SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS AND SPIRIT PICTURES
Before me, as I write, are two spirit photographs which have gone at
least part of the round of the Press, and confirmed the consoling belief
in thousands of hearts. One is a photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and behind him, peeping over his shoulder, is a strange form which has,
he says, "a general but not very exact resemblance to my son." The other
photograph is supplied by the Rev. W. Wynne. It bears the ghostly faces
of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, with whom Mr. Wynne had been acquainted; and
the text says that the plate was exposed for Mr. and Mrs. Wynne and
received these ghostly imprints. Both these photographs came from "the
Crewe Spiritual Circle," which has done so much in recent years to
strengthen the faith.
Let me first make a few general remarks on spirit photography. Everybody
to-day has an elementary idea what taking a photograph means. A chemical
mixture, rich in certain compounds of silver, is spread as a film over
the glass plate which you buy at the stores. The rays of light--chiefly
the ultra-violet or "actinic" rays--which come from the sun (or the
electric lamp) are reflected by a body upon this plate, through the
lenses of the camera, and form a picture of that body by fixing the
chemicals on the plate. The lens is essential in order to concentrate
the rays and give an image, instead of a mere flood of light. The object
which reflects the light--whether it be the ordinary light or the
actinic rays--must be material. Ether does not reflect light, for light
is a movement of ether.
Spiritualists have such vague ideas as to what can and cannot happen
that they overlook these elementary details altogether. Sometimes they
ask us to believe that a medium can get the head of a ghost on a plate,
without a camera, by merely placing his or her hand on the packet
containing the plate. Even if there were a materialized spirit present,
it could make no _image_ on the plate unless the rays were properly
concentrated through lenses. But the whole idea of spirits hovering
about and making images on photographic plates because a man called a
medium puts his hand on the camera is preposterous. That would be magic
with a vengeance! Even if we suppose that the spirits have material
bodies--ether bodies would not do--which reflect only the actinic rays,
and so are not visible to the eye, the idea remains as absurd as ever.
To say that the invisible material body of Mr. Gladstone (if anybody is
inclined to believe in such a thing) only reflects the rays into the
camera at Crewe when Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton, the mediums, put their
hands on the camera, and do not reflect light at all unless these
mediums touch the camera, is to utter an obvious absurdity. The ghosts
are either material or they are not.
We must look for a simpler explanation. Now, when we examine Sir A. C.
Doyle's spirit photograph, we find at once that the candour of that
earnest and conscientious Spiritualist gives us a clue. He tells us how
he bought the plate, examined the camera, and exposed and developed the
plate with his own hands. "No hands but mine ever touched the plate," he
says impressively. We shall see presently that that need not impress us
in the least. What is important is that Sir Arthur adds: "On examining
with a powerful lens the face of the 'extra' I have found such a marking
as is produced in newspaper process work." Very few of the general
public would understand the significance of this, but I advise the
reader to take an illustrated book or journal and examine a photograph
in it with a lens (which need not be powerful). He will see at once that
the figure consists of a multitude of dots, and wherever you find an
illustration showing these dots it has been at some time printed in a
book or paper. During a lantern lecture, for instance, you can tell, by
the presence or absence of these dots, whether a slide has been
reproduced from an illustration or made direct from the photographic
negative.
Sir A. C. Doyle is candid, but his Spiritualist zeal outruns his reason.
He goes on to say:--
It is _very possible_ that the picture ... was conveyed on to the
plate from some existing picture. However that may be, it was most
certainly supernormal, and not due to any manipulation or fraud.
This is an amazing conclusion. It is not merely "possible," but certain,
that the photo, which he says resembles his son, had been _printed_
somewhere before it got on to his plate. The marks are infallible. It is
further practically certain that, when the son of so distinguished a
novelist died on active service, his photograph would appear in the
Press. It is equally certain that mediums, knowing well that Sir Arthur
and Lady Doyle would presently seek to get into touch with their dead
son, would treasure that photograph. When I add that, as I will explain
presently, there is no need at all for the spirit photographer to touch
the plate, the reader may judge for himself how much "supernormal" there
is about the matter.
