Starting with William Mumler in 1862, many people have claimed to be able to photograph those who are no longer on this mortal coil. Time has shown Mumler and his contemporaries to have been peddling spirits that were simply fabrications of photographic materials. With the photographic developments of the past century, however, new avenues of the unexplained have been opened in the world of photographing spirits. On this page exists a wide smattering of spirit photographs - some deliberate fabrications, but others real.
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Return of the Fox Sisters?
I tend to shy away from images made during ghost hunting expeditions. With this image, however, I find it difficult to find a natural explanation. This photo was made in early 2020 at a site in Newark, NY which residents believed to be haunted by the Fox Sisters. While our hunt yielded little more than this photograph, it stands as possible evidence of an interaction with those who brought to light the potential for such a thing.
In Absentia
These photographs are the result of a fortunate trip to an antique store in New Paltz, NY. While searching through their book section, I happened upon a yearbook from a neighboring town. Unlike other yearbooks I’ve stumbled upon in antique stores, this one was stuffed with negatives, a contact sheet, and pages that had been cut up with a hobby knife. The contact sheet contained photographs of the yearbook photos surrounded by clouds of cotton that appear to be mimicking spirit photographs of the late 19th century. The negatives contained these photos and photos of other students without the fabricated ectoplasm. It seems that whoever owned this yearbook before me had attempted to create false spirit photographs of these students. Whether their intentions were artistic or part of some manipulative scheme, I cannot tell. With these materials I have decided to finish their job. These images contain no more spirits than the yearbook photos they are made from, and I hope my completion of these faux spirit photos can stand as a warning of the ease of manipulation within the genre writ large. A version of this work was shown in the "Ghosts of Film" photo exhibition, which can be viewed here.
Spirit Photo Explorations
After coming across the previous yearbook, I became interested in the idea of creating my own spirit portraits. My research into spirit photography would often hint heavily about the relative ease of making spirit photographs. I wanted to know just how simple this process could actually be. These images all have an explicit reference within the annals of paranormal history. They all utilized relatively simple trickery from in front of the lens and within the darkroom. Though my images lack the bind of secrecy which was required for many of the original images, my exploration left me content with the relative ease with which an image of this sort may be manufactured.
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