A FAMILY has been left baffled after a mysterious image which they say looks like the Virgin Mary was discovered on a photograph.

Four-year-old Sinead Fielden took the photograph of three members of her family on her mother’s mobile phone.

When her mother, Shiralee, came to check the phone she noticed the religious “apparition”.

The photograph was taken in the living room of Ms Fielden’s terraced home in West Auckland, County Durham, and features her sister, Nicola Jardine, and her husband, Glen, and her three-year-old brother, Blaine Campion.

A figure wearing a blue dress with black hair and a white shawl can be seen hovering over the three people in the foreground.

To compound the mystery, shortly after the photograph was taken, Mrs Jardine learnt she was pregnant.

Ms Fielden, 22, who is from a Catholic family, says she does not know how the image got on the phone.

She said: “My little girl always messes on with my phone and takes pictures. I was deleting some she’d taken when I saw this one.

“I said to my Mam, ‘Don’t laugh, but I think I’ve got a picture of the Virgin Mary on my phone’.”

When Ms Fielden transferred the picture to her computer and was able to view it on a larger screen, she was even more mystified.

She said: “I’ve got nothing blue in my living room – it’s all green and brown.”