Let us glance next at the Gladstone ghost. We are not told if it showed
process marks, but, of course, they need not always be looked for. It
might be taken direct from a photograph in the case of so well known a
couple as the Gladstones. But here again there is a significant
weakness. When you turn the photograph upside down, you discover that
the photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Wynne are on the lower half of the
plate, and inverted! You have to come to this remarkable conclusion, if
you follow the Spiritualist theory, that either the highly respectable
Mr. and Mrs. Wynne or the perfectly puritanical Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone
were _standing on their heads_! For my part, I decline to believe that
Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone have taken to such frivolity in the spirit land.
I prefer to think that the spirit photographer has bungled.
But how could it be done if the plate was never in the hands of the
photographer? In the early days of Spiritualism faking was easy. You put
on an air of piety, and your sitter implicitly trusted you. It was then
quite easy to make a ghost, as every photographer knows. Expose a plate
for half the required time to a young lady dressed as a ghost, then put
the plate away in the dark until a sitter comes and give it a _full_
exposure with him. He is delighted, when the plate is developed, to find
a charming lady spirit, of ghostly consistency, beaming upon him. Double
development, or skilful manipulation of the plate in the dark room, will
give the same result.
This is how the trick was done in the sixties and seventies. A London
photographer, Hudson, made large sums by this kind of trickery. It was
easily exposed--any person who has dabbled in photography knows it--and
often the furniture or carpet behind the ghost could be seen through it.
At last there was a very bad exposure which for a time almost suspended
the trade. At Paris there was a particularly gifted photographer medium
named Buguet. Not only were his ghosts very artistic, but Spiritualists
were able to identify their dead relatives on the photographs. Buguet
came to London and did a roaring trade. But early in 1875 the police of
Paris carried Buguet off to prison and searched his premises. They found
a headless doll or lay figure, and a large variety of heads to fit it.
At first Buguet had had confederates who used to creep quietly behind
the sitter and impersonate the ghost. Then he used to take a
half-exposure photograph of his doll, and so dispense with confederates.
He had a very smart clerk at the door who used, in collecting your
twenty francs, to get from you a little information about the dead
relative you wanted to see. Then Buguet rigged up and dressed a more or
less appropriate doll, gave it a half-exposure, and brought the same
plate to use for his sitter.
One feature of the trial of Buguet should be carefully borne in mind.
Spiritualists are very fond of assuring us that the spirit voice or
message or photograph they obtained from a medium was "perfectly
recognizable." They scout any suggestion that they could be mistaken. Do
they not know the features of their dead son or daughter or wife? During
the trial of Buguet scores of these Spiritualists entered the
witness-box and swore that they had received exact likenesses of their
dead relatives. But Buguet, hoping to get a lighter sentence, confessed
that the same group of heads had served every purpose, and the witnesses
in his favour were all wrong![11]
Buguet got a year in prison, and for a time trade was poor. But new
methods were invented, and spirit photographers are again at work all
over the world, and have been for decades. In country places the old
method may still be followed. Generally, however, the sitter brings his
or her own plate, and is then supposed to be secured against fraud. The
next development was easy enough. A prepared plate was substituted for
the plate you brought. This trick in turn was discovered, and sitters
began to make secret marks on the plates they brought, in order to
identify them afterwards. Then the machinery of the ghost was rigged up
in the camera itself, and you might bring your own plate and mark it
unmistakably with a diamond, if you liked. The ghost appeared on it when
it was developed.
