# Spirit photography

Source: https://spiritfold.com.au/Spirit_photography  
Published by the Australian Spiritual Alliance on Spiritfold, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

[](https://spiritfold.com.au/index.php?title=File:Twee_portretten_van_onbekende_mannen_met_geestverschijningen_Photographie_spirite_de_Mumler._Photographie_spirite_de_Buguet_(titel_op_object),_RP-F-2001-7-1101D-31.jpg&filetimestamp=20261014131931&)A book page reproducing spirit photographs by William H. Mumler and Édouard Isidore Buguet, each showing an unidentified man with a spirit figure. Image: Rijksmuseum, [CC0](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons

**Spirit photography** is the making of photographs that are said to show the spirits of dead people beside or behind living sitters.[1] In spirit photography, as Paul Gillen described it in his 1981 study of Sydney Spiritualists, a spirit is said to appear on the photographic emulsion even though the camera's shutter has been worked in the normal way.[2] It flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century, when photographers in the United States, France and England made such pictures.[1]

## Description

### What the photographs show

A typical spirit photograph is an ordinary studio portrait with something added: a pale face or a figure in drapery hovering above or behind the sitter, often surrounded by what looks like mist.[3] In one album of about 1920, the faces are identified as, for example, the sister of a man prominent in the Spiritualist church, or a sitter's dead first wife.[3] Several of its photographs carry a sitter's signature on the plate, written to authenticate it, in one case at the photographer's request.[3]

### Evidence, not art

For Spiritualists, Massimo Introvigne writes, spirit photography was never a kind of art but a way of supporting their claims: if spirits could be photographed, they must exist.[4] Martyn Jolly, writing about early Australian Spiritualists, describes three uses: exchanging photographs that bound a worldwide movement together, staging the photograph as part of the ritual of the séance, and offering the picture as proof that the dead live on.[5]

### How the images were explained

Critics have long given ordinary explanations for the effect. The National Film and Sound Archive says spirit photography rested on the technique of double exposure.[6] At a court hearing in New York in 1869, several photographers gave evidence of how the same effects could be produced by tricks in the darkroom.[7] Jolly suggests two ways one English studio may have done it: preparing a plate in advance with an image of an accomplice already on it, or printing two negatives together in the darkroom.[5] The Science Museum Group notes that a photographer might already hold a picture of the dead person, or might ask the sitter to bring one.[3]

## Scope

### What it includes

- Photographs said to show spirits of the dead with living sitters, taken in studios or at séances[1][5]
- Spirit photography is one of the physical phenomena of Spiritualism, in the same group as raps, apports and materialisation[2][8]

### What it is not

- It is not "thoughtography", the claimed projection of a mental image straight onto a photographic emulsion, although Gillen notes that the two may coincide.[2]
- It is not spirit art. Introvigne does not count spirit photography as a form of [spirit art](https://spiritfold.com.au/Spirit_art), because Spiritualists valued it as evidence rather than as art.[4]
- Gillen suggested that Kirlian photography might, depending on how it is interpreted, be counted as a kind of spirit photography.[2] For photographs said to show the aura, see [Aura reading](https://spiritfold.com.au/Aura_reading).
- Spirit photographs have been challenged since the 1860s. Photographers explained how the effects could be faked at the 1869 New York hearing,[7] and in 1922 an investigator for the Society for Psychical Research reported evidence that plates bearing ghostly images had been substituted during sittings with the Crewe Circle.[9]

## Traditions and lineage

### William Mumler

In 1861 William H. Mumler, a jeweller's engraver in Boston who was learning photography, found the faint figure of a young girl on a plate he was developing.[10] By his own later account he first treated it as a joke on a Spiritualist friend, but the picture was reprinted in Spiritualist publications, and Mumler began to offer spirit photographs for ten dollars a sitting, without promising that a spirit would appear.[10] The National Film and Sound Archive notes that this was the time of the American Civil War, when many of his clients would have lost loved ones.[1] His best-known picture shows Mary Todd Lincoln with what is said to be the spirit of her late husband, Abraham Lincoln.[1]

In 1869 Mumler was charged in New York with fraud for selling photographs he said showed spirits. After seven days of evidence the magistrate dropped the charges, saying the prosecution had not proved its case.[7] The costs of his defence weighed on him for the rest of his life, and he destroyed all his negatives shortly before he died in 1884.[7]

