Those covering the topic of spirit photography have typically acted like swift snobs, people who dismiss the topic as being unworthy of serious attention. This does not make sense, because there is a large body of evidence hinting that the topic is very much worthy of serious scholarship. When we get the "swift snob" treatment of this topic from hard-score skeptics, that may be predictable. What is rather less predictable is when people receptive to reports of paranormal phenomena act like swift snobs when discussing the topic of spirit photography, giving us a strong feeling they were thinking something like "I can't soil my hands by diving deeply into this topic."
I have a theory about such treatment. My theory is that a scholar discussing the paranormal and acting as if he is persuaded for the evidence for some phenomena may pick some types of spooky phenomena as a target for a hasty, contemptuous rejection, choosing anything he thinks is particularly likely to be scorned. The scholar may be thinking that he will thereby show his critical acumen, that he has the ability to reject those spooky reports worthy of rejection. But just as an analysis of a reported phenomenon should not be biased by someone's desire to show himself as a "good Darwinist" or a "good materialist" or a "good Catholic" or a "good spiritualist," an analysis of a reported phenomenon should not be biased by some desire of someone to show himself as a half-skeptic. The topic of spirit photography is one deserving some serious objective scholarship, not quickie forays by swift snobs eager to prove they are bona fide this or bona fide that.
The year 1869 saw the case of the trial of William F. Mumler on charges of faking "spirit photographs." Mumler would take photographs, typically of strangers. The photographs would often seem to show figures who never appeared during the photographic session. Often when presented with such a photograph, someone might say the figure matched or appeared to be some deceased person known to him. Nowadays such images can easily be produced by computer software, but in the 1860's there was no known way of producing such images without some elaborate artistic process that would take quite a while and be easily detectable by anyone watching the photographer. Witnesses would often say they watched Mumler at work, seeing no signs of anything special going on before the appearance of such enigmatic images.
It was a disgrace that Mumler was ever put on trial for fraud, as there never existed any prima facie evidence of a fraud. The trial quickly showed how weak the prosecution's case was. You can read here a newspaper account of the early testimony. The prosecution's main witness was Joseph A. Tooker, who witnessed no deceptive photography activity, and whose claim of fraud was based on this claim:
"They promised to give me a portrait or picture of a deceased relative, or of one nearest in sympathy with me: they did not do it. I was therefore deceived."
Getting a photo that does not match what was promised may be grounds for a refund, but is not a basis for a fraud arrest.
A judge found Mumler not guilty of the charges after a three-week trial. Examples of Mumler's photographs can be seen on this page. Below is one of his photos.
"The counsel for the defense have brought forward a number of witnesses who testify to the genuineness of spiritual photographs taken for them by Mr. Mumler. William P. Sneed, a photographer of Pougheepsie, testifies that Mumler succeeded in producing spiritual photographs at his gallery in Poughkeepsie, and he was unable to discover how it was done. Judge Edmonds, one of the most distinguished advocates of Spiritualism, deposed that he had two photographs taken by Mumler; the spirit form in one of them he thought he could recognize, but not the one in the other.... A large number of witnesses testified that they recognized the faces of departed friends (in some cases of those long dead) in the photographs taken for them by Mumler. The most striking case was that of a gentleman of Wall Street, whose deceased wife's features both he and his friends distinctly recognized in a photograph taken for him in this way. If there is a trick in Mr. Mumler's process it has certainly not been discovered as yet."
No one ever showed that Mumler was guilty of fraud. The treatment of him in the press and by skeptics is a classic example of groundless libel so often practiced by the mainstream when dealing with the paranormal. Many witnesses stated that they had observed Mumler's entire activity during the production of photos with mysterious figures, and that they had seen no evidence of fraud. For example, in the January 1, 1863 edition of The Spiritual Magazine, page 34, we read this:
"As I have been commissioned by Messrs. A . J. Davis and Co., you can rest assured that I was resolved, if permitted, to allow nothing to slip my utmost scrutiny. Having had ten years’ continual practice in this particular branch— that is, negative on glass, and positive on paper from negative— I felt competent to detect any form of deception. Having been permitted by Mr. Mumler every facility to investigate, I went through the whole of the operation of selecting, cleaning, preparing, coating, silvering, and putting into the shield, the glass upon which Mr. M. proposed that a spirit form and mine should be imparted, never taking off my eyes, and not allowing Mr. M. to touch the glass until it had gone through the whole of the operation. The result was, that there came upon the glass a picture of myself and, to my utter astonishment— having previously examined and scrutinized every crack and corner, plate-holder, camera, box, tube, the inside of the bath, &c.—another portrait. Having since continued, on several occasions, my investigations, as described above, and received even more perfect results than on the first trial, I have been obliged to endorse its legitimacy.
Respectfully yours, Wm. Guay.”
