December 30, 2023July 1, 2026Lindsay SheedyLeave a Comment

Episode 38: Spirit Photography

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Sources:

Cadwallader, Jen. “Spirit Photography Victorian Culture of Mourning.” Modern Language Studies 37, no. 2 (Winter, 2008): 8-31.
Conan Doyle, Arthur. A History of Spiritualism. London: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1926.
Cortés-Rocca, Paola. “Ghost in the Machine: Photographs of Specters in the Nineteenth Century.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 38, no. 1 (March 2005): 151-168.
Douris, Steele Alexandra. Spirits, Seers & Seances: Victorian Spiritualism, Magic, & the Supernatural. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2023.
Ferris, Alison. “Disembodied Spirits: Spirit Photography and Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Ghost’.” Art Journal 62, no. 3 (Autumn, 2003): 44-55.
Kaplan, Louis. The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Kaplan, Louis. “Where the Paranoid Meets the Paranormal: Speculations on Spirit Photography.” Art Journal 62, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 18-29.
Manseau, Peter. The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
Schoonover, Karl. “Ectoplasms, Evanescence, and Photography.” Art Journal 62, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 30-43.
Traill, Taylor. The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments in Spirit Photography. London: Whittaker & Co., 1894.
West, Nancy. “Camera Fiends: Early Photography, Death, and the Supernatural.” The Centennial Review 40, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 170-206.

Media Links:

Images:

William Mumler, Portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln with the Ghost of Abraham Lincoln, 1872, original in the collection of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection [image source: LFFC]

Mrs. Lincoln’s portrait, for size [image source: Michelle Pemberton/The Indy Star]

Daguerrotype portrait of Kate and Maggie Fox [image source: Missouri Historical Society]

The “original” spirit photograph that Mumler took in 1862, featuring the vague impression of his deceased cousin [image source: Peter Manseau, The Apparitionists, pg. 12 — via Archive.org]

Collection of spirit photographs taken by William H. Mumler [image source: Smithsonian]

Front page of Harper’s Weekly featuring print reproductions of Mumler’s portrait (top left) and varied examples of his spirit photographs [image source: Harper’s Weekly via Issuu]

A cartoon featuring a man named Mr. Dobbs sitting for and reacting to a spirit photograph taken by William Mumler [image source: The Spirit Photography Studio, originally in Harper’s Weekly]

An example of Mumler’s “mail order spirit photography” side hustle [image source: J. Paul Getty Museum]

Spirit photograph featuring Hannah Mumler, which she later used to advertise her services as a “clairvoyant physician” or “mesmerine phyisican”; note how the man behind Hannah–likely a deceased physician–is “directing” or “controlling” her [image source: Auckland Museum of Art]

Advertisement for Hannah Mumler’s services [image source: Beverly Wiggins via Find A Grave]

Two words: ANIMAL MAGNETISM. This advertisement for Hannah Mumler’s services appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle in June 1879 [image source: Cambridge Chronicle]

A spirit photograph by Edouard Buguet, c. 1874 [image source: Archive.org]

A spirit photograph taken by William Hope [image source: National Media Museum]

1931 photograph of medium Helen Duncan spewing “ectoplasm” [image source: Senate House Library, University of London via Science and Media Museum]

Spirit photograph featuring Arthur Conan Doyle and the spirit of his deceased son [image source: ArthurConanDoyle.co.uk]

A poster advertising a lecture that Harry Houdini gave c. 1909 discrediting mediums as frauds [image source: Wikipedia Commons]

“Alice and the Fairies” — the first photograph to feature the so-called Cottingley Fairies; Frances Griffiths as photographed alongside “fairies” by Elsie Wright [image source: Science Museum Group]

Unidentified spirit photograph from c. 1865, which I used as the featured image for this post [image source: Wikipedia]

Happy listening!

-Lindsay

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