The (mostly) true story of “ghost photography"
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- čas přidán 4. 02. 2022
- William Mumler claimed he could photograph ghosts ... and no one could prove he couldn’t.
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In the mid-1800s, the development of exciting new forms of communication, like photography and the telegraph, was considered miraculous. This technology also coincided with a new religious movement becoming popular in the US and Europe: spiritualism. Spiritualists believed that, through the use of a medium, contact with the dead was possible. During the bloody American Civil War (1861-1865), belief in Spiritualism grew.
It was during this time that William Mumler, an amateur photographer in Boston, claimed he could photograph ghosts. He and his wife Hannah, herself a professional photographer and Spiritualist medium, created a stir in Boston by selling these "spirit portraits," and attracted the attention of Spiritualists and skeptics alike. Professional photographers in Boston investigated Mumler's method again and again but couldn't figure out how he did his trick.
After accusations of fraud piled up in Boston, the Mumler’s relocated to New York City, the photographic capital of the US. Here, Mumler was quickly arrested on fraud charges, and his trial was sensationalized in New York newspapers. The prosecution even brought in circus showman P.T. Barnum to testify against Mumler. But, like the photographers in Boston, no one could confidently identify his method - and Mumler was acquitted.
Once the trial was over, the Mumlers' spirit photography business boomed. They photographed prominent Americans, including Mary Todd Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison, and even took mail-in orders from people who couldn't visit their studio in Boston. We visited photographic process historian Mark Osterman to demonstrate how Mumler could have used two negatives, printed simultaneously with a bit of sleight of hand, to fool witnesses into believing his "ghosts" were the real thing.
Our director of photography in Annapolis, Maryland, was Colin Faust.
Darkroom is a history and photography series that anchors each episode around a single image. Analyzing what the photo shows (or doesn't show) provides context that helps unravel a wider story. Watch previous episodes here: • Vox Darkroom
Note: The headline on this piece has been updated.
Previous headline: We tried to recreate this famous photo of a ghost
The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer, by Louis Kaplan:
www.upress.umn.edu/book-divis...
The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost, by Peter Manseau:
www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/T...
Helen F. Stuart and Hannah Frances Green: The Original Spirit Photographer, by Felicity T.C. Hamer:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
The Getty Museum’s collection of Mumler’s spirit photographs:
www.getty.edu/art/collection/...
Archive of “Banner of Light” and other Spiritualist newspapers:
iapsop.com/archive/materials/b...
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![False Positive: When forensic science fails [Full version]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EO6kYkoCEsA/mqdefault.jpg)
Dig into the past one photograph at a time with more Darkroom episodes, see the full playlist here: bit.ly/35ZRj4J
What exactly ARE ghosts?
😮😮😮😮😢
For all those wondering how he got ghost pictures to look similar to the dead loved ones. Think about it most people in the late 1800s had never sat for a painting or a photograph, so Mumler’s customers were relying on their fading memories, tricked by their desire for these photos to be real.
That or in the case of famous people like Lincoln it was easy to find drawings, you can kinda see that all of the people who aren't famous have fairly obscured features but the famous one are much more distinct.
Probably someone similar posed
I can also see an exchange happen where the person getting their photo taken, talks about someone they miss and vaguely describes them, and then the photographer goes into their library of templates and pulls one that matches a given description.
This is kinda what im wondering but the thing is, where did he get that many people to photograph and use as spirits (that also matches up to the pose)
you just do a bit of medium trickery first (aka asking questions disguised as statements) and boom, theres grandma from 1800s shutterstuck
Imagine that you recreate this with one ‘spirit’ but the photograph shows a second spirit.
Wow you should write low effort horror novels...
@@TomSmith-jp1es how about you be nice on the internet.. don’t got anything nice to say don’t say it. It’s like 10000x easier on CZcams. Just don’t comment!
😂
@@TomSmith-jp1es I lol’d. But then I read it as low effort horror MOVIES, which require slightly less imagination and don’t sweat the actual writing.