There were several ways of doing this. The first was to cut out the
figure of the ghost in celluloid or some other almost transparent
material and attach it to the lens. When this trick leaked out, a very
tiny figure of the ghost, hidden in the camera, was projected through a
magnifying glass (a kind of small magic-lantern) on to the plate when it
was exposed in the camera. As time went on, sitters began to insist on
examining the camera, and these tricks were apt to be discovered. I
remember an honest and critical Spiritualist telling me, about ten years
ago, that he offered a certain spirit-photographer (who is still at
work) five pounds for a spirit-photograph, if the sitter were permitted
to see every step of the process. The photographer agreed; but when my
friend wanted to examine the camera he at first bluffed, and then
returned the money, saying that that was carrying scepticism too far! He
had the ghost in his camera.
Your modern Spiritualist friend smiles when you tell him of these
tricks. They are prehistoric. To-day you are allowed to examine the
camera, bring your own plate, expose it and develop it yourself. The
logic of the Spiritualist is here just as defective as ever. Because he
has not on this occasion discovered certain forms of trickery which are
now well known, he concludes that there was _no_ trickery. As if
trickery did not evolve like anything else! Spiritualists were just as
certain twenty years ago that there was no possibility of fraud because
they brought their own marked plates; but they were cheated every time.
There are still several ways of making the ghost. Where the sitter is
careless, or an enthusiastic Spiritualist, the old tricks (substitution
of plates, etc.) are used; but there are new tricks to meet the
critical. The ghost may be painted in sulphate of quinine or other
chemicals on the ground-glass screen. Such a figure is invisible when it
is dry. There may be a trick dark-slide, with a plate which will appear
in front of yours. If the photographer develops it for you, he can
skilfully get a ghost on it by holding another plate against yours
(pretending to see how it is developing) in the yellow light. If you
develop it yourself, you use _his_ dish, which is often an ingenious
mechanism. It has glass sides or a glass bottom, and, while the whole
thing is covered up during development, secret lights impress the ghost
on it. An actual case of this sort was exposed in _Pearson's Weekly_ on
January 31, 1920.
When the Spiritualist airily assures us that he has guarded against all
these things (some of which could not be seen at all) we have to
remember that Spiritualist literature teems with cases in which, we are
told, "all precautions against fraud were taken," yet sooner or later
the fraud is discovered. But the possibilities are not yet exhausted. I
once saw a remarkable photograph which Sir Robert Ball had taken of the
famous old ship, the _Great Eastern_. Along the side of it, in enormous
letters, was the name "Lewis"; yet this name was totally invisible to
the naked eye when one looked at the ship. A coat of paint had been put
over the name--the ship had been used by Lewis's as an
advertisement--and concealed it from the eye, yet the sensitive plate
registered it. No scrutiny of the camera or the studio or the dark room
would reveal conjuring of that sort. In fine, there is the possibility
of some compound of radium, or radio-paint, being used at one or other
stage in the process.
No sensible man will pay serious attention to spirit photographs until
one is taken in these conditions; neither plates nor any single part of
the apparatus shall belong to or be touched by the medium. The spirit
photographer shall be brought to an unknown studio, and shall not be
allowed to do more than, under the eye of an expert observer, lay his
hand, at a sufficient distance from the lens, on the outside of a camera
which does not belong to him. That has not been done yet. Until it is
done fraud is certainly not excluded; and any man who uses the medium's
own premises and apparatus is courting deception.
That the ghost on a photograph often resembles a dead relative of the
sitter will surprise no sensible person. It is well known that mediums
collect such photographs, as well as information about the dead. Mr.
Carrington describes in his _Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism_ the
elaborate system they have. They have considerable knowledge of likely
sitters in their own town. In fact, I have clearly enough traced in some
cases that they _first_ gathered information about a man, and _then_ got
an intermediary to persuade him to visit them. He, of course, tells
everybody afterwards that the medium "could not possibly" know anything
about him. Sometimes a Spiritualist takes the precaution of going to a
spirit photographer in a distant town. If he is quite able to conceal
his identity, he will get nothing, or only a common or garden ghost. But
he makes an appointment for a sitting in a few days to try again, and
gives his name and address; and the next mail takes a letter to a medium
in his town asking for information and photographs. As I have previously
said, when the Berlin police arrested Frau Abend and her husband they
found an encyclopædic mass of information about possible sitters.
