On March 15, 2021, The Daily Mail tabloid offered the sensational headline “Terrified Grandmother Captures Image of Horned Demon Standing Over Her Granddaughter’s Bed.” The article goes on to explain how Tory McKenzie, age forty-one, became concerned after one of her grandchildren started talking to an invisible entity. These experiences took place in her son’s home, just a few minutes’ walk from McKenzie’s own residence. According to a now-deleted Facebook post dated March 3, the two-year-old (granddaughter) would “stay up every night, usually laughing and talking, until one night we heard her telling it no, and to go away.”
It was then, back in January of 2021, that McKenzie decided to set up a motion-activated camera in the bedroom to see what was going on. Four days after setting up the camera, McKenzie checked the camera’s app and found, according to the Daily Mail article, a “bone-chilling image of a figure standing inches away from the sleeping tot and her seven-month-old brother Michael McKenzie, with a horn on its head and long claws.”
The monochrome infrared image shows a bedroom with two cribs, with the left one having the siderail removed. A figure is standing in the center of the image, just next to the left-side crib (the one with the siderail removed) and facing toward the right side of the room—away from the crib. The figure is standing in a slightly awkward position: it is hunched over a bit, the knees are bent, and the right arm is bent at the elbow. There are two short streaks of light at its head, just about where the eye would be. The figure has an overall blurriness to it that obscures details of the face and clothing. McKenzie is quoted in the Daily Mail article saying, “It was so shocking when I saw it. I had to do a double take. The first thing I saw was horns on its head, so you immediately think it’s the devil or a demon.”
The description attributed to McKenzie about why she believes this is an “evil presence” is that the figure has “a horn on its head and long claws.” Taking a closer look at the image, several key issues stand out to me. First, the image makes use of infrared light (likely from a few LEDs incorporated into the camera), and the image we’re viewing is known as a false color image, which means that a range of wavelengths in the infrared spectrum are rendered with a corresponding wavelength of visible light. Just as with visible light, a particular wavelength of infrared light can vary in intensity from just above black to near saturation. Light blue shirts can appear black, for example, and gray yoga pants can appear white. It all depends on how the camera manufacturer decides to translate the infrared information to visible light.
The second issue I have is with the image quality. In this case, the image quality is extremely poor, displaying a resolution on par with VHS tapes. This can be due to several things, one being that a cheap, low-quality camera was used (and thus provided a correspondingly low-quality image). My efforts to identify the exact make and model of the camera were unsuccessful, for reasons I’ll soon address. Another possible reason for the low quality is how the image reached the public. If this were taken off a phone app, it probably was not good quality to begin with. Because the image was posted initially to Facebook, which has a reputation for compressing images to much smaller files, I would expect the final version we see in the Daily Mail piece to be the low-quality image we were given.
My final issue with the image may help explain the “horns” and “long claws” described by McKenzie. A common problem with many low-end, app-based surveillance cameras is the exposure time when snapping pictures in the dark. Like trail cams, movement in the scene triggers the camera to flash the infrared LEDs, while the electronic shutter snaps the image. This almost always results in a long exposure, a photography technique that “involves using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring the moving elements.” In the case of McKenzie’s demon, the figure is demonstrating photographic blurring and smearing due to moving elements (a person in motion), also known as motion blur.
The figure appears to be female, likely wearing yoga pants (or not; this was 3 a.m. after all), has long hair, and was caught in the process of getting up from the crib behind her. We have already been informed that the two-year-old granddaughter was staying up all night, so it’s not a far stretch to assume that McKenzie or her son’s partner (identified as Alicia Johnson in the Daily Mail article), entered the room and either sat or laid down in the crib-bed to coax the child to sleep. Both my wife and I used to do this with our son, often falling asleep next to our child (because we were exhausted). In this case, when the woman finally started to stand up to go back to her own bed, the camera sensed the motion and snapped a picture. We can see that the mattress of the left-side crib is low to the ground and would cause a grown adult to take on the awkward position we see from the figure.
