Spiritual photography

The first "ghosts" in the photographs were obtained by chance and were the result of long exposures necessary in connection with the peculiarities of chemical processes that were used at the dawn of the development of photographic equipment. If the object appeared for a short time in front of the lens (or moved during the exposure), then it remained in the photo in the form of a blurry, transparent, "ghostly" figure. The portrait of one of the sons of Queen Victoria , Prince Arthur , shot by the court photographer Roger Fenton in 1854, clearly illustrates this effect. To the right of the young prince in the photo you can see the distinctly present "ghost". In fact, this is the figure of his maid, who intervened in the frame, as she was worried that the prince might fall from the low pedestal on which he posed ^[2] .

This effect at that time was demonstrated openly as evidence of the limitless possibilities of photography. In the late 1850s, the London stereoscopic company released a series of stereo cards called Ghosts in a Stereoscope. And again, it was not a demonstration of the real fact of communicating with ghosts, but a demonstration of the possibilities of editing during photography. The photographs were created solely as an artistic experiment or joke, and no one tried to present them as genuine photographs of ghosts. Such photographs were relatively easy to obtain, and even detailed instructions appeared on how to make them, such as, for example, Walter Woodbury’s book "Photographic Amusements" (1896). The author claimed that sometimes after shooting on a glass negative the image from the last photo shoot remained. Glass plates, which were photographic material of the time, were expensive, so unnecessary negatives were cleaned, and the plate was reused. In this case, sometimes the details of the previous shooting, which were layered on the image during the new exposure, remained on the negative ^[3] .

A photograph close to spiritualistic photographs was created by the French photographer Eugene Thibault in 1863. However, it is believed that it is humorous in nature and is an advertisement for the performance of the French illusionist Henri Robin ^[4] .

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  London stereoscopic company. Photo from the series of stereo cards “Ghosts in a Stereoscope”, 1850

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  Roger Fenton. Prince Arthur, 1854

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  Eugene Thibault. Advertising of the show of the French illusionist Henri Robin, 1863

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  Illustration for Walter Woodbury 's Photographic Amusements , 1896

Roland Barth tried to substantiate interest in the recently invented photographs based on its correlation with the peculiarities of human thinking in the second half of the XIX century. He wrote: “Historically, Photography was related to the“ crisis of death ”dating back to the second half of the 19th century, and I would prefer that instead of relentlessly incorporating the invention, Photographs in the social and economic context would better ask about the anthropological connection of Death and a new type of image” ^[5] . One of the largest photographers of this time, Nadar believed that photography gave man the power of a deity and became a means of finding the divine beyond the form of flesh. One of the characteristic beliefs of photographers of the XIX century was the ability to invade the realm of the spirit ^[1] .

Spiritual photography originated in the United States, but was most widespread in Britain in the 1870s - 1920s. Significantly less was its distribution in continental Europe. In the United States and France, there were high-profile trials against photographers who created similar pictures, ending with their exposure ^[6] .

The appearance of spiritualistic photographs in the USA

The date of the appearance of spiritualistic photographs is officially considered to be 1861, when the American William G. Mumler , a photographer from Boston , discovered that the image of his long-dead cousin appeared on his photograph. Photographic methods were still in their infancy at this time. Photography was a relatively young art when Mumler announced that he was able to capture a ghost on film. Mumler worked as an engraver in a jewelry company, was not a professional photographer, he was engaged in photography in the studio of his friend. His method was “that he first focused the lens on an empty chair, removed the lens cap, and then quickly took a seat by the chair and stood there until the exposure worked.” In the photo was a girl sitting in an armchair, it and part of the table shone through hands and body. The figure was dissolved in a haze ^[7] .

Mumler's most famous photograph is a photograph of the widow of President Abraham Lincoln - Mary Todd Lincoln with a ghost of her husband. When it was discovered that some of Mumler’s most famous photographs contained ghosts resembling people who were still alive, even the most gullible customers became suspicious. The photographer’s trick was to use double exposure , an technique unheard of in those days, which allowed you to put faces from other pictures on photographs owned by his clients. The exposure caused a wave of public outrage, in 1868 he was deported to New York . With the approval of the mayor of New York, he was arrested. After a lengthy trial, Mumler was released, he later died in poverty in 1884, leaving the memoirs “Personal experiences of William G. Mumler in photographing spirits” ^[8] .

