Haunting Photo May Show Socialite Who Inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’

A photo may have captured the spirit of the socialite who inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Daisy Buchanan. 

Private chef Kristie Ranieri took a photo recently at the now-dilapidated former summer home of Ginevra King in Lake Forest, Illinois, and in the chilling picture is an image that appears to look like the owner. 

King was a former lover of the acclaimed American author and is said to be the basis of Daisy in Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterpiece “The Great Gatsby.” Daisy was Gatsby's love interest in the book.

King and Fitzgerald were involved in 1915 when she was just 16, but two years later she left the author and married into a wealthy Chicago family.

Ranieri is convinced the image in her picture is King, who she said continues to haunt her former home after her 1980 death.

“I walked around it with my husband [Michael] and took some pictures,” she told SWNS. “Michael was going through the pictures that night, zooming into the windows to see if he could see the interiors and that’s when he spotted her face.

"We definitely got chills. Neither of us believed in ghosts, but we were really freaked out. I knew what Ginevra King looked like because I’m interested in local history and she grew up in this area. When I saw that picture, I immediately Googled her and we both agreed it has to be her.”

The couple went back to the mansion, which was built in 1905 and has 14 rooms, to see if King was still there. 

“We rushed back to see if we could spot her again but of course she was gone,” Ranieri recalled. “I want to talk to some experts in this field and I want to let the local ghost hunters know. I imagine this will now become a spot on the ghost hunting trail. I was a skeptic before, but seeing that image, I know that it is her ghost looking down.”

The mansion was part of a 47-acre estate belonging to the King family and was used as their summer home. The estate, known as Kingdom Come, was sold to a developer in 2016, who hopes to find a buyer for it. The home has sat vacant for more than a decade. 

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