Compared to the rest of the scene, the figure is fuzzy, which occurs when a person can’t stand still during a long exposure photograph. We see more pronounced blurring at the figure’s head, in particular the twin bright streaks of light by the figure’s eyes. These are likely reflections of the camera’s infrared light off a pair of glasses. We also see blurring of the figure’s left leg, which is lifted slightly, as one does when they are taking a step forward. The leg appears almost transparent, which is a common result of motion blurring.
The suspected “claws” of the figure appear to be the result of motion blurring of the woman’s hands, because the fingers hang down. Again, in the process of getting up from the crib, she likely swung her hands forward as she straightened up. I was also able to obtain a separate image of the room without the figure, and when I overlayed this image on top of the “demon” image, several details in the background, particularly where the two cribs intersect, blend in with the “claws” to make them look … well, more claw-like. Basically, this is part motion blur and part optical illusion.
According to the Daily Mail article, McKenzie reports that “everybody was asleep, so it couldn’t have been my son or his partner. We have still shots of him in there and it looks nothing like that. I know that it’s something supernatural.” This is a common statement from those presenting ghostly photographs and video, but it still raises some questions. For one, we are told that McKenzie did not check the camera footage until four days after the event. Whenever an extraordinary event occurs, it is crucial to check the scene immediately. Doing so in this case would have likely uncovered the identity of the figure. Because she did not realize a figure was captured until four days later, I don’t see how she could be certain that “everybody was asleep.” Aside from that, the camera was in her son’s home, not McKenzie’s own residence. Unless McKenzie was staying at her son’s place that night, there is again no way for her to be sure that everybody was indeed asleep. Sincere-but-mistaken assumptions such as these have been a cause of many “mysterious” images and videos over the years. Lastly, we have no idea what her son’s partner looks like, and her possible likeness to the figure in the captured image is not addressed any further than McKenzie claiming it could not have been her—though it could very well have been.
In addition to the figure, McKenzie claims that they have “recorded orbs floating around the children’s bedroom.” She attributed the orbs to a (deceased) family member looking after the kids. This statement establishes that McKenzie, at least, holds a belief that ghosts and spirits can be captured on camera. Orbs are circles of light that appear in photographs that many ghost hunters still consider evidence of spiritual forms. When properly analyzed, orbs are found to be the result of the camera flash (or other light source) reflecting off dust particles, bugs, hair, rain, and so on. For more information on such photographic anomalies, see the article in the July/August 2020 Skeptical Inquirer titled “So You Have a Ghost in Your Photo” by Joe Nickell and me.
As I dug into this little mystery further, I attempted to locate Tory McKenzie to get information directly from the source. It appears there’s a slight twist to the story: “Tory McKenzie” is a name allegedly created by the reporter who originally wrote the story. In a March 19 Facebook post by Melanie from the Paranormal Society of GA (where the image was originally posted), the name change was made up to protect the privacy of “McKenzie’s” family. I’ve reached out to Melanie, asking if she could pass along my contact information so I could speak directly to the family. I was informed that others had approached her for the same reason and that everyone was refused. The family neither expected nor wanted the amount of attention they were suddenly exposed to.
As with similar stories, this “demon image” story was picked up pretty quickly by almost every online news service on the internet, making it go viral overnight. As is expected, most outlets simply repeated the same story. The Daily Mail article includes a quote from McKenzie: “I’m not that talented when it comes to technology to fake the photo, and I didn’t share it on my own page so it’s not like I was trying to get attention from it.” I certainly don’t believe she—or anyone else—used software to create this image. I think it comes down to a misunderstanding of the technology in use and allowing one’s own beliefs to dictate the interpretation. (It also doesn’t help to post the image to a paranormal group page and ask mediums and psychics for assistance.) In conclusion, the figure is most likely the female partner of “McKenzie’s” son who was checking in on a child who was wide awake and talking to her imaginary friend.