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  William G. Mumler. Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, circa 1869

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  William G. Mumler. John Glover with the ghost of an old lady

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  William G. Mumler. Mrs. French with a ghost baby

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  William G. Mumler. Unknown with two ghosts

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  William G. Mumler. Moses A. Dow and the ghost of his assistant

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  William G. Mumler. Fanny Conan and the ghost of her brother

Spiritual Photos in Victorian England

In 1851, the Englishman Richard Bursnel claimed to have photographed ghosts, but not one of his earlier photographs was preserved, and those taken much later did not cause much interest. In 1856, optician Thomas Slater in London held a session with Lord Brugham and the utopian socialist Robert Owen , who, in his declining years, became interested in spiritualism. A message from the world of spirits said that Slater was destined to engage in spiritual photography. Owen said that after his death, his portrait will appear in the photograph. In 1872, Slater practiced photography; he unexpectedly received on the back of a photographic plate with a portrait of his sister the face of Robert Owen (less clear than the photograph itself) and Lord Brugham ^[9] . Slater showed them to Alfred Russell Wallace , who then recalled: “Other photographs were taken that could not always identify the faces of the“ spirits ”depicted on the plates, but the human figures that appeared on the plates were clearly distinguishable. In one case, a ghost figure appeared on a plate on which Slater posed for himself, sitting in an armchair ... ” ^[7]

The credible image of a ghost in England, considered the first in the tradition of the Spiritists themselves, was received by the photographer Frederick Hudson in 1872. He was about sixty years old in March 1872. Assisted, and sometimes posed for him, Miss Georgiana Houghton, who was a medium and an artist (a major art exhibition in the UK was dedicated to her work in this capacity in 2016). She left a description of this event in the book “Chronicles of Photography of Spiritual Creatures and Appearances Unseen by the Material Eye” (1882) ^{[10] [11]} .

The client told about his visit to the medium photographer Hudson (March 1872):

“I posed three times and always chose the pose myself. Each time an additional figure appeared on the negative next to me. The first was a male figure with a short sword, the second figure fit in a full-length photograph and stood about a few feet behind me, slightly behind, holding a bouquet of flowers. The third time, as soon as the plate was placed in the camera and I was comfortably seated in an armchair, I mentally asked that the figure stand at a very close distance from me. On the third disc appeared an image of a female figure standing very close in front of me so that the folds of her clothes covered the lower part of my body. I saw how all three plates appeared and in each case an additional figure began to emerge at the moment when the developer was poured, at the same time my portrait remained invisible for almost twenty seconds after the appearance of vague outlines of the spirit. I could not recognize a single figure on the negatives, but when I received the developed pictures, then at first glance I correctly recognized the image of my mother on the third of them. He accurately reproduced her appearance and facial expression, but differed from all her intravital portraits: it was an image of a pensive woman, somewhat idealized, but one that I will never confuse with anything. ”

- Arthur Conan Doyle. The History of Spiritism ^[12]

From 1861 until 1926, starting with Mumler and ending with William Hope, up to thirty mediums claimed to be able to capture ghosts (sometimes called “ghost twins”) ^[7] .

F.M. Parkes in 1872 conducted an experiment on photographing perfumes with his friend Mr. Reeves, the owner of the diner. Parks was thirty-nine at the time. At first, only individual light spots appeared on the plates, but three months later an image of a certain “ghost” was obtained. Often they were posed by Dr. Sexton and Dr. Clark from Edinburgh . For a thorough examination, Dr. Bauman from Glasgow , who was an experienced photographer, was invited. The medium did not take remuneration for its services. He took 110 photographs of ghosts from April 1872 to the 1920s (with some interruptions). Each image of a ghost had its own character and personality . A significant number of photographs were identified by participants in spiritualistic sessions ^[13] .

