Kansas Teen Buys $1 Polaroid Camera, Finds Deceased Uncle's Photo
Thirteen-year-old Addison Logan loves scouring garage sales for hidden treasures and his recently broken arm has given him more time to do so.
He and his grandmother Lois Logan got in her car Thursday and started hitting some yard sales in Wichita, Kan. At their fourth stop, Addison finally spotted something he wanted to buy.
"I found this Polaroid camera and it looked pretty old and cool, so I just bought it for a dollar," he said today.
Addison took the camera home and tried to take a picture with it, but discovered after some Internet searching that he would need special film for the old Polaroid. "I opened up the cartridge to see if there was any [film] in it and I saw a full photograph in there," he said.
The '70s-looking photo was of a man and a woman sitting on a chair with the man's arm around the woman in what appeared to be someone's basement. The man wore a tan suit over a pointy-lapel shirt and the woman wore a long floral-print dress under a maroon sweater.
Addison thought the photo was just of a "random person," but his grandmother was shocked when she saw the snapshot.
The man in the photo was her late son and Addison's uncle, Scott Logan. Logan died in a car accident in 1989. The family believes the image was taken between 1978 and 1980, when Logan would have been between the ages of 17 and 19. They think it was shot at the house of Scott Logan's then-girlfriend, who is in the picture.
"She was like, 'Wow. I can't believe it,'" Addison said. "It was just unbelievable."
Addison called his father, Blake Logan, at work to tell him what he had found.
"He told me what had happened and I kind of brushed it off and it didn't really strike me - the significance of it - until I went home," Blake Logan said.
When he saw it, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "I was kind of in a state of shock," he said. "I asked him, 'This really came in this camera? Are you sure?' He assured me that it did and I was in a state of disbelief."
The next day, Blake Logan's older brother went to the house where Addison bought the camera to find out whether the sellers knew Scott Logan or the girl in the photo. The man who sold the camera said he had no connection to either of them and could not remember where he had bought the camera.
Blake Logan can't explain what brought his teenage son to the camera that held a photo of his beloved brother, but he finds comfort in the fateful find.
"It's one of those things that it almost touches me the more I see how much it touches other people," he said. "When you have faith, you believe they're always with you and when you see signs like this, it kind of reaffirms that."