The blurred negatives of early photography provided ample opportunities for Spiritualism; the appearance of phantoms in the background of photographs, next to viewers or behind them, sparked the imagination, even if their credibility quickly faded.
The trend began with William H. Mumler (1832-1884), a New York photographer, whose accidental double exposure (the double use of a negative on two or more photographs) blended a photograph of himself with a deceased cousin. Mumler proceeded to produce multiple portraits where sitters were joined by a ghostly apparition. The enterprise foundered after the recognition of some ‘ghosts’ as in fact living, but not before Mumler had a successful run as a medium, tapping into the fascination with the esoteric, and the undiscovered properties of that eminently scientific portraiture, photography.
The Psychic Research Society Scrapbook is replete with Spirit photographs, but none which Society members obtained. The methods of Mumler in the 1860s were hardly credible by the 1930s, but did enjoy a media ‘afterlife’ in popular magazines.
The Scrapbook boasts a letter describing a particular experience. A New Zealand connection is found in the undated story of a ‘Man in Bristol’, a New Zealand expatriate, who has his photograph taken to send home. When he comes to collect the print, the assistant apologises, telling him it was a double exposure. Seeing himself next to ‘a stout woman in period dress’ in the queue to the shop, he assumes the assistant’s story, but several more ‘mistakes’ leads him to think otherwise, wondering if the woman in the queue was a ghost.