### England

In London, the spirit photographer Frederick Hudson held photographic séances in his studio; the Spiritualist photographer Georgina Houghton documented gatherings there.[1] In 1873 Hudson photographed Dr Walter Richardson of Melbourne with what was said to be the spirit of his sister.[5]

### The Crewe Circle

William Hope, born in Crewe in 1863 and a carpenter by trade, became interested in spirit photography in 1905 and went on to lead a group of six spirit photographers known as the Crewe Circle. After the First World War, demand for their work grew among families grieving those killed in the war.[9] An album of nineteen postcards made by Hope for the Crewe Spirit Circle between 1910 and 1930 is now held by the Science Museum Group.[3]

In 1922 the Society for Psychical Research sent Harry Price to investigate. Price reported that plates had been substituted, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle answered him with a book, *The Case for Spirit Photography*. Hope kept working until his death in 1933.[9] Conan Doyle's public showings of photographs said to show spirits drew wide attention and controversy in the 1920s.[11]

## Context

### Within Spiritualism

Spirit photography belongs to the physical side of Spiritualist phenomena. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States lists it among the "Phenomena of Spiritualism", alongside raps, materialisation and clairvoyance, as mental and physical demonstrations of mediumship.[8] For Spiritualists its value lay in evidence: a spirit that can be photographed must exist (see Evidence, not art, above).[4] See also [Physical mediumship](https://spiritfold.com.au/Physical_mediumship).

### In Australian Spiritualism

Australian Spiritualists collected and showed spirit photographs from the 1870s (see Spirit photography in Australia, below).[5][6] By the late 1970s, though, Gillen found that in Sydney spirit photography, like spirit writing, was virtually forgotten.[2]

### A Spiritualist perspective

Spirit photography came out of a hopeful moment in Spiritualism, when many believed the camera could give the world the proof that mediums offered in the séance room. The history above shows how quickly that hope ran into trouble, and how often the people who paid for these pictures were newly bereaved. A Spiritualist today can hold that story with honesty: the movement's case for survival never rested on a photograph, and it does not need to defend every picture made in its name.

What the history teaches is care. Grief makes people want to see a face again, and anyone offering an image or a message has a duty not to exploit that longing. Spiritualism asks for evidence offered humbly and tested openly. Where a photograph is shown, say plainly how it was made, make no claims you cannot stand behind, and never charge a grieving person for a promise.

## Spirit photography in Australia

In 1878 a member of the Victorian Association of Progressive Spiritualists put together an album of carte-de-visite photographs that is now in the National Gallery of Australia. Beside portraits of living people, including well-known mediums and lecturers and Melbourne's own Spiritualists, it holds spirit photographs. One shows Dr Walter Richardson, first president of the Victorian Association, photographed by Frederick Hudson in London in 1873 with the transparent spirit of his sister.[5] Jolly thinks some of these cartes were brought to Melbourne by touring lecturers, some exchanged among Spiritualists and some perhaps bought through a London Spiritualist magazine.[5] He returned to the album in a 2025 talk at the University of Sydney.[12] Jolly, an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University's School of Art and Design, wrote *Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography* (2006).[13]

The National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra holds 65 glass slides of spirit photographs from the collection of A. J. Abbott, a practising Spiritualist and pastor of the Free Christian Assembly in Melbourne. From 1910 he projected them at lectures for audiences curious about séances and spirit communication.[6][1] Some of the slides reproduce plates first published in London by Georgina Houghton.[1]

Photography was also used in Sydney in the 1890s to test the claims of materialising mediums. In 1894 the Sydney *Sunday Times* joined a series of photographic test séances, and the dispute that followed produced a critical pamphlet, *Spookland!* (1894), and a Spiritualist reply, *A Counterblast to Spookland* (1895).[5]

## Safety and good practice

## Common questions

### Who made the first spirit photographs?

The practice is traced to William Mumler in Boston, who found a ghostly figure on one of his plates in 1861 and soon began selling spirit photographs.[10] The National Film and Sound Archive describes it as an accident, a plate that had been exposed twice.[1]

### How were spirit photographs made?

The National Film and Sound Archive links spirit photography to double exposure.[6] At Mumler's 1869 hearing, photographers showed the court how darkroom tricks could give the same results, and Jolly describes plates prepared in advance and negatives printed together as likely methods.[7][5]

