Dusk had settled and night was closing in on Beach Cemetery at Hell Spit, on the old Anzac battlefields of Gallipoli, when Fairfax photographer Joe Armao opened the shutter on his last series of pictures for the day – and captured something inexplicable.

Only three people were at the cemetery, or anywhere, so far as we were aware, within kilometres: Armao, guide and local author Celal Boz, and me.

The frame before. Credit:Joe Armao

Celal was standing among the silent graves, the only person – no more than a silhouette in the gloom – in the camera's field of vision.