Spirit Photography

a selection of works from a Brooklyn private collection.

Spirit photography is a type of photography whose primary attempt is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities,

especially in ghost hunting and has a strong history dating back to the late 19th century.

Spirit photography was first used by William H. Mumler in the 1860s.  Mumler discovered the technique by accident, after he saw a second person in a photograph he took of himself, which he found was actually a double exposure. Seeing there was a market for it, Mumler started working as a medium, taking people's pictures and doctoring the negatives to add lost loved ones into them (mostly using other photographs as basis). Mumler's fraud was discovered after he put identifiable living Boston residents in the photos as spirits.

One of the later spirit photographers was William Hope (1863–1933). The psychical researcher Harry Price revealed that the photographs of Hope were frauds. Price secretly marked Hope's photographic plates, and provided him with a packet of additional plates that had been covertly etched with the brand image of the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd. in the knowledge that the logo would be transferred to any images created with them. Unaware that Price had tampered with his supplies, Hope then attempted to produce a number of Spirit photographs. Although Hope produced several images of spirits, none of his materials contained the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd logo, or the marks that Price had put on Hope's original equipment, showing that he had exchanged prepared materials containing fake spirit images for the provided materials.

Hope still retained a noted following from spiritualists such as Charles Lakeman Tweedale author of Man's Survival After Death (1920) as well as the author and spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle, who refused to accept any evidence that Hope was a fraud and went to great lengths to clear his name, including writing a book supporting spirit photography, The Case for Spirit Photography (1922). In his book Fifty Years of Psychical Research, Price listed many spirit photographers who had been exposed as frauds. Price who had spent most of his life studying psychical phenomena wrote that "There is no good evidence that a spirit photograph has ever been produced which is also the view of most psychical researchers. *

William Hope, Group of 3 spirit photo, photo postcards (one has writing on verso)

edition of 3, London UK c. 1920's images 3 1/2 inches each

ROBERT BOURSNELL SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHER

GHOST APPARITION circa 1900 5.25" x 3.75"

JACK EDWARDS Spirit photo of congregation inside the Chapel at Camp Silver Belle with floating apparitions.

c, 1940's. 5 x 4 inches