French photographer Edouard Isidore Buguet visited London in June 1874 and demonstrated his achievements in this area. During the exposure of the record, he was in a partial trance . The images he received were not of high quality and were not distinct, unlike those that were obtained by other mediums. Many of his spiritualistic portraits have been identified. Bugue received portraits of doubles of the people present at the session, as well as his living friends who were in other places. William Stanton Moses , who was at that time in a state of trance in London, turned out to be on a photographic plate in Paris, where a certain benevolent man in the street posed in front of the camera. In April 1875, Bugue was arrested and convicted of producing fake perfume photographs. He admitted that all the results were obtained by him through fraud. He was sentenced to a fine of 500 francs and a year in prison. However, some of his friends began to claim that he was a weak-minded person who, instead of fighting for his innocence, made a false admission of guilt ^[14] . After the trial, Bugue became an “anti-spiritual” photographer, showing tricks, editing techniques and tricks that achieve the effect of a ghost. In one of these photographs, the “ghost” holds a table with the inscription: “Better than Mesmer and Cagliostro . Ghosts to choose from. Success guaranteed. Invisible manipulations under the nose of the client. Tricks of mediums ” ^[4] .

Richard Bursnel (1832-1909) was a partner of a professional photographer from Fleet Street and received on the records “traces of spiritual presence” in the form of hands and faces even in 1851. The partner accused him of not processing the plates well (this was the time the wet-colloidal process appeared in the photograph). About forty years passed before he again began to receive light spots on the plates, and then the figures of "ghosts" in his photographs. At first they were fuzzy, but later managed to get portraits that were identified. In 1903, he was awarded an award sheet signed by a hundred well-known London spirits, as well as a large sum of money. An exhibition of 300 photographs of the ghosts of Bursnel was held at the premises of the Psychological Society ^[15] .

Edward Wiley (1848-1911) was born in Calcutta , his father was a military adviser to the government of India . Wiley himself received the rank of captain during the Maori War . The regular appearance of bright spots on the negatives annoyed him. He did not hear about photographing perfumes until one of the clients told him about such cases. Wiley decided to quit his business and devote himself to photographing perfumes. He was accused of fraud, and it shocked him so much that he temporarily refused such attempts, although after a while he returned to work as a photomedium ^[16] .

David Dugid (1832-1907) - another medium photographer - wrote:

“Some of them [otherworldly objects, ghosts] were sharp, some not; some were lit on the right, although the posing was lit on the left ... some went beyond the size of the plate, representing distorted images of real people; others looked like ordinary people on a poor-quality portrait decorated with vignettes . Sometimes it seemed that the piece of the photograph where the image of the “ghost” was located was cut out with a can opener (an oval with uneven edges) and crookedly attached to the portrait of the model itself. But one thing is obvious: I did not see any of those figures that were so clearly visible on the negatives, until the time of manifestation expired. I can seriously vouch for the fact that no one had any access to any of these records and could neither place anything on its photosensitive side nor influence the development process. From the point of view of technology, the images were of poor quality, but how did they appear there? ”

- Arthur Conan Doyle. The History of Spiritism ^[16]

Despite such a noticeable interest, few have heard of such photographs outside of spiritualist circles. However, some fairly impressive photographs appeared in the press, and some of them have remained inexplicable since. Photograph of Lord Combermer was made in 1891 (and first published in 1895) by Sibella Corbet in Cheshire, England. She decided to take a photo of a large library, the exposition lasted about an hour, which she noted in her diary. Although no one was in the room when the photograph was taken, it showed a faint image of a man sitting on one of the chairs. The photo was shown to a relative of Lord Combermer, who established that it bears a family resemblance to the appearance of the Lords. The first Lord Combermer was the commander of the British cavalry in the early 1800s, showed himself in several military campaigns, including in the battles of Salamanca and Bhartpur. In 1817, he became governor of Barbados . He died in 1865. The second lord, the Viscount Combermer, died in an accident just five days before. While Sibella Corbet was taking a photograph, Lord Combermer was buried more than four kilometers from the mansion. It is believed that during this time a certain servant could come into the room and for some time sat in an armchair, creating a transparent image on the negative. This version was unanimously refuted by the servants, who testified that they all participated in the funeral. The photograph has not received an explanation since ^[17] .