@@erikgarrett9027 calm down man, I think Tom is complimenting the poster of the comment haha
He was an engraver before getting into photography. I strongly believe he was using engraving skills instead of photo processing skills to embed the "spirits". Aside from that, he's the forefather of Photoshop 🤣
That could be true too..
yup. i'm amazed it wasnt one of the ideas in the court case. they only have to be ever so faint, and you can sort of see in the positioinig of the arms that it might not be a photo but rather a drawing.
just a little bit of a certain chemical , or maybe sanded on..
Id like to see someone try with that method.
with plate photography that would not have been possible unfortunately, since it was not like printing and chemicals are needed to remove the image off the plate, but I do like your theory
This is still better than security camera footage nowadays.
POTATO CAMERA *ACTIVATE!!!*
better than US capturing UFO videos
Oh this is pretty cool! Never knew about the existence of spirit photography before, I would love to know how Mumler (and Helen Stuart) really do it!
If you like horror video games, give Fatal Frame a try.
Ever heard of Joseph joestar? He has a stand called hermit purple that can do spirit photography however he has to destroy a camera everytime he does it
They took the picture and the ghosts appeared. Simple.
You could ask him yourself lol
It's easy. photo effect. called фото наложение in russian... they already revealed this trick and it's not real ghosts.
The sad thing is, nobody followed his wife around. They only seemed to see her as a distraction while they follow him around, which was perfect since it left her time to do whatever it was she did to tje pictures 😂
Exactly 👍 That's why the research points to her being the mastermind. She knew exactly how to do it
While I was watching I was like oh god it was the wife and nobody cared to follow her probably bc she's a woman....... It's fairly obvious that she was the mastermind bc she's the one that owned the studio
She used 19th century sexism to her advantage.
@@kutter_ttl6786 the OG girlboss
Behind a clever man, stand a genius women🤣
You'd think if the ghosts are real they would pose a bit for the camera.
Duck face victorian ghosts throwing a peace sign as well.
What a mental image.
Just irks me that the left photo on 10:43 just looks so anatomically weird. Sure they were looking at the camera, but their body is just ehhh
I actually thought it was weirder that the ghosts were all posed. Like they have a spirit phone that the loved one can just call them up on and be like "Hey Abe, dress nice on Sunday!"
@@artiction Yeah some of them look half painted, or maybe some sort of collage, like an early form of Photoshop
We have one of these in my family. I remember it on the wall of my Grandmothers when i was a kid.
Is it scaty?
Is it cusred?
Is it skoopy?
@@RIFLQ very cusred indeed whatever that means
Is it ceerpy?
The sleight of hand method would require them to readily have a lot of pictures of just the right people in fitting postures, which is unlikely too. Wouldn't some of them have recognized themselves in the photos? Very intriguing topic that I somehow never heard about as a photographer, really cool
I thought the same thing
They know who they are photographing in advance so they could prepare it.
@@samanjj So they went to Abe Lincoln asking him to pose weirdly for this unspecified photo, mysteriously appearing in newspapers after? Unless the dude had mad humour, I kinda doubt that one :D
@@OfficialEFEN No, they just got someone to dress up like Lincoln haha. The photos arent exactly in 4k here
Some people recognized the ‘spirits’ as living people they knew.
Oh this is fun and pretty cool (and I like how niche it feels; it’s always nice to learn something new)! Also I enjoy how scientific and historically informed it is. I guess that’s the standard here, but it would certainly be easy to _just_ recreate this and not try to examine it, so the informational content is appreciated ahaha.
America is over and be gangup up by Russia and China
@@hermeslein6614 Why would you say that?
so it is 'niche' now to learn about scams?
what a sad world we have created.. idots reign, it seems.
If he set up the camera before the client got there then he could have pre-exposed the plate with a model for 1-2 seconds.
Then the client shows up, plate gets exposed again this time with enough light to develop a full picture.
