The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer by Louis Kaplan

And eventually, some of them noticed that several spirits were actually people still living.īy 1869, the police were on the case and claimed Mumler was swindling people out of their money.

Barnum, always one to enjoy a good humbug, was intrigued as well and displayed several Mumler photographs in his American Museum.īut with growing success came more skeptics. Over the years, he took thousands of photographs, including one of Mary Todd Lincoln showing the assassinated president behind her. The great loss of life during the Civil War translated to more business from grieving family members wishing to make contact with deceased loved ones.

Mumler surely was, too, as the dead were helping him make a good living. The Banner of Light was quite pleased with Guay’s report. 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. The result was, that there came upon the glass a picture of myself, and, to my utter astonishment-having previously examined and scrutinised every crack and comer, plate-holder, camera, box, tube, the inside of the bath, &c.-another portrait. to touch the glass until it had gone through the whole of the operation. proposed that a spirit form and mine should be imparted, never taking off my eyes, and not allowing Mr. 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. 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. Davis and Co., you can rest assured that I was resolved, if permitted, to allow nothing to slip my utmost scrutiny. M.’s photographic impressions of spirit forms, it gives me much pleasure to detail to you what I have seen. Mumler that you desire to publish the results of my investigation into the possibility and genuineness of Mr. A Spiritualist newspaper, the Banner of Light, printed this letter on November 18, 1862, stating the observations of another photographer, William Guay: People assumed there was trickery involved and wished to investigate his photographic process. He never promised a spirit would appear, but they often did. Mumler rolled with the wave of excitement and began taking more photos of people eager to fork over ten bucks. Photography was still a relatively recent phenomenon, leading many to believe that the camera could quite possibly see things the human eye couldn’t. Image via Wikimedia Commons.Įnthusiastic Spiritualists, of which there were many in Boston, proclaimed that Mumler had opened a new door to the afterlife. Mumler’s photograph of Fanny Conant and an unknown dead person behind her.

The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer by Louis Kaplan