Guay then states that he recognized images of his father and mother on photos taken by Mumler, and that "it is impossible for Mr. Mumler to have procured any pictures of my wife or father.” On page 35 we also read this:
"Another photographic artist, Mr. H. Weston, of 31, Province street, Boston, writes that after making a full examination of the process, he found a spirit-figure on the negative. He also says that he cannot conceive of any process by which imitations could be made without his detection."
There follows in the same article quite a bit of similar testimony from other people. We have three hard-to-explain aspects in the Mumler and quite a few similar cases of this time:
(1) The appearance in mid-nineteenth-century photos of ghostly figures that could not have been produced at such a time except through some elaborate fakery process requiring very substantial time and work, such as manually painting on a photographic plate.
(2) The testimony of quite a few witnesses that they observed Mumler's operation when some mysterious figures appeared in his photos, and saw no evidence of any fraud, and no evidence of anything unusual.
(3) The mysterious appearance of figures in photographs of someone, with that person recognizing the figure as a deceased relative, even though Mumler had no knowledge of the appearance of such a deceased relative. Some examples are here. A French work giving some examples of Mumler's photos can be read in the 1890 book here. Some other examples of Mumler's photos can be seen on this page of an 1894 German book.
Below is an example of Mumler's work, with some background details given in the 1894 book here.
"As a fair specimen of spirit photographs obtained through Mumler, I submit one (see opposite) got by the Hon. Moses A. Dow, who was editor and proprietor of the Waverley Magazine, Boston. The portrait was fully recognised by Mr. Dow as that of an amiable and accomplished young lady who had been his assistant editor. Before sitting for the portrait Mr. Dow had a stance with a lady medium, and received from her a message, which purported to be from his late assistant editor, instructing him when to go to Mumler's for the picture, stating that she would appear with a wreath of lilies on her head, would stand by his side, would put her hand on his shoulder, and would bring him beautiful flowers. The photograph has lost some of its intensity ; but in the original negative the wreath of white lilies is very distinct, and the spirit is holding between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand an opening moss-rosebud, the exact counterpart of one which Mr. Dow placed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, while her body lay in the coffin just before the funeral."
Here is the photo as presented in the book:
The serious scholar of this topic should look for relevant first-class observational reports: reports written by witnesses who reported something impressive-looking after visiting a photographer or taking the photos themselves, particularly reports published soon after the reported events. The type of report that would be most convincing is one in which a person reports visiting a photographer, and then getting one or more "extras" in the photograph, who the visitor identifies with some relative that the photographer knew nothing about. There seem to be many cases of this type.
The account below signed by a doctor and his secretary appeared on page 292 in the July 4, 1873 edition of the publication Medium and Daybreak. The reference to "spirt that came" refers to unexpected figures appearing in photographs took of the visitor.
"While in London I visited the photograph rooms of F. A. Hudson 177 Palmer Terrace, Holloway Road, being a perfect stranger to that gentleman. I was accompanied by my secretary, Mr. T. R. Poulterer. We sat for pictures. The first spirit that came was Mr. Poulterer's mother ; the second, unknown ; the third, apparently only clouds: but an account of which will be given hereafter, as a prophecy has been made in regard to this picture ; the fourth was distinctly recognised by both Mr. Poulterer and myself as the spirit of my former partner, E L. Hamilton, M.D. So distinct was the picture, that we recognised it from the negative. We would recommend Mr. Hudson to those investigating the spiritual philosophy."
J. Wm. Van Namee MD
T. R. Poulterer, Sec."
The report above is hard-to-explain through any hypothesis of fraud, as the photographer apparently did not know the two men. Rodger I. Anderson's Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules notes that Hudson "was never caught in any overt act of deception," although the authenticity of his photos was widely debated by those believing in other paranormal phenomena. A book on Hudson and his photos is the one here.
William Howitt was a respected scholar, who was the author of a very long two-volume history of reports of the supernatural, which can be read here and here. In the October 1872 edition of The Spiritual Magazine, pages 477 to 478, we have an account by William Howitt of making an unannounced visit to photographer Frederick Hudson, who had reported getting anomalous figures in some of his photos. This is the same F. A. Hudson referred to in the account above. Howitt did not tell his name. Howitt claims to have got from this visit "two photographs, perfect and unmistakable, of sons of mine, who passed into the spirit-world years ago." Two other people claimed the same identification after seeing the results. Howitt says that there was no existing image of one of the sons. The topic of Hudson's photos is dealt with in the book here, which has some interesting examples.
On the 43rd page of the October 1873 edition of The Spiritual Magazine (with a listed page number of 475), we have this account:
" 4, Worcester Lawn, Clifton, Bristol, 44 August 5th, 1873.
