, and some secrets are better left undiscovered.
If you wish to proceed, please place the photograph in the window of your study on the night of the next full moon.
I will know and I will contact you again.
Sincerely, a friend of the family.
I read the letter several times trying to determine whether it was genuine or whether someone was playing an elaborate joke at my expense.
The specific details, the name Violet, the location in Germantown, the date of 1897 could potentially be verified through research, and I decided to attempt that verification before responding to the letter’s strange request.
The records I found confirmed that a family named Hartwell had lived in Germantown in the 1890s, that they had been prosperous merchants with a large house and several children, and that one of those children, a daughter named Violet, had died in 1899 at the age of 23.
The cause of death was listed in the registry as heart failure, a vague diagnosis that covered a multitude of conditions, and that was often used when the true cause of death was unknown or unspeakable.
But the records also revealed something else, something that the letter writer had alluded to without fully explaining.
Violet Hartwell had been confined to her room for the final 18 months of her life.
Declared mentally incompetent by a physician whose name appeared frequently in records of that era as someone who specialized in the treatment of nervous disorders in young women.
She had been removed from society, hidden from visitors, forbidden to leave the house or to communicate with anyone outside the family.
The reason for her confinement was not stated in any official document, but I found references to it in newspaper articles from the period, carefully worded accounts that spoke of a young woman of good family afflicted with delusions of a religious nature and unfortunate tendencies toward prophecy and prognostication that have caused distress to her loved ones.
Violet had claimed to see the future.
She had claimed to know things that she could not possibly have known, to perceive truths that were hidden from ordinary sight, to look at people and see not just their present selves, but their pasts and their futures, their secrets and their sins.
Everything they tried to hide from the world and from themselves.
And people had believed her.
That was what the newspaper articles made clear.
What had made her dangerous enough to confine.
People had believed what she said, had been disturbed by her revelations, had demanded that something be done about the young woman whose eyes seemed to see too much, who spoke truths that no one wanted to hear.
She had been silenced.
She had been hidden away, and she had died at 23 of a heart failure that might have been genuine illness or might have been something else entirely.
I placed the photograph in my window on the night of the next full moon.
I do not know what I expected to happen.
Perhaps I thought that the letter writer would appear, would knock on my door, and introduce herself and explain the history of the photograph in ordinary, rational terms.
Perhaps I thought that nothing would happen at all, that the letter was a prank, and that I would feel foolish for having taken it seriously.
Perhaps I did not think at all, was simply following instructions because I could not resist the pull of the mystery, could not walk away from a secret that had been dangled before me.
What happened was none of those things.
I placed the photograph in the window at midnight, propping it against the glass so that Violet’s face was visible from outside, her eyes looking out into the darkness of the street.
Then I sat in my chair and waited, watching the window, watching the photograph, watching the shadows that gathered around the edges of the frame.
I must have fallen asleep.
I do not remember closing my eyes, do not remember the transition from waking to dreaming, but I woke to find the room transformed, the modern furnishings of my study replaced by older things, heavier things.
the gas lamps and velvet curtains and dark wood furniture of a Victorian parlor.
I was sitting in a chair that was not my chair, in a room that was not my room, and across from me, seated in a chair of her own, was Violet Hartwell.
She looked exactly as she did in the photograph, young and beautiful and severe, her hair piled high, her dress dark and modest.
Her eyes fixed on me with the same intensity that had first drawn my attention to the image.
But there was something different about her now.
Something that the photograph had not captured.
A quality of presence that made her seem more real than the room around us.
More solid than the chair beneath me.
More alive than I felt myself to be.
You wanted to understand, she said.
Her voice was soft but clear, carrying easily across the space between us.
You wanted to know why my eyes follow you.
You wanted to know what I see.
I tried to speak, but no words came.
I was paralyzed, unable to move, unable to respond, able only to sit and listen, as Violet Hartwell told me her story.
I was born with a gift, she said.
Or a curse, depending on how you choose to see it.
I could see things that others could not see.
I could look at a person and know their secrets, their fears, their desires, everything they tried to hide from the world.
I could not control it.
I could not stop it.
When I looked at someone, I saw everything, and I could not pretend that I had not seen.
She paused, her eyes never leaving mine.
And I felt as though she were looking at me now, as she had looked at everyone in her lifetime, seeing everything, knowing everything, perceiving the secrets I kept, even from myself.
The photograph was taken 2 years before I died.
she continued.
My father commissioned it, wanted a record of the family as we were before everything changed.
The photographer was a man named Morris, who had a studio on Chestnut Street, and who was known for capturing what he called the essence of his subjects.
He did not know what he was capturing when he photographed me.
He did not understand that what he saw through his lens was not merely my face but my sight, my ability, the gift that had made me both blessed and cursed.
The photograph captured something that photographs are not supposed to capture.
