[Dr.Gonzo☠]

for more threads like this one : http://www.documentingreality.com/fo...me-line-45276/


Spirit Photography was one of the first types of photography commissioned in the United States. Back in 1848, due to the photography of William Mulmer, people believed the images of the dead would appear next to them in a photograph. This was tied directly in with the Spiritualist movement, a religion that was around in the United States until the early 1900’s. Though we now know that all of the spirit photography created by Mulmer and other medium/spirit photographers of that time was a hoax, it is easy to see this early fascination of the possibility that images of the dead can be seen through the lens of a camera.

The Spiritualist movement started in 1848, when a woman claimed she and her sister could speak to a dead person through loud bangs in their home. This created a religion of people who believed in the after life, believed in speaking with the dead, and believed that psychics or mediums possessed the power to do so. Before the invention of photography little viable evidence was provided for this religion, however once photography was invented, the spiritualists embraced it. Not only because the means by which you develop film (in a dark room) was similar to the way they held their séance’s, but because photography was a new way that they could communicate with the dead, or so they felt.
illiam Mulmer was the first Spirit Photographer, but there were many soon to follow, as it was a profitable business for its time. A grieving person in hopes of contacting their relative would come into the studio and either sit with a medium next to them, or have the medium actually take the photograph. When the patron would return probably weeks later to pick up their prints, there would be, usually multiple faces which seemed to be floating in an ectoplasm or mist. The grief stricken person would usually identify at least one of the faces, and the medium would explain that the unknown faces are your spirit guides manifesting themselves, and susceptible to any belief, the grieving person would usually be happy with the results. Mulmer and others claimed that Spirit Photography was able to promote faith in the after life, to validate a mediums power, and mostly to counter the dismissive claims of the Spiritualists, as in provide evidence to back their beliefs. Mulmers most famous work was the portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln, in which a full figured Lincoln stands over her. He claims he had no idea who she was but that must be hard to believe considering she came to him within months of Lincoln’s death. Many photographers doubted Mulmer and came to watch him while he was in his darkroom, but no photographer ever came forward to say it was a hoax, no photographer ever caught Mulmer in the act, which is why when he was actually brought up on charges years later, they were dismissed.

By now your asking yourself, so how did they do it? How were they able to produce such seamless for their time, images of "apparitions?"
There were many different ways spirit photographers falsified their photos. One simple way was by the use of printed materials, magazines, other photographs, and to create a photo montage of them. This was discovered by F.W. Warwick who discovered that many spirit photographs when analyzed carefully contained lots of little dots to make up the image of the "spirit" and therefore that they came from printed materials.

Like many hoaxes, the story of spirit photography begins with an accident and a joke. In 1861 Mumler was a 29-year-old jewelry engraver living in Boston who enjoyed experimenting with the nascent science of photography. In his autobiography, The Personal Experiences of William H. Mumler in Spirit Photography , Mumler explained that one day, while developing a self-portrait, he noticed the mysterious form of a young girl on the negative. Mumler printed this curiosity and showed it around to friends, telling them it looked like a dead cousin. Being of “a jovial disposition, always ready for a joke,” Mumler said, he decided to jest with a spiritualist friend and pretend that his picture was a genuine impression from the world beyond. The friend fell for the gag. Soon cartes de visite of Mumler and his spirit “extra” circulated through the city, while news that the first spirit photograph had been taken appeared in The Banner of Light and other spiritualist newspapers. The spirit cousin in all likelihood was no more than the residue of an earlier negative made with the same plate, but it quickly ripened into a revelation, with Mumler, the mischievous jeweler, heralded as the oracle of the camera

[Dr.Gonzo☠]

Unidentified Photographer (U.S.)Woman with Daisies and Spirit circa 1875

This beautifully-executed image is remarkable in several ways. The posing is dramatic, making the composition compelling for more than the "special effect" of the ghost. From a technical standpoint, this is a highly unusual photograph. Tintypes were made directly on a painted metal plate, without the use of a negative, thus eliminating the possibility of most forms of darkroom manipulation. In addition, the image needed to be exposed and developed before the sensitive coating on the plate had time to dry out. For that reason, the woman who is being "haunted" must have been a knowing participant in the production of this picture. She would have been required to hold her position for an exposure lasting several seconds; part of the way through that exposure, the shrouded figure would have stepped out of the frame.

[Dr.Gonzo☠]

Robert Boursnell Couple with the Spirit of an Old Family Doctor who Died Around 1880
January 3, 1893

oursnell claimed to have made spirit photographs as early as 1853, when "extras" appeared on portraits he was taking. The photographer, it was said, did not recognize the supernormal nature of these interlopers and blamed their appearance on improper cleaning of the glass used in the negative. One day, in a fit of anger, he dashed the negative to the floor, damning both the glass and the people who appeared on it. The "extras" did not return until 1886, when Boursnell became acquainted with spiritualism.

Because spirit photographers and mediums were subject to prosecution in Great Britain, Boursnell handed a printed slip to his patrons which denied the "extras" were spirits--instead, it proclaimed, they were "shadows in the background." Critics charged that the same spirits appeared unchanged in different photographs, a sign of fakery. That revelation seems to have made no difference to Boursnell's supporters.

