Long-Lost Footage Of Amelia Earhart Has Surfaced

If you, like every other woman out there, were obsessed with ill-fated aviator Amelia Earhart as a child, prepare to have your day improved by at least 350 percent. Are you ready? Long-lost footage of Amelia Earhart has surfaced from a 1937 photo shoot that occurred shortly before her infamous attempt to fly around the world, and it's just as awesome as you're expecting. It's also incredibly eerie, of course, but that's par for the course when it comes to anything and everything Earhart. According to Jezebel, the footage was most likely shot by John Bresnik, the brother of Earhart's official photographer, and it sat around for decades before his son passed it on to the Paragon Agency. "It just always sat... in a plain box on a shelf in his office, and on the outside it said, ‘Amelia Earhart, Burbank Airport, 1937,'" he told the Associated Press. The film shows an uncharacteristically smiling and sharply-dressed Earhart and her photographer, Al Bresnik, as she models for the last photoshoot before her untimely demise/secret retirement to New Jersey/abduction by aliens, depending on who you ask.

(I think we all know which one is the real answer.)

Ahem.

There are some, however, who believe that the footage wasn't taken before her her last flight in May of 1937. Instead, executive director of the International Group For Historic Aircraft Recovery Richard Gillespie told the Associated Press that he believes it was filmed before her first attempt to circumnavigate the globe, which occurred in two months earlier, in March of 1937. That particular expedition was cut short when Earhart crashed her plane on takeoff in Hawaii, forcing her to return home for repairs. According to Gillespie, the plane in Bresnik's film is "very clearly the pre-repaired airplane," indicating that it took place before her first try.

Whether it took place in March or May of 1937, many believe this is Earhart's last appearance on film before her disappearance, which makes the already dark and grainy footage that much creepier (and more awesome). Check it out below:

Image: Giphy