  We show that low-energy photon scattering from a body with radius R slightly
larger than its Schwarzschild radius r_s resembles black-hole absorption. This
absorption occurs via capture to one of the many long-lived, densely packed
resonances that populate the continuum. The lifetimes and density of these
meta-stable states tend to infinity in the limit r_s -> R. We determine the
energy averaged cross-section for particle capture into these resonances and
show that it is equal to the absorption cross-section for a Schwarzschild black
hole. Thus, a non-singular static metric may trap photons for arbitrarily long
times, making it appear completely `black' before the actual formation of a
black hole.
