Oct

When a 19th-century ‘spirit photographer’ claimed to capture ghosts through his lens

In the post-Civil War era, when many Americans were reeling from loss, a photographer claiming to capture ghosts on film enjoyed very corporeal success.

Even 150 years later, the eerie spirit photographs taken by Boston photographer William Mumler pack an emotional punch. A mourning mother is visited by the angelic silhouette of her departed daughter, the young girl resting her tiny hand on her mother’s lap. A mutton-chopped widower, his head hung in grief, is comforted by the glowing soul of his loving wife, her hands draped across his heavy shoulders.

William Mumler’s eight-year-long career in spirit photography was marked by highly publicized civil court trials for fraud. Mumler produced this image for the seated woman, identified as Mrs. Tinkham. (The J. Paul Getty Museum, via History.com)

This photo by William Mumler features a faint image of a woman with bobbed hair above the subject, identified as Col. Cushman. (The J. Paul Getty Museum via History.com )

It’s not hard to understand why 19th-century Americans enamored with the growing Spiritualism movement would have believed that these photographic apparitions were real, even as high-profile skeptics like P.T. Barnum decried spirit photography as a sham.

When spirit photography appeared in the 1860s, the United States was reeling from the Civil War, which claimed an astonishing 620,000 lives. Deep in mourning, Americans were drawn to anyone who offered even a fleeting connection to the souls of their dearly departed. Self-proclaimed mediums performed seances in which the living could speak with the dead, and photographers like Mumler granted the wishes of the bereaved to see their lost sons or brothers one last time.

Peter Manseau, curator of American religious history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, says Mumler was surely a fraud, although he doesn’t know exactly how the photographer managed his trick. As he notes in his book, The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost, he also doesn’t discount the healing function that Spiritualism served.

This is an excerpt from David Roos’ story about Paul Manseau’s new book and the history of spirit photography. To read the rest of the story, visit History.com.