She said it preserved not just my image but my perception, my way of seeing, the quality of attention that had made me dangerous to everyone who looked into my eyes.
When you look at the photograph, you are not merely seeing my face.
You are being seen by me.
You are being perceived as I perceived everyone who crossed my path.
With a clarity that leaves nothing hidden, with an attention that follows wherever you go.
I wanted to ask her what she saw when she looked at me, what secrets she perceived, what truths she knew that I had tried to hide.
But I could not speak, could not move, could only sit in that phantom parlor and listen as she continued her story.
My family confined me because they could not bear to be seen, she said.
They locked me away because my eyes told them truths they did not want to know.
Because every time I looked at them, they felt exposed, vulnerable, stripped of all the comfortable illusions that made their lives bearable.
They told themselves it was for my own good, that I was ill, that I needed rest and quiet and isolation from the stimulations of the world.
But they were the ones who needed protection.
They were the ones who could not endure the weight of being truly seen.
I died in that room, she said.
I died alone, forbidden to see anyone, forbidden to speak to anyone, forbidden to use the gift.
That was the only thing that made me who I was.
And when I died, something of me remained in the photograph, trapped there by the accident of Morris’s camera, and the particular quality of light that had fallen through his window on that winter afternoon.
I have been watching from inside that frame for more than a century, seeing everyone who looks at me, knowing everyone who meets my eyes.
She leaned forward slightly, and I felt the intensity of her gaze increase.
felt as though she were pressing against some boundary between us, trying to reach through the space that separated her world from mine.
“You wanted to know why my eyes follow you,” she said.
“Now you know, my eyes follow you because I am still seeing.
I am still perceiving.
I’m still alive in the only way that remains to me.
Trapped inside a photograph that captured not just my image but my essence, my gift, my curse.
And I will go on seeing, go on following, go on watching everyone who looks at me until the photograph is destroyed or until someone finds a way to set me free.
I woke in my study in my own chair in the gray light of early morning.
The photograph was still in the window where I had placed it.
Violet’s eyes looking out at the street, seeing whatever there was to see in the world beyond the glass.
I do not know whether what I experienced was real.
I do not know whether I truly spoke with the ghost of Violet Hartwell, or whether I simply dreamed a story that my mind had constructed from the fragments I had gathered in my research.
I do not know whether her eyes truly follow me because something of her remains trapped in the photograph or whether the effect is simply an optical illusion, a trick of perception that has nothing to do with spirits or curses or gifts that persist beyond death.
What I know is that I cannot look at the photograph the same way anymore.
When I meet Violet’s eyes, I feel seen in a way that I have never felt before.
Exposed and vulnerable and stripped of all the comfortable illusions that make my life bearable.
I feel as though she knows my secrets, my fears, my desires, everything I have tried to hide from the world and from myself.
I have considered destroying the photograph, burning it, or tearing it to pieces, ending whatever connection exists between Violet Hartwell and the world she left behind more than a century ago.
But I cannot bring myself to do it.
Something stops me every time I reach for it.
Some reluctance that I cannot explain.
Some feeling that to destroy the photograph would be to kill her a second time.
to silence her once again as her family silenced her when she was alive.
Instead, I have kept it.
I have hung it on the wall of my study, where Violet can see everything that happens in the room, where her eyes can follow me as I work and read and live my life.
I have grown accustomed to the feeling of being watched.
have come to find a strange comfort in her presence, in the knowledge that someone is paying attention, that someone sees me as I truly am.
The letter writer never contacted me again.
I do not know who she was or how she knew that I had purchased the photograph or what she hoped to accomplish by sending me that letter.
Perhaps she was a descendant of the Hartwell family, still keeping watch over Violet’s image after all these years.
Perhaps she was something else entirely, another spirit bound to the photograph, another presence trapped in the silver and paper that has preserved Violet’s gaze for more than a century.
Or perhaps she was Violet herself, reaching out from inside the frame, trying to connect with someone who might finally understand what it means to see too much, to know too much, to be locked away because the truth in your eyes is more than the world can bear.
I look at the photograph now, at the family lined up for their portrait, at the mother and father and children arranged in careful composition.
At the eldest daughter standing at the back with her hair piled high and her dress dark and modest, and her eyes looking directly at the camera, at me, at everyone who has ever looked at her.
Her eyes follow me no matter where I stand.
They have followed me since the day I first saw the photograph in the auction catalog, since the moment I first met her gaze and felt the weight of her attention.
They will follow me, I suspect, for the rest of my life.
And I have come to believe that this is not a curse, but a gift, not a haunting, but a connection, not a burden, but an honor.
Violet Hartwell was silenced for seeing too much, was locked away and left to die because her eyes revealed truths that others could not bear to know.
But her eyes are still open, still seeing, still following everyone who looks at her.
She is still alive in the only way that remains to her.
And I am grateful, strange as it may sound, to be one of the people she has chosen to see.