A hundred of Boursnell's spirit photographs were exhibited at the Psychological Society in London, and in 1903 the spiritualists of that city presented the photographer with a signed testimonial and a purse of gold.

The mount of this photograph is inscribed, "Taken by R. Boursnell in London Jan. 3, 1893. The spirit is an old family doctor who died around 1880."

[Dr.Gonzo☠]

A woman of dark mystery appeared at William Mumler’s Boston studio in 1871 to have her photograph taken. Attired in mourning, she gave the well-known photographer a false name and kept her faced concealed behind a black veil. “I requested her to be seated, went into my darkroom and coated a plate,” Mumler said four years later in his autobiography. “When I came out I found her seated with her veil still over her face. I asked if she intended to have her picture taken with her veil. She replied, ‘When you are ready, I will remove it.’ ” She was used to dealing with mediums and knew how to prevent their tricks. Her dead husband had appeared to her at a séance while she was in Boston , and now she wanted her picture with him. Mumler would later claim that he did not recognize her until the negative had been developed, which revealed Mary Todd Lincoln embraced by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

Shattered by her husband’s assassination and the loss of three of her four sons, dead before their 18th birthdays, Mary Lincoln cleaved to spiritualism, the belief that spirits of the dead can be contacted through mediums. She must have been satisfied, even consoled by the image, but to the objective eye, this photograph of Mary Lincoln is a touching, if sadly preposterous, fake. Nonetheless, it was Mumler’s most famous portrait.

Mumler began his career in Boston peddling his expertise as a “medium for taking spirit photographs,” part of the growing phenomenon of spiritual manifestations introduced in 1848 by the Fox sisters of Hydesville, N.Y. Their séances, with attendant spirit rappings and table tippings, caused a sensation that had spread across the country. Boston, combining traditions of intellectual dissent with enthusiasm for transcendental philosophies, became a quasi-capital for the movement, and was attracting spiritualists from all over to the mysterious world of the “higher plane.” Coming as it did with the new era of scientific technology—the camera and photography, as well as electricity and the telegraph—people were seeing and hearing the unexplainable.

America in the 1860s was a mournful country, immersed in civil war and disease. Death leeched into everything: the filthy water, the consumptive air, the blood-soaked battlefields of the South. Cameramen such as Mathew Brady were on the battlefields, too, recording sadness and loss in black and white. Heartbroken survivors, desperate for tokens of enduring life, clutched at any straw of hope. And a spirit photograph was that straw painted to a fine, bright shine.

William Mumler’s spirit photographs stand out as one of the grand hoaxes of the period. His misguided craft—the pretended ability to capture the shadows of the dead on photographic negatives—puts him in the same “Barnum’s circus” arena as the other tricksters, hucksters and confidence men of mid-19th-century America. Over nearly three decades, Mumler’s occult artistry made him wealthy and famous, and, as is the destiny of these affairs, it nearly destroyed him.


William H. Mumler Moses A. Dow, Editor of Waverley Magazine, with the Spirit of Mabel Warren. circa 1871.

[thissiteisfuckedup]

shit, maybe they need to start using old cameras to capture ghosts :P

[Dr.Gonzo☠]

Originally Posted by thissiteisfuckedup ↗

shit, maybe they need to start using old cameras to capture ghosts :P

Film is still the best way, it's hard to tamper with a negative. With this they used a arduous technique involving plates and so tampering would be quite difficult.

[güttsfükk]

this is a cool thread

[Hotstuff]

good post
think they are fake tho

[Dr.Gonzo☠]

William H. Mumler Unidentified Man with Two Spirits

[Dr.Gonzo☠]

In an 1872 advertisement offering spirit photographs for sale at thirty cents each or four for a dollar, Mumler lists "Last, but not least, three very wonderful pictures of Mrs. Fannie Conant, the celebrated medium for the Banner of Light."

Banner of Light, a weekly subtitled "An Exponent of the Spiritual Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century," had the largest circulation of any spiritualist paper in the world. For three dollars a year, subscribers would get "a first-class eight-page Family Newspaper containing forty columns of interesting and instructive reading." Features included a literary section offering occasional French and German works in translation, but specializing in "Original Novelettes of reformatory tendencies."

Banner of Light also featured reports of spiritual lectures by "able Trance and Normal speakers," original essays on spiritual, philosophical and scientific subjects, general interest current events, and a very special service: messages from the dead.

The Message Department was described as "a page of Spirit-Messages from the departed to their friends in earth-life, given through the mediumship of Mrs. J. H. Conant, providing direct spirit-intercourse between the Mundane and Super-Mundane Worlds."

Fanny Conant was prolific: the book Flashes of Light from the Spirit-World provided a 400-page compilation of questions answered by the spirits through her mediumship. The Biography of Mrs. Conant, subtitled Immortality Demonstrated Through Her Mediumship, was published in Boston by W. White in 1873.

Link to digital copy of Biography of Mrs. J.H. Conant, the world's medium of the nineteenth century