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  Georgiana Houghton. Photo of a ghost with the spiritualist Alexander Calder, 1882

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  Georgiana Houghton. The spiritualist photographer Stanton Moses, 1882

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  Georgiana Houghton. Spiritual Photography with Mrs. Everitt and W.P. Adhead, 1882

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  HA Reid. Photo of Edward Wiley with ghosts, 1897

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  Henry Ridgeley Evans . Photograph of a ghost (revealing), 1897

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  Henry Ridgeley Evans . Spiritual photography (revealing), 1897

Late photos of ghosts

During the reign of King Edward VII (1901-1910) and George V (1910-1936), the development of spiritualistic photography was mainly associated with the spiritualistic circle organized in the English city of Crewe ( Cheshire ) by William Hope and Mrs. Buxton, the inhabitants of this city. The circle was formed in 1905, initially it included six people involved in photographs of ghosts. Hope took a photograph of a young worker against a brick wall. After the plate appeared, the figure of a woman standing next to him appeared on it, and a brick wall shone through it. The young man allegedly recognized her as his sister, who died several years ago. For a long time, Hope destroyed negatives with images of spirits, but the archdeacon Thomas Collie, who met him, advised him to keep them. In one case described by Dr. Henslow, an image of a rare Greek manuscript stored in the British Museum appeared on Hope’s plate, albeit with some changes in the text, which supposedly indicated that it was not an exact copy of the manuscript and therefore must be genuine ^{[18 ] [19]} . In 1922, Hope moved to London, where he began to work as a medium. The most famous study took place in 1922 when the Society for Psychical Research sent Harry Price to check the accuracy of the results of the Crew Circle. Price has gathered evidence that Hope forged photographs of ghosts and published the results of his research. Arthur Conan Doyle defended Hope ^[9] .

Another famous spiritualist photographer of this time is the Englishwoman Emma Dean. She took her first spiritual picture in 1920. She carried photographic plates with her for several days before taking photographs, magnetizing them. It has been suggested that in this case, images of otherworldly objects may have fallen into negative even before the shooting was made. The 1920s saw the last surge of interest in spiritual photography. Since the late 1920s, it has lost the confidence of public opinion ^[20] .

In the second half of the 1960s, interest in spiritual photography began to grow, both from the side of parapsychology and from the side of historians. In the 70s, similar experiments with photographing otherworldly objects were carried out by Gledis Hyter. In her photographs, either images of objects that were missing in front of the lens appeared , or objects located in front of the camera in reality were not captured in the photographs. In 1979, when photographing her daughter in a car that drove up to her house, she received a blonde figure in the back seat of a car, although no one was there. For a short time, her message returned interest in such images and caused a lively discussion in the media ^[21] .

During the second half of the 19th century, books on spiritual photography were published, the authors of which tried to justify the possibility of such photographs, among them: “Personal experiences of William G. Mumler in photographing spirits”, “Chronicles of photography of spiritual beings and phenomena invisible to the material eye” by George Houghton . The spiritualist photographer William Stainton Moses also wrote a book on spiritualistic photography. A large article, A Brief History of Spiritual Photography, was published by the spiritualist James Johnson Morse in the journal Two Worlds in 1915 ^{[22] [23] [24]} .

The interest in transmitting images from a distance was shown by the French photographer Nadar. He told in his memoirs (the name “Gazebon Revenge” was attached to his story) that at the dawn of the photograph, the owner of a provincial theater wrote him a letter asking him to send him his own portrait. The author of the letter did not understand that this required his presence. Nadar did not reply to this letter. Many years later, a certain man told Nadar about experiments with photography at a distance. Unknown handed him a card on which the features of a male face suddenly appeared. “I never saw this man, but I immediately understood who was talking about: Monsieur Gasebon was looking at me from the photograph shown,” Nadar concluded his story ^[5] .

Attempts were made experimentally to establish the authenticity and the possibility of obtaining such photographs. In the 1890s, photographer John Trail Taylor, editor of The British Journal of Photography, analyzed the methods by which photographs of ghosts are created. He approached this phenomenon as a skeptic , summing up the scientific basis for analysis. Taylor took pictures in the laboratory using a stereoscopic camera. He noted that when using a stereoscopic camera all objects were voluminous, and the image of the ghost was two-dimensional. This proved that it entered the photographic plate directly, and not through the lens. From the point of view of Arthur Conan Doyle, who was actively interested in his experiments and the very problem of the possibility of spiritualistic photography, this was a weighty argument in favor of the authenticity of photography ^[25] .

