I took this photograph in about 1959 with a simple camera called a Finetta. It shows Oare church in the Doone Valley on Exmoor – the church where, in RD Blackmore’s novel Lorna Doone, the heroine was shot at the altar on her wedding day. Curiously, the group of four faces clearly visible to the right of the aisle appear to be gazing up at the very window though which (according to local legend) Lorna’s jealous admirer fired the shot that struck her down.

When I took the picture, I used a time exposure because the light was poor and I didn’t have a flash facility with me; nor did I have a tripod and so had to steady the camera by hand, which explains the blurring. The print was taken from a slide. In spite of the faces in the picture, I am confident there were no people in the church when I took it. Whenever possible, I used to avoid having people in my pictures and would wait, if necessary, for them to move away before I took them. Can anyone offer a logical explanation for the faces?

F Snook, Torquay, Devon