That's one way to do it without anyone being able to follow you through the process.
basically a double exposure. A lot easier to do now but still possible. Even the method shown in the video is like a double exposure. The fact that you can send a photo in and miraculously get a spirit photo from that screams this was dodgy.
i mean it is possible, but the thing is this is wet plate photography. you have only a few minutes (5-10) to sensitize, take the photo and then develop. there is no time to take a whole other picture and wait for another person to come in. each plate must be prepared and finished within only a few minutes
Yes that would be a great way to do it. Or keep a set of exposed plates preserved somewhere that could be brought out to suit what the sitter wanted. But, if I was a skeptic trying to debunk him, I would have definitely brought my own plate or otherwise ensured that a unexposed plate was used, or at least one randomly chosen by me, not Mummler (so the composition would at least be wrong).
Could have also just hidden the ghost plate inside of the exposure apparatus.
Except that once you've got areas exposed to light, you can't unexpose them. So you would have the whole body of the "ghost" showing through crying regardless of the main sitter. You can't have the ghost appear behind the sitter.
Surely the 'spirit' negatives can be matched up to a previously-existing photograph of the person? Surprised that wasn't discussed--none of these cases has even one example of a 'spirit' posing in exactly the same position/expression as a photograph that already existed of them? Because even one example of this would prove the fraud.
Sorry, didn't see this.
I swear you can see the same person as the spirit in a few of the example photos.
If you go to the Ask A Mortician channel, you will see her vid (which was coincidentally made around the same time as this one), which (as I recall) outlines how this kind of exposure of fraud was what led Mumler and his wife to leave Boston for New York. There seems to be no conflict between the content creators of this vid and hers (she even provides a link to this one) and watching both is very informative 🙂
no doubt but when people do not know they were scammed they don't go back to look for evidence.. and since they were glass plates, how hard is t to destroy the evidence once he was charged?
How come the models used for those spirit photos never came forward? Usually, the more people you involve into a fraud, the higher the chances of one of them to come forward. These people were very loyal, or they never found out the photographers used their photos in this way.
Probably the models nevet found out their photos were used by mumler. It seems like these "ghosts" face didn't match quite well with the body. You can see in 10:44 their bodies didnt fit quite well -- probably someone else posing for the body.
he posed the people for the pictures, always in standard positions, so he could re-use anyone's portrait from a previous session, no one would know if their pictures were given a second print, as there was no internet.
Since i see so many people commenting saying they could have taken an exposure before and then took the second one of the client, this would not be possible. This is wet plate collodion process. each glass plate has to be 1. sensitized in silver nitrate, 2. put into the camera and exposed 3. developed within 10 minutes from sensitized phase. it is simply not possible for him to take 2 pictures on one plate as the silver nitrate would already been ruined within the time it took him to take the second picture. The entire process must be done before the silver nitrate has a chance to dry.
You seem knowledgeable. I'm a beginner tintypist who are has tried to do some spirit photography and wondered how it could be done at separate times. Could someone take the ghost photo, develop it, and not varnish it and then later prepare and shoot with the plate again? I've never tried it but I've wondered if that could work.
@Rachel C. I'm not sure about that specifically, but I don't think it would be a a good idea, the silver is very fragile before its varnished and even then acording to the video, the photographers watched every step of the process, it would be very obvious if he were using a plate that has already been fully developed.
Thank you for this fascinating piece of history! I'm with Mr. Barnum in believing it's not right that people profit off of grief and gullibility, and it's important to debunk fraudulent claims like these.
Perhaps the same could be said of *all* religions?
Barnum was a terrible person. He acted all mightier than thou, when he took advantage of people on the daily and stole from them.
This this impressive as that we can research and re -inacted it.
man invented photoshop
double exposure
still does not explain how he knew alll their clients dead loved one i think the gohst photo thing is real
@@klachingmacgaming8400 yeahhh me too
This has got to be one of the best series on CZcams right now. I never knew this was a thing. I'm a film camera collector, I have hundreds from the early 2000s all the way back to late 1800s. Such interesting pieces of history.