In 1909, the Daily Mail suggested sending ghosts photos to the editor. An entire Commission was created, consisting of reputable experts. The commission consisted of three skeptics: R. Child-Bailey, F.J. Mortimer and E. Senger-Shepherd and three supporters of spiritualistic photography: Alfred Percy Sinnett (who himself presented his photographs to the Commission), E. R. Sirkold-Skills and Robert King. The Commission's report was published in the free daily newspaper London Lite ^[26] . The results of her activities were disappointing:

• I. None of the photographs submitted to the editorial staff were taken under conditions that excluded fraud .
• II. The photographs presented by Mr. Sinnett were clearly the result of a fake.
• III. Other photographs met the conditions put forward by the editors, but no traces of the object of the other world were found in them. Only image defects were present due to careless manipulations, which were mistaken by their creators for supernatural results ... ^[27] .

In Japan, the study of spiritualistic photography in the 1910s was engaged in psychology professor Tomokichi Fukurai . He conducted experiments in order to find out whether the medium is capable of leaving a particular image on the plates of his own free will. In one experiment, a medium, at the request of a professor, mentally captured one half of an arbitrarily selected character on one photographic plate, and the missing part on the other ^[20] .

Widely presented were openly revealing articles. An active fighter against photo media was Dmitry Mendeleev ^[28] . In the Russian magazine "Nature and People" in 1910 a revelatory essay by E. Finsky was published, which explains the technique of making a ghost photo, while he shares the appearance of the ghost as a plate defect (or a coincidence) and deliberate fraud of the public by scammers ^[29] . At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries, the exposing tradition was continued by Ronald Piersel in his book The Table-Rappers (1972) ^[30] .

One of the staunch supporters of the idea of ​​photographing ghosts was Arthur Conan Doyle (he even opened in 1925 a small museum dedicated to the shooting of spirits ^[31] ), which in 1922 published the work "Facts in favor of spiritualistic photography." Arthur Conan-Doyle also devoted chapter XIX to this issue (in some publications it is referred to as Chapter V in Volume II) in the book The History of Spiritism , which was published in 1926. In it he wrote:

“We cannot deny, however, that many fraudsters are struggling in this area. However, and we recognize this publicly, many of the results obtained by mediums are absolutely reliable. The author believes that many more discoveries can occur in this field of science, and we must be ready to accept and understand everything, no matter what happens. ”

- Arthur Conan Doyle. The History of Spiritism ^[9]

In 1965, the English Society for Psychical Research published S. Edmunds' book “Spiritual Photography”, in which the author rejects the possibility of the authenticity of any such photographs; The criticism of William Hope and Emma Dean was particularly harsh ^[20] .

The history of spiritual photography was attempted to be recreated and generalized already in our time by Karen Hisley in her work “The History of Spiritual Photography” ^[27] . A similar work in modern Russia was done by Igor Vinokurov in the book “Invisible Phantoms” ^[32] .

Associate Professor of St. Petersburg University Ekaterina Vasilyeva believes that the ability of the camera to create an image in the 19th century was considered irrational, so photography was part of spiritualistic sessions. Photographic spiritualism reflected the idea of ​​the soul as a light form, linking photography with the extensive religious tradition of light, which blurred the line between radiance and religious illumination (therefore, the church was suspicious of photography). The attempts of the 19th century to capture ghosts were also associated with a belief in the ability of photography to detect the invisible in chemistry , physics and optics , as well as in the hidden foundations of human nature (in the soul and character of a person). In the discoveries of V.K. Roentgen and M. Curie-Sklodowska, it was a question of radiation that is invisible to the eye, but leaves an imprint of its effect on a photosensitive plate. Photographers did not see a big difference between radiation and any other manifestation of the invisible, believing that if a photograph captures an invisible glow, then it is subject to the intangible. Photography was considered a way to detect both invisible rays to the human eye and mysterious intangible substances ^[1] .

• Reginald Southey and the skeletons , 1857 photograph of Lewis Carroll
• Victorian headless portrait
• Thought industry

• Vasilieva E. Photography and the phenomenology of the tragic: the idea of ​​the due and the figure of responsibility // Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University. Series 15: Compilation. - 2015. - Issue. 1 . - S. 26-52 .
• Vinokurov, Igor. Invisible phantoms. - M: Olma-Press, 2006 .-- 320 p. - ISBN 5-94850-394-1 .
• Conan Doyle, Arthur. Chapter XIX. Photos of Spirits // History of Spiritism. The study of the spiritual world. - M: Eksmo, 2015 .-- 789 p. - ISBN 978-5-699-82790-9 .
• Harney, Anne; MacCuen, Leigh. A Brief History of Spirit Photography . Beiond The Grave. Date of treatment February 10, 2017.