A case, with which I may conclude this section, is given by Dr. Tuckett
in his _Evidence for the Supernatural_ (pp. 52-3). Mr. Stead was once
delighted to find the ghost of a "brother Boer" on a photograph, and the
clairvoyant photographer mystically informed him that he "got" the name
"Piet Botha," and gathered that he had been shot in the Boer War. Mr.
Stead was jubilant, and the Materialist was nowhere, when he learned
that Piet Botha _had_ been shot in the war. Who in England knew anything
about Piet Botha and his death? But the wicked sceptic got to work, and
he presently discovered that on November 9, 1899, the _Graphic_ had
reproduced a photograph of Piet Botha, who had been shot in the war! A
magnificent case fell completely to pieces.
Spirit-drawings and paintings have drawn out just the same ingenuity on
the part of the mediums. A favourite and impressive form is to let the
sitter choose a blank card and see that it _is_ blank. Then the medium
tears off the corner and hands it to the sitter, so that he will
recognize his own card at the close. The lights are completely
extinguished, the card is laid on the table, and when the gas is re-lit
a very fair picture (still wet) in oil is found to have been painted on
the card. David Duguid persuaded thousands of people of this marvel in
the later decades of the nineteenth century. It was represented that he
was merely a cabinet-maker who, in 1866, came under the control of the
spirits of certain Dutch painters, and was used by them. I learned long
ago in Scotland that the statement that he had never practised drawing
or painting was untrue. It is, in any case, probable that he had torn
the corners off the little paintings he had prepared in advance, and
that it was _these_ corners which he palmed off on the sitter. In the
dark he substituted his painting for the blank card, and the corner
naturally fitted. The fact that the paint was "still wet" need impress
nobody. A touch of varnish easily gives that impression.
Innumerable tricks have been invented by American mediums for fooling
the Spiritualist public in this respect, and in many cases it taxes the
ingenuity of an expert conjurer to find out where the fraud lay. Mr.
Carrington gives a long series of frauds which he has at one time or
other studied. One medium offers you an apparently blank sheet of paper,
and, although nothing more suspicious than laying it under an
innocent-looking blotting-pad can be seen, and there is certainly no
substitution, a photograph appears on it while you wait. If you happen
to be one of those people whom the medium had had in mind as a possible
sitter, or whom he (through an intermediary) induced to come to him, it
may be a photograph of your dead son. The photograph was there,
invisible, all the time. It had been taken on a special paper (solio
paper), and bleached out with bi-chloride of mercury. The blotting-pad
was wet with a solution of hypo, and this suffices to restore the
photograph.
In other cases the medium, with solemn air, enters his cabinet and draws
the curtain. There is a fantastic theory in the Spiritualist world that
this cabinet, or cloth-covered frame (like a Punch and Judy show),
prevents the "fluid" or force which the medium generates from spreading
about the room and being wasted. Nearly all these convenient theories
and regulations come from the spirits through the mediums; that is to
say, are imposed by the mediums themselves. The closed cabinet, like
charity, covers a multitude of sins. In the case of the spirit-painting
it may have a trap-door or other outlet, through which the medium hands
the blank canvas to a confederate and receives the previously painted
picture.
Another medium shows you a blank canvas, and, _almost_ without taking it
out of your sight, produces an elegant, and still wet, oil painting on
it. The painting was there from the start, of course, but a blank canvas
was lightly gummed over it, and all the conjuring the medium had to do
was to strip off this blank canvas while your attention was diverted.
Mediums know that their sitters are profoundly impressed if the paint is
"still wet." I have heard Spiritualists stubbornly maintain that this
proves that the painting had only just been done, and done by
spirit-power, since no man could do it in so short a time. It is a good
illustration of the ease with which they are duped. The picture may have
been painted a week or a month before. Rub it with a little poppy oil
and you have "wet paint."