But I wondered how did they get the exposure of Lincoln. Maybe because he’s a famous man and there’s a lot of portraits of him. Then the explanation would be triple exposure. One with the subject, another one with the actor, and the last one is the face which’s extracted from portraits or paintings and exposed on top again.
I was wondering that, too. Is it like an elaborate 1870s deepfake?
Or could have casted a lookalike
Oh come on. He was most likely the best known man in the US, had been photographed multiple times, seen in person around the country. You think they couldn't just find a tall white man, maybe an out of work broadway actor, and dress him up like Lincoln to take the picture?
Isn’t he too short in the photo - i reckon they replaced the head of the “body” double with a photo of Lincoln
@@Ghiaman1334 I agree however, this would not explain all of the other ghost doppelgangers.
Fascinating. Thank you and I appreciate the work you put into this.
This video was utterly fascinating. Thank you for sharing all the resources!
Nice essay!
Caitlin Dougherty linked your video on her site...how about return the courtesy?? 🙏🏼🙂
I want more of this series! It's enthralling!!!
"... photo of a photo, plus the presence of the sprits" ...technical genius and a scamster at the same time. 😂🤣
So he got pictures of all his clients dead ones??
How did he do that, with similar looking people?
Same question man..... please reply if anyone has answer!
Seriously, I was thinking the same
The video did say his pictures would have spirits of strangers sometimes.... If we could know that stranger spirits conveniently appeared when the dead ones appearance was not available to him, then we can say for sure he's a fraud, something the investigators of that time didnt think to.
@@adiadiadi333 but questions still remains that how did he get some of the dead ones in photos in that old era!
@@trickmab I feel like this has got something with going into the house of the grieving person and getting a photo of the dead ones or something on that line...
Love this kind of historical investigation. Not only thought provoking but fun !
I was surrounding one of my Uni modules around spirit photography and the ability to see the dead, the apparitions book was a brilliant read! Wish I found this video last term too!
Still better quality than all the “real UFO footage” of today.
I think the trick is so obvious no matter what technology was used.
As a photographer, the first thing that came to mind when I saw these pictures is "double exposure"
Whatever the actual technique was, it cannot be anything other than some form of double exposure
They covered that, but the trick was that there were skeptics watching intently throughout the whole process, so he couldn’t do a double exposure for those pictures, as that would have been obvious fakery to the onlookers.
@@Tustin2121 you can expose the spirit way before the subject !
@@Tustin2121 Just take the ghost picture first before the skeptics arrive, then position the costumer in a particular way so that the ghost seems to interact. That way the costumer nor the skeptics would have seen the ghost.
But a double exposure of what exactly, I think that's the bigger question here. If he just used existing photos (which there were far less of back then), that would seem too obvious. If he was hiring doubles to dress up as the dead people, I'm kinda surprised none of them ever came forward. Some of the dead people images look heavily altered though, like he may have been cutting and pasting photos together.
@@EliaMarc no that is not possible. this is the 1800's they used the wet plate method. each photo must me sensitized, taken and then developed within 10 minutes. it is not possible him to take a picture then wait however long for the client to show up and then take another one.
As always. Making the finest content. Thank you Vox
Here from Our lovely Mother of Deathlings channel. Lol, sometimes crosses path. Good on you both for the cool vibes of peace. May those vibes spread. We *need* them!
Here from Ask a Mortician. So great that there are multiple skilled artists who know how to use these cameras and old technologies. 😀
well done Hannah Stuart! In helping Mumler contact spirits for his photography, you both were able to bring the dearly departed back into the lives of those whom missed them.
Great video! I’ve long been fascinated with early hoaxes and fakes and it was great to learn more about photos like these. I would love to see a video about the Cottingley Fairies.
Great cosplay as Mary Todd Lincoln, Coleman.
One of my most loved part of vox is darkroom and i love evey single minute of their videos. Love it and please keep it up.
This was a pretty cool content Vox. I haven't been this impressed since OG Vox. Great edutainment.
But where does the stock Lincoln photo come from?
this just leaves so many points unanswered...