Dear Sir,— As I promised, I write to let you know that the spirit-figure in my photograph has been recognised as a likeness of my mother, who died 44 years ago, when I was born, and as there was no picture of her of any kind, I was unable to trace any resemblance in the photograph. I sent the latter however to her brother, simply asking him to let me know if he recognised in the figure any resemblance to any of my relations who have died, and he has written to say that he recognises in it the likeness of my mother. Yours faithfully, G . T h o m s o n .
P .S.— I should perhaps add that I do not think my uncle knows anything about Spiritualism or spirit-photographs, as he resides in a remote part of Scotland; I infer this too from his remarking 'but I cannot understand how this has been done.' "
John Traill Taylor was a mainstream figure who was very long the editor of the British Journal of Photography. Taylor published a paper in the March 17, 1893 edition of the British Journal of Photography, page 107, a paper you can read here. The paper is "required reading" for anyone seriously studying this topic. The paper starts out with remarks like I make at the beginning of this post:
"The presence of smoke maybe considered as implying the existence of flame. Spirit photography, so called, has of late been asserting its existence in such a manner and to such an extent as to warrant competent men making an investigation, conducted under stringent test conditions, into the circumstances under which such photographs are produced, and exposing the fraud should it prove to be such, instead of pooh-poohing it as insensate because we do not understand how it can he otherwise — a position that scarcely commends itself as intelligent or philosophical."
Eventually in the paper Taylor discusses how he went about testing a medium who some claimed to be associated with the production of spirit photographs. The "Mr. D." he refers to is David Duguid, and is identified as such in a book Taylor later wrote. Taylor says this:
"For several years I have experienced a strong desire to ascertain by personal investigation the amount of truth in the ever-recurring allegation that figures other than those visually present in the room appeared on a sensitive [photographic] plate. The difficulty was to get hold of a suitable person known as a sensitive or 'medium.' What a medium is, or how physically or mentally constituted to be different from other mortals, I am unable to say. He or she may not be a photographer, but must be present on each occasion of trial. Some may be mediums without their being aware of it. Like the chemical principle known as catalysis they merely act by their presence. Such a one is Mr. D. of Ghugovv, in whose presence psychic photographs have long been alleged to be obtained. He was lately in London on a visit, and a mutual friend got him to consent to extend his stay in order that I might try to get a psychic photograph under test conditions. To this he willingly agreed. My conditions were exceedingly simple, were courteously expressed to the host and entirely acquiesced in. They were, that I for the nonce would assume them all to be tricksters, and, to guard against fraud, should use my own camera and unopened packages of dry plate purchased from dealers of repute, and that I should be excused from allowing a plate to go out of my own hand till after development, unless I felt otherwise disposed; but that, as I was to treat them as under suspicion, so must they treat me, and that every act I performed must be in presence of two witnesses, nay, that I would set a watch upon my own camera in the guise of a duplicate one of the same focus — in other words, I would use a binocular stereoscopic camera and dictate all the conditions of operation. All this I was told was what they very strongly wished me to do, as they desired to know the truth and that only. There were present, during one or other of the evenings when the trials were made, representatives of various schools of thought, including a clergyman of the Church of England ; a practitioner of the healing art who is a fellow of two learned societies ; a gentleman who graduated in the Hall of Science in the days of the late Charles Bradlaugh ; some two extremely hard-headed Glasgow merchants, gentlemen of commercial eminence and probity ; our host, his wife the medium, and myself. Dr. G. was the first sitter, and, for a reason known to myself, I used a monocular camera. I myself took the plate out of a packet just previously ripped up under the surveillance of my two detectives. I placed the slide in my pocket, and exposed it by magnesium ribbon which I held in my own hand, keeping one eye, as it were, on the sitter and the other on the camera. There was no background. I myself took the plate from the dark slide, and, under the eyes of the two detectives, placed it in the developing dish."
Immediately after the description of rigorous controlled conditions, Taylor then discusses how the developed photo contained a female figure, one that was not present when the photo was taken:
"Between the camera and the sitter a female figure was developed, rather in a more pronounced form than that of the sitter. The lens was a portrait one of short focus, the figure being somewhat in front of the sitter was proportionately larger in dimensions. I submit this picture. It is, as you see a lady. I do not recognise her or any of the other figures I obtained as like any one I know, and from my point of view, that of a mere investigator and experimentalist, not caring whether the psychic subject were embodied or disembodied. Many experiments of like nature followed ; on some plates were abnormal appearances, on others none."
Taylor then reports getting a variety of "psychic extras" in the photos he took, mysterious forms that should not have been there:
"The psychic figures behaved badly. Some were in focus, others not so; some were lighted from the right, while the sitter was so from the left ; some were comely, as the dame I shall show on the screen, others not so ; some monopolised the major portion of the plate, quite obliterating the material sitters ; others were as if an atrociously badly vignetted portrait, or one cut oval out of a photograph by a can-opener, or equally badly clipped out, were held up behind the sitter. But here is the point : not one of these figures which came out so strongly in the negative was visible in any form or shape to me during the time of exposure in the camera, and I vouch in the strongest manner for the fact that no one whatever had an opportunity of tampering with any plate anterior to its being placed in the dark slide or immediately preceding development. Pictorially they are vile, but how came they there ?"
