Jesus tatoo leaves ghostly imprint on man’s T-shirt
AN eerie image of what some say is Jesus on the Turin Shroud has intrigued historians and religious believers for decades. Now one Lan...
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AN eerie image of what some say is Jesus on the Turin Shroud has intrigued historians and religious believers for decades.
Now one Lancashire town has its own version, albeit in rather less mysterious circumstances.
Born-again Christian Terry O’Neill decided to have an intricate design depicting Jesus tattooed on his back.
But when he woke the next morning, he found the pattern had left a ghostly imprint on the T-shirt he had worn to bed.
Friends have dubbed it the Adlington Shroud after the Greater Manchester town where he lives because of its similarity to the image in Turin.
Mr O’Neill, 43, said: ‘It was amazing. It’s a shroud. They are going to frame it and put it up in the (tattoo) shop.’
The father-of-two had his tattoo inked at Psycho Monkey, in Adlington, near Bolton.
Afterwards, staff at the shop gave him a spare T-shirt to wear until he got home so he that did not ruin his clothes.
When he took the T shirt off, he discovered it had created an imprint of Jesus’s face on it.
Shop manager Alan Calderbank said: ‘We gave him a T shirt so he wouldn’t spoil his bedsheets and he gave it back with an imprint of Jesus or, as we call it, The Adlington Shroud.’
The body art cost £900 and took tattoo artist Jay Abbott more than 14 hours to create. Mr O’Neill, who got his first tattoo at the age of 18, said: ‘It’s not finished yet – it will be even better once it is.’
He had the idea for the tattoo when he saw a similar image on someone’s arm in a magazine – but Mr Abbott said it would look better if it was big.
Mr O’Neill said: ‘I was looking for somewhere to put it – I was running out of space. I thought, what about my back?’
He said his family and friends’ jaws dropped when they saw it.
‘His eyes are glazed and piercing. It just looks so real,’ he added.
Mr O’Neill said the second sitting was particularly sore, but he refused pain-relieving gel in honour of Jesus.
He said: ‘I thought that would be cheating a bit with me being a Christian. Jesus went through a lot more.’
Mr O’Neill, a drummer in The Taser Puppets, a band that has recently signed to an independent record label, turned to religion about 15 years ago.
He said: ‘I’m a born-again Christian. I don’t think I was a nice person before I became a Christian. I’ve had a lot of lucky escapes and have been in some bad situations.’
The Turin Shroud is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion.
The Vatican, which owns the relic, hails it as an exploration of the ‘darkest mystery of faith’.
But the church has shied away from any definitive statement over whether the shroud – which is supposed to have formed Christ’s burial robe – is real.
It was kept in a French convent for years – by nuns who patched it, and where it was damaged by fire.
The Shroud was given to the Turin Archbishop in 1578 by the Duke of Savoy and has been kept in the Cathedral ever since.
Carbon dating tests in 1988 dated it from between 1260 and 1390 – implying it was a fake.
In 1999, two Israeli scientists said plant pollen found on the Shroud supported the view that it comes from the Holy Land.