The fact that we get free videos on CZcams by Vox is truly a gift 👏
absolutely love this series
A fascinating look at vintage photography. Thanks for delving into the past to unearth these gems..
There is a short opera in English called “The Medium” about a scamming medium who actually senses something one day to her horror, and drives her mad. Really recommend it!
I want to read a novel with the premise that Mumler was right.
Some people are confused as to how the figures matched up directly with those the clients were inquiring about. This can be done easily by 1) asking questions beforehand to make sure you place the right figure in question. 2) when the photo is being exposed, you can alter and add details to the image like today’s photoshop. I have to admit their skills at the hand must have been pretty good to nail their loved ones down and 3) have Hannah or a stranger dress up as closely to the person as possible and vuala! Easy. You also have to take into account the people who believed in spiritualism. Sometimes the belief alone can trump logic if a person simply wants something to be true. Mary Todd Lincoln wanted to feel Abe’s presence despite the fact that she should’ve known that wasn’t Abe.
He's done many photos. How exactly he knew all of their client's dead relatives faces and double exposured them all? If their relatives are still alive, it's possible to assume he did some detective works. Unfortunately, they weren't. In one of photography classes, I asked this question too. But it remains unsolved how Mumler & his wife done it legit.
Ridiculous argument. No one will be able to miraculously figure out what’s my dead grandma looked like AND find a body double. Besides Asking for detailed enough description to produce a likeness would not have been possible without rousing suspicion. Your explanation really doesn’t explain a thing
He had to have a negative or photo of the lost loved one. Were all the participants in on it? Either way it’s cool.
The problem is, the clients' relatives were all dead before they asked Mumler to take their photos.
no, they were saying they might've taken negatives of people who matched a similar discription
Thank you so much , I learn a lot.
You know there are plenty of people in modern day that would absolutely fall for this trick
Finnaly early to a Vox video. And a really interesting and intriguing one!
That was so interesting !!! Thank you !
I Have heard about it & seen some photos also but don't know in technology back in 1997 while studying printing technology. This documentary cleared dought.
Fabulous and informative video 😁👍 May I ask what brand of camera did Mumler use in his studio?
The last ep?? Ohh come back for season 4 soon, please!!
And it was great to see Coleman in the lenses again... hehe
Watching because Ask a Mortician shared this too!
Can't wait for the next season!
Mark is a great teacher and inspiration
6:49 _"Fourth... to distract attention by raps..."_ Mrs. Mumbler distracted people with some dope beats.
Never knew this was existed, thank you Vox!
Love this! Also watch the super cool video by “Ask a Mortician” about this same subject - she sent me here lol. They’re on the same thing but both so fun.
I remember finding a picture in an old family album that had a man who slightly translucent(not as much so as these) with a white glow around him. I was pretty creeped out, my mom said it was signify he was dead
That’s fascinating stuff!
Mark Osterman is fantastic! Would love to see more videos with his work as well as stuff from the George Eastman Museum :)
More photography histories please!!!!
I guess Mumler would just Google the deceased and pull a photograph off of the internet to get the face.
Ah yes, that 1860s Internet that everyone had access to during that time. Why didn't anyone else think of that?
@@kbrock9146
Seems so obvious
Perhaps he's from the future
This is wonderful!! Thank you!
What exactly ARE ghosts?
Very interesting. These little videos always are.
How many are here from Caitlin’s (Ask A Mortician) amazing video to see if Vox added anything new to her second victorian photography episode (the death photots last time still amaze me with the cutting edge techneques of thier day)! What a lovely coincidence both had the same idea for content that thier viewers got to learn about today.
Wow, this was incredible
Maybe he was a really good painter. He painted the deceased faces on the negatives.
No, no the sceptical photographers watched his entire process. You wouldn’t be able to intricately paint a negative while someone watched you, without them knowing what you were doing
The 19th century’s Photoshopped image of the sky with a godly figure in it.
These videos are awesome
You should put Ask A Mortician's video somewhere in the description
excellent - came to this from the divine Caitlin Doughty's channel -
I wish these vids weren't so short
What a fascinating story!
