First screening of Wem ghost tale that captivated world

It is a ghost story which has captivated the world after first appearing on the front page of the Shropshire Star.

Now the story of Wem ghost Jane Churm is being told in a special documentary film which had its first screening in the town last night.

And the children who helped create the film were given the full red carpet treatment as flash bulbs went off ahead of the first showing of Ghost Girl – a documentary telling how an amateur photographer took one of the most famous ghost pictures ever taken.

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The nine-minute film tells how farm worker and budding snapper Tony O'Rahilly took a picture appearing to show the ghostly figure of a young girl inside Wem Town Hall during a major fire in November 1995.

The picture featured on the front page of the Shropshire Star under the headline Ghost Town and was quickly picked up by news organisations around the world.

The ghostly image divided experts with some saying the picture was genuine and others saying it was a fake.

Mr O'Rahilly insisted he never saw the ghostly figure – said to be that of 14-year-old Jane Churm, who accidentally started a disastrous fire in Wem in 1677 – when he took the picture and only noticed it once it was developed.

The famous picture was hotly debated until 2010 when the mystery was apparently solved by a Shropshire Star reader who spotted a similarity between the girl in the photograph and the image of a girl printed on a postcard that appeared one our nostalgia pages.

The girl in the postcard, which dates from 1922, so closely resembled the Wem Town Hall ghost that the mystery now appears to have been solved, although nobody could ever put the claims to Mr O'Rahilly who died before the new information emerged.

Last night's screening was fittingly held at Wem Town Hall, the scene of the fire which kick-started the ghost story.

In recent years the ghost even had her own Facebook page where she made gloomy predictions about the end of the world.

Besides Ghost Girl, which was made by the budding film-makers, aged 12 to 17, the audience were treated to a first showing of other films. They included King of Wenlock, a pair of documentaries about Shropshire's links to the Olympic Games, and On Our Doorstep – a film lifting the lid on village life in Penley, near Ellesmere, made by children aged five to nine.

The premiere was attended by about 200 people involved in making the films and invited guests. Children from Thomas Adams School in Wem, Sir John Talbot's Technology College, Whitchurch, and Madras Primary School, Penley, helped produce the films. Rose Manley from Wem Town Hall, which has bounced back as a community arts centre, cinema and venue since the fire, heaped praise on the children and young people who made the films.

She said: "Unusually, each film has used creative techniques including animation and the use of archive films and photos, and the resulting films are quirky and entertaining. It was a brilliant night and the audience really enjoyed seeing it on a big screen.

"Everyone was just amazed by the quality and if Jane Churm was watching then I hope she was pleased with it."

Jazmin Hudson-Owen, 15, who worked on the Ghost Girl film said: "I'm happy that I was given the opportunity to learn new skills and techniques. It has really opened my eyes to the bigger and better things to come. I'd love to continue when I'm older."

The productions were made possible thanks to First Light Movies funding and the support of the specialist Thomas Adams School's Community Media Arts Team, Wem Town Hall and professional artists and filmmakers including Al Smith and Spencer Whalen. They will have a public screening on March 2 at 7pm and visitors will have the opportunity to see a programme of other First Light-funded documentary films from across the country.

A full programme of films and screening times will be available nearer the time. For more information call (01939) 232299.