1334
English spirit photographer Frederick Hudson on the
other hand convinced his critics with his ability to pro-
duce spirit-extras with his own daughter as a medium.
Publishing in the British Journal of Photography, July
11, 1873, one investigator John Beattie stated;
If the fi gures standing by me in the pictures were not
produced as I have suggested [i.e. real spirits appearing
through the medium’s presence], I do not know how they
were there; but I must state a few ways by which they
were not made. They were not made by double exposure,
nor by fi gures being projected in space in anyway; they
were not the result of mirrors; they were not produced by
any machinery in the background, behind it, above it, or
below it, nor by any contrivance connected with the bath,
the camera or the camera inside. (Permut, 17–18)
As convinced as Beattie was, it is interesting to note
that Beattie himself had successfully experimented
with spirit photography prior to his investigation of
Hudson,
Whatever the merits of each individual case what is
truly fascinating is not the argument whether or not the
works were fakes—most of them almost certainly were,
but rather that there was such a huge desire to have this
link with the deceased even when the evidence would
indicate that the images provided no such thing. The
sitters wanted the images to be real and the desire was
enough to remove overwhelming doubt. When viewing
the images themselves this becomes apparent.
Sometimes fuzzy, of varying scale, technical skill
and unconvincingly dressed in shrouds it would seem
almost impossible to believe that anyone could accept
these images. However it would be wrong to project our
own more sophisticated media scrutiny back upon these
sitters. The photograph represented the real; there upon
the plate where nothing had been before was a trace, a
certainty of life beyond life. It was this photographic
veracity this machine’s verdict, that helped convince his
sitters that this was a scientifi cally recorded truth.
The report of the fraud inquiry into Mumler’s work
suggested:
A number of good recognitions were claimed from time
to time by sitters, and these can only be accounted for
in the light of subsequent events by the long arm of co-
incidence, and the will to believe that lies in all of us.”
(Nickell, 149). Especially, it might be added, when the
evidence of a machine reinforces the will.
Importantly there was again the encounter between the
Victorian understanding of the truth, i.e. the photograph,
and the challenge of the unreal, “As visual spectacles and
entertainment, such manifestations opened the way for
the enjoyment of appearances whose very fascination
came from their apparent impossibility, their apparent
severance from the laws of nature” (Petro, 68). This type
of photograph now offers clues not to the evidence of
the afterlife but rather an insight into the Victorian mind
and the complex puzzles of representation and implicit
belief that the act of making a photograph evokes. As
photographic knowledge progressed people were more
and more convinced of the ability of the photographic
‘medium’ to access visual realms the eye could not see.
The invention of the X-Ray by Karl Wilhelm Röntgen
in 1895, understandings about the visible and invisible
spectrum such as infra-red photography and the develop-
ment of spectroscopy, reinforced such beliefs.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiritualist and believer,
defended the growth of this belief in paranormal activity.
Doyle was himself convinced by the evidence he had
seen over the course of his investigations.
Victorian science would have left the world hard and clean
and bare, like a landscape in the moon; but this science
is in truth light in the darkness, and outside that limited
circle of defi nite knowledge we see the loom and shadow
of gigantic and fantastic possibilities around us, throwing
themselves continually across our consciousness in such
ways that it is diffi cult to ignore them. (Doyle, 13)
Chris Webster
See also: Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé; and
Mumler, William H.Further Reading
Cohen, D., Encyclopedia of Ghosts,. New York: Dorset, 1984.
Doyle, A. C., The Coming of the Fairies, New York: Samuel
Weiser, 1979.
Gettings, F., Ghosts in Photographs, New York: Harmony Books,
1978
Mulholland, J., Beware Familiar Spirits, New York: Scribner,
1979
Nickell, J., Camera Clues, Lexington: University Press of Ken-
tucky, 1994.
Permutt, C., Beyond the Spectrum, Cambridge: Patrick Stephens
Ltd., 1983.
Petro, P. (ed.) Fugitive Images—from Photography to Video.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Tagg, J., The Burden of Representation. London: Macmillan,
1988.
Trilling, L., and Bloom, H. (eds.), Victorian Prose and Poetry.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Webster, C., Memory of the Fall, Aberystwyth: School of Art
Press, 1998.SQUIER, EPHRAIM GEORGE
(1821–1888)
American poet, engineer, archaeologist, and
photographer
Born June 17, 1821 in Bethlehem, New York, to Joel
Squier, an itinerant Methodist minister, and Katherine
Kilmer Squier, Ephraim George gained two half broth-
ers—Charles Wesley and Frank— when his father mar-