Hey, good to see some ghosts here! I do also "ghost portrait" people in my longterm project called :Ghost Portrait Project".. its been great to search and get the notion that I'm not the only one doing it, despite a handful more doing it aswell! Great video, thnx, cheers
What exactly ARE ghosts?
If ghosts were real. one of them would have mooned or flipped off the camera. Those ghosts are way to well-behaved to be real people.
Same thought 😂😂 to good to be real
Photographic therapy. Splendid!
The image of Lincoln straight up looks like a painting
This was fascinating
But how did he manage to get the negative image of those deceased loved ones in that same studio set up ? This trick can be done with strangers only but those familiar faces who have already passed away how could they come and pose for negative photos? Please someone explain. I'm really curious.
The ghosts are of lower quality, so they could’ve used people who looked really similar to the “spirits” and you wouldn’t be able to tell
@@BPS298 I see... thanks for explaining.
@@madhurabali1810 Also, people in grief are gonna see what they want to see. If your wife had just died and the photographer shows there's a ghost of a woman with a vague face, there's a decent chance you'll see your wife in her. In the exact same way that taking a placebo might make you feel better. Our brains are evolved to find patterns, even when they're not really there.
Also keep in mind that, in addition to being super faded and vague, the pictures were black and white. Obvious, yes, but that makes it even harder to discern features.
@@michaelhenry3234 If this a placebo, what u perceived will be different than mine. In this case, everybody knows dead relatives in the photos look exactly the same.
Nonsense. Grief does not make you forget what your wife looks like. These images aren’t not that blurry that you cannot see exactly what face type and hairstyle etc they had and you WOULD absolutely be able to tell if they are not your loved one. So I don’t know how he did it
It's quite hard also to think that Mumler already had a copy of a ghost negative, like where would he get those ghost faces in the first place.
From other photos, just get a copy of a photo of the dead relative and then use that in a double exposure.
@@hedgehog3180 so Mumler would ask photos of their dead love ones after they took a portrait, that would be suspicious enough to tell he is joking during that time
@@hedgehog3180 that's suspicious
@@hedgehog3180 of course not
Fascinating!
Hardest thing to explain is how he got various models to pose without any of them ever exposing him. If the models were doing it for money, they could have easily ratted him out to the press /police for a reward.
this is creativity at its finest, imagine if Mumler live in this era.
i think the biggest clue is how the pictures are composed. the compositions would make no sense unless they knew where the ghosts were standing before the picture was taken. the ghosts are always perfectly framed
Cool story and video! I wonder if the technique was discovered accidentally or was it designed just as a way to make money? Just curious. I enjoyed this vid, as always 😃⚜️
Really impressive video
That's a pretty smart way to do it. And since the images were captured on glass plates, it guarantees that the spirit negative will be out or focus and thus more ghostly.
Has anyone tried to find a picture of Lincoln (maybe from a newspaper) that matches his position? That would be all they needed, and finding that picture would prove the scam.
Exactly
one mystery solved. how about the other deceased relatives?
This was great!
So delightful.
This is a piece of lost history wow!!!
great analysis
Fascinating! This makes me think of the "Peculiar Children" book series by Ransom Riggs. This author used vintage photographies to illustrate his novel. And these pictures are pretty weird, a bit like the ones you describe.
As a student I wanted to participate in a seance to get my own impression of this kind of stuff. Unfortunately they kicked me out very soon because I couldn't stop laughing ...
Thank you very much for a well researched interesting and yet not too long video!
This is so cool! :)
Interesting that the results Mumler got were still better than what the historian tried to recreate. Props to the Mumlers.
I learnt two things from the episode, Abraham Lincoln might not have been the OG vampire hunter that I thought and Hugh Jackman skipped some parts of Barnum's life 😂
Mumlers (wife and husband) are genius to be honest. Not even today anyone can imitate it exactly using the same equipment. Mumlers are the Photoshop wizards of that time.