September 11 Digital Archive / "Satan in the Smoke" Emails

"Satan in the Smoke" Emails

On the morning of September 11, immediately after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, photojournalist Mark D. Phillips took a picture that would prove to be one of the most evocative and disputed images of that tragic day. Many peple later construed the image of the smoke in his photo of the burning buildings to compose the face of Satan. These e-mails related to this picture provide a revealing portal into Americans' responses to the attacks in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Dear Mr. Phillips,As the smoke was rising, I called a friend to tell her I thought I saw a face in the smoke. I wasn't sure if it was a religious face or not because it happened so fast and until toda...

I want to let you know that there are those of us who believe in your integrity. The picture should give all of us something to think about and take inventory of oneself. If it is a Heaven then it is...

http://www.stellarimages.com/On this image from the site above, I do not believe it's the devil, I believe it to be jesus. If you look carefuly at the image that was cut out from the picture and is p...

Hey how you dong I don't know if you noticed but right beside the one picture they're two more faces in the smoke they're to the right and up and above almost at the horns then the other one is almo...

I would just like to say that seeing that image was very chilling, it definitely looked like an image of what we perceive the devil to look like, or perhaps the work of the devil, or perhaps Osama was...

Dude,Check this out. http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/ap/stories/20010913smoke.frm Kevin\nFri, 14 Sep 2001 00:44:24 EDT\nmphillips@stellarimages.com\nKLarkin440@aol.com\n\n(no subject)\n...

do you think there going to bomb El Paso? Well one thing that is going to be hard to forget is what they did. i will never forget what happened and those who lost their lives for something they did no...

when my mother and i looked at the photo, we saw two evil faces, the original one and the one to the right\nSat, 22 Sep 2001 14:16:34 EDT\ninfo@stellarimages.com\nAnglbaby725@aol.com\n\n(no subject)\n...

are u a funny ole guy or what? isn't it funny that no one else pictures got that but urs did seeing how u change pics for a living that's sad when u use tons of peoples tragady to make urself...