Adam Ellis says the image shows the ghost he has called "Dear David" sitting staring at him in the bedroom of his New York home.

His live updates about the alleged haunting have gone viral since he started posting details on Twitter of them in August.

He claims his home is being “haunted by the ghost of a dead child” who is “trying to kill him”.

Bizarrely, he says the child spectre first appeared to him in dreams before haunting him in the real world.

He claims after taking the snap, the ghost got out of the chair and came towards his bed.

It then climbed on the bed and chillingly began to whisper at him, he claims.

Mr Ellis said: “Last night I dreamed about him again. It was almost exactly the same as the first time I saw him.

“In the dream I saw him in a chair again. I don't have the green chair in my room anymore - this time it was a recliner I've had for years.

“He was staring right at me just like the first time.

“Again, I felt paralysed and could barely move. But this time something was different.

“David glared at me and I dreaded what I knew was coming - he was going to get out of the chair and come toward me, like before.

“I had to do something. I keep my phone next to me on the bed and I somehow managed to get a hold of it.

“I thought, ‘If David is going to kill me, maybe I can at least get evidence on my phone’. I started snapping pictures in the dark.

“Sure enough, he crawled down off the chair and began shuffling toward me. He moved slowly, like it was a struggle for him.

Mr Ellis said he continued to take photos of him despite being "terrified".

He said: "David limped closer toward me, never taking his eyes off me. Soon I was face to face with him.

“He started muttering something, too quiet for me to understand. I watched as his eyes rolled back in his head, until they were all white.

“I tried to writhe away from him but I could barely move. I stared in horror as he began crawling up onto my bed, still murmuring something.

“And that's when I woke up. Same as before. Broad daylight. No trace of David anywhere.”

He said he awoke and believed it was another bad dream, before going to aghast at what he saw.

Mr Ellis said: “I went into my phone to find a picture from a couple days ago and saw dozens of pitch black photos in my camera roll - all from last night.”

The strange images seem to have caught a child-like figure sitting in a chair staring back at the camera.

The figure in the pictures appears to resemble a sketch of the phantom that Adam said he had earlier drawn.

He claims it also looks similar to a statue he found in Japan which he photographed because he believed he could see David’s face in it.

Millions of people believe in ghosts across the globe, but, although many alleged pictures have been put forward as evidence of them, there has never been any conclusive proof.

Some ghost hunters say they will never be able to prove the existence of ghost apps that have emerged over the past few years.

The apps allow users to choose from an array of realistic-looking spooks and place them into their own photographs, meaning there is a huge amount of potentially hoaxed images now available online.

Some people have been exposed for passing off ghost app images as the real deal.