Can you explain this old photo?

Photoshop existed back then. Maybe it wasn’t photoshop, but people knew how to manipulate images.
It seems like two images are fused together.

I can’t get a good resolution on my iPad but it looks like it isn’t a reflection, neither image in the water appear the same as the girl. So it looks more like a double print of an old phot o of the girls printed below and reverse of the girl standing

It’s a graphic created for the book
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. The image on the cover of the book is definitely manipulated from the original photo so I’d say it’s a pretty safe guess that this image has also been manipulated.

One’s a ghost. Duh.

If a person wanted to fake such a photo in 1925, there are darkroom techniques that could be used. Take two photographs, one with a girl in a different place, against a plain bright background like that, taken from the same camera position via tripod. Then cut the negative of one to exclude the above-pond portion of the second girl, or even just cut out the girl, and line it up with the other negative. Make a print of the layered negative.

Thanks everyone.

It’s a double exposure. It was an art form practised in the Victorian Age. I’ll find you some links if you want to see more of these types of pictures. (I have no idea why or how I know this… I wish I got paid for knowing stupid trivia) Here is one guy who faked in ghosts: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-spirit-photographs-of-william-hope/

Here is more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/aug/29/classic-faked-photographs-in-pictures

I studied dark room techniques and photography for two years when I was a teenager. It wasn’t difficult to super impose an image.

It’s double exposure. It’s a technique whereby the artist manipulated the exposure of the negative and/or the print. It is not Photoshop, or any digital manipulation of the image.

When my dad was in his 20s, sometime in early 1930s, he made a picture of him talking to himself on both sides of a table. It must have been very difficult at the time because he was quite proud of it. As little kids we thought that picture was magical!
Obviously the techniques (and spoofers) have been around for a long time.

Now we can bang out something like that in seconds. Thanks Photoshop!

Clearly some kind of demon.

…or a window to an alternate dimension.

Females have multiple,and random personalities in play, at any given time. This photo captures the ones currently in control.

Without photos like this, men would simply have to guess which personalities are present, and act accordingly. That would be tough…;p

One of Loli’s friends obviously.

A ghost. No doubt about it.