Mr. Carrington's _Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism_, one of the
richest manuals of mediumistic trickery, has a number of these
picture-frauds. A painting is, when thoroughly dry, covered with a
solution of water and zinc-white. It is then invisible, and you have "a
blank canvas." The picture comes out again by merely washing it with a
sponge. In other cases a painting is done in certain chemicals which
will remain invisible until a weak solution of tincture of iron is
applied; and it may be applied to the back of the canvas. The medium,
Carrington suggests, begs the sitters to sing "Nearer, my God, to Thee,"
to drown the noise, while his confederate creeps behind the canvas and
sprays it with the solution. The picture dawns before their astonished
eyes.
Perhaps the best illustration is one that Carrington gives in his
_Personal Experiences_, to which I must send the reader for the full
story. Two spinster-mediums of Chicago had a great and profitable
reputation for spirit-painted photographs. I take it that their general
air of ancient virtue and piety disarmed sitters, who are apt to think
that a _fraudulent_ medium will betray himself or herself by criminal
features. You took a photograph of your dead friend, and asked that the
spirits might reproduce it in oils. The medium studied it, and made an
appointment with you at a later date. Perhaps the medium then studied it
again, and made a further appointment. On the solemn day the medium held
a blank canvas up to the window before your eyes, and gradually, first
as a dim dawn of colours, then as a precise figure, the picture appeared
on the canvas. Carrington suggests that she held up to the window two
canvases--a thin blank canvas a few inches in front of the prepared
picture. By deftly and slowly bringing these together with her fingers
she brought about the illusion; and only a little ordinary sleight of
hand was required to get rid of the blank canvas.
These illustrations will suffice to show the reader what subtle and
artful trickery is used in this department of Spiritualism. He will know
what to think when a Spiritualist friend, who could not detect the
simplest conjuring trick, shows him a spirit-photograph and says that he
took care there was no fraud. The ordinary members of the Spiritualist
movement are as honest as any, but their eagerness--natural as it
is--puts them in a frame of mind which is quite unreasonable. The
trickery of this class of mediums has been developing for nearly sixty
years, and it has to find new forms every few years as the older forms
are exposed. The mediums have become expert conjurers and even, in some
cases, expert chemists--or they have expert chemists in collusion with
them--and it is simply foolish for an ordinary person to think that he
can judge if there has been fraud. We must have at least one elementary
safeguard. No part of the apparatus employed must belong to the medium
or be manipulated by him; and the photograph must not be taken on his
premises. Every Spiritualist who approves a photograph taken under other
conditions is courting deception and encouraging fraud.
And instead of finding even the leading Spiritualists setting an example
of caution in face of the recognized mass of fraud in their movement, we
find them exhibiting a bewildering hastiness and lack of critical
faculty. Most readers will remember how Sir A. C. Doyle sent to the
_Daily Mail_ on December 16, 1919, a photograph of a picture of Christ
which had, he said, been "done in a few hours by a lady who has no power
of artistic expression when in her normal condition." The picture was,
he said, "a masterpiece"; so wonderful, in fact, that "a great painter
in Paris" (not named, of course) "fell instantly upon his knees" before
such a painting. It was "a supreme example" of a Spiritualist miracle.
The sequel is pretty well known. On December 31 the artist's husband
wrote a letter to the _Daily Mail_, of which I need quote only one
sentence:--
Mrs. Spencer wishes definitely to state once and for all that her
pictures are painted in a perfectly normal manner, that she is
disgusted at having "psychic power" attributed to her, and that she
does not cherish any ludicrous and mawkish sentiments about helping
humanity by her paintings.
FOOTNOTE:
[11] I might add that Mrs. Gladstone is not at all recognized by her own
son in Mr. Wynne's photograph. The other figure seems to me certainly a
reproduction of a photograph or bad picture of Gladstone.