The paper led to a book that included the paper by Taylor, along with comments by those he presented the paper to at a meeting, comments about the paper in the press, and some essays by other authors ( the book "The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography. With Twelve Illustrations"). The book includes the paper quoted from above, and the photo of the female figure. The photo is shown below, from page 29 of the book. This is the exact photo referred to by Taylor above when he states this: "Between the camera and the sitter a female figure was developed, rather in a more pronounced form than that of the sitter."
We have here a photo that should be included on any list of the top ten most convincing ghost photos or spirit photos ever taken, and also deserves to be on any list of the top ten photos ever taken of the paranormal. The pedigree of the photo is impeccable, and as evidence what we have in the photo above seems "good as gold." The photographer is a mainstream figure (John Traill Taylor, a long-time editor of the British Journal of Photography); and he has described how the photo was produced by himself under conditions which should have made fraud impossible. The lady figure in the photo was not present when the photo was taken, and was not recognized by anyone involved in the taking of the photo.
Page 41 of a book gives the same photo, but in a sepia version in which the figure appears with slightly greater resolution. We can see the eyes of the ghostly woman clearly open, causing the figure to have a somewhat warmer appearance. Page 43 of the book has a photo seeming to show a ghostly figure of stunning female beauty.
The striking photo below appears on page 120 of "Photographing the Invisible" by James Coates. The photo is of John Dewar, who recognized the figure on the right as being his deceased sister.
Again, we have a photo in which there appears a figure the photographer should have known nothing about, and also an examination of the photographic process that should have ruled out fraud. On page 264 of Photographing the Invisible by James Coates, PhD, we have a photo that was taken in 1909 when only the woman was present. The figure on the photo was recognized by the woman and a friend as the face of the woman's deceased son. The woman says no photo was ever taken of the son while he was alive. The book gives us quite a few similar photos.
It is clear from the above that a serious "deep dive" into the topic of spirit photography reveals a very weighty line of evidence worthy of very serious consideration, not at all something that should be lightly dismissed by glib putdowns. The skeptic tries to explain away all the reports of spirit photographs with a simple idea of "there were trickster frauds, and they fooled people." Such an idea is incapable of explaining the reports. No credible sleight-of-hand can explain frequent nineteenth century reports of someone going to a photographer he has never met, and getting a photograph of himself which also included another image matching those of his dead relative, whose appearance was unknown to the photographer. Nor can any conceivable sleight-of-hand theory credibly explain the appearance of such images on photographic plates when the whole photographic process was carefully monitored by someone looking for fraud, someone bringing his own blank photographic plates (as was so often reported), someone who found nothing unusual occurring.
Below is Plate 1 from the beginning of Helene C. Lambert's very interesting book "A General Survey of Psychical Phenomena," which you can read here. We have some text at the bottom of the photo that seems to describe a photographic situation in which fraud was not possible, with the medium never touching the photographic plates. The anomalous figure was identified as the late Letty Hyde, by her relatives.
There is one explanation that could explain the reports without resorting to the paranormal: a conspiracy theory explanation. A skeptic could claim that the reports of experiences with spirit photography were mainly lies, and that there was some big conspiracy involving the photographers and the people who came to get the photographs, a conspiracy to spread false tales causing people to believe that paranormal "extras" were appearing in photographs. The problem with advancing such a story is that no one ever confessed to being involved in such a big conspiracy. Moreover, being someone who nowadays scorns certain type of people as being "conspiracy theorists," the skeptic is putting himself in a very bad spot if he resorts to becoming a conspiracy theorist himself.
Of some relevance to this topic is the fact that in our century there have gradually been published very many photos seemingly inexplicable under materialist theories, with some dramatic examples you can view in the photos here, the 400+ photos here, the 800+ photos here, the thousands of photos here and the retrospective post here. The continued occurrence of such photographic anomalies should make us all the more inclined to seriously study inexplicable-seeming photos appearing many decades ago.
In 2019 I published a video of my camera's viewfinder as I was photographing mysterious "orb faces" appearing as I photographed drops of clean, pure water falling against a black background. The video is shown below. In the video, you can clearly see the face-like details appear many times in the camera's viewfinder as I was photographing nothing but ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background. Similar videos of my camera's viewfinder during photography of the inexplicable can be seen in my posts here.
In the video below, you can watch my camera viewfinder as I photographed some photos like the ones above.
You can use this link if you prefer to watch the video in a separate tab.