### Is spirit photography part of Spiritualism?

The National Spiritualist Association of Churches lists spirit photography among the phenomena of Spiritualism.[8] In Sydney, though, Gillen found it had almost disappeared from Spiritualist practice by the late 1970s.[2]

### Can I see historical spirit photographs in Australia?

The National Film and Sound Archive has a curated online collection of spirit slides from the A. J. Abbott collection.[6] A Spiritualist's carte-de-visite album of 1878, containing spirit photographs, is held by the National Gallery of Australia.[5]

## Related modalities

- [Physical mediumship](https://spiritfold.com.au/Physical_mediumship)
- [Spirit art](https://spiritfold.com.au/Spirit_art)
- [Mediumship](https://spiritfold.com.au/Mediumship)
- [Spiritualism](https://spiritfold.com.au/Spiritualism)
- [Aura reading](https://spiritfold.com.au/Aura_reading)
- [Automatic writing](https://spiritfold.com.au/Automatic_writing)

## References

1. Blackshaw, Adam. ["19th century ghost photos: Spirit slides of the living and the dead"](https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/19th-century-ghost-photos). National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, 27 October 2017 (accessed 14 October 2026).
2. Gillen, Paul. *[The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology](https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_spiritualists_gnosis_and_ideology/19431146/1)*. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, November 1981 (accessed 14 October 2026).
3. Science Museum Group. ["Album of Crewe Spirit Circle"](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8228836/joe-thomas-photograph). Object no. 2002-5054, National Science and Media Museum, Bradford (accessed 14 October 2026).
4. Introvigne, Massimo. ["Spiritualism and the Visual Arts"](https://wrldrels.org/2017/08/02/spiritualism-and-the-visual-arts/). World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2 August 2017 (accessed 14 October 2026).
5. Jolly, Martyn. ["Spirit Photography and Australia: A Spiritualist's carte-de-visite album"](https://martynjolly.com/2013/10/03/spirit-photography-and-australia/). Paper given at *Spiritualism and Technology in Historical and Contemporary Contexts*, University of Westminster, London, 26 September 2009; posted on the author's website 3 October 2013 (accessed 14 October 2026).
6. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. ["Spirit slides"](https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/spirit-slides) (curated collection; no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
7. American Museum of Photography. ["The Mumler Mystery: A Gallery of Spirit Photography"](https://photographymuseum.com/mumler). The American Photography Museum, Inc., © 2000 (accessed 14 October 2026).
8. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. ["Spiritualism Explained"](https://nsac.org/spiritualism-explained/). NSAC, © 2026 (accessed 14 October 2026).
9. The Public Domain Review. ["The Spirit Photographs of William Hope"](https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-spirit-photographs-of-william-hope/) (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
10. Dickey, Colin. "The Broken Tech of Ghost Hunting". *The Skeptic* (Australian Skeptics) 36, no. 4 (December 2016): 45–48. First published in *The Atlantic*, 2016. [PDF](https://www.skeptics.com.au/wp-content/uploads/magazine/The%20Skeptic%20Volume%2036%20(2016)%20No%204.pdf) (accessed 14 October 2026).
11. Ellwood, Robert S. and Gracia Fay Ellwood. ["Spiritualism"](https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/spiritualism). *Contemporary American Religion*. Reproduced on Encyclopedia.com (accessed 14 October 2026).
12. Jolly, Martyn. ["'A condensation of sublimated matter': photography, belief and the spirits in colonial Australia"](https://martynjolly.com/2025/10/20/a-condensation-of-sublimated-matter-photography-belief-and-the-spirits-in-colonial-australia/). Talk in the *Believing What You See* research event series, School of Art, Communication and English, University of Sydney, 10 October 2025; posted 20 October 2025 (accessed 14 October 2026).
13. Jolly, Martyn. ["About"](https://martynjolly.com/about/) (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).

## Further reading

- American Museum of Photography. ["The Mumler Mystery: A Gallery of Spirit Photography"](https://photographymuseum.com/mumler). The American Photography Museum, Inc., 2000.
- Introvigne, Massimo. ["Spiritualism and the Visual Arts"](https://wrldrels.org/2017/08/02/spiritualism-and-the-visual-arts/). World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2017.
- Jolly, Martyn. ["Spirit Photography and Australia"](https://martynjolly.com/2013/10/03/spirit-photography-and-australia/). Conference paper, 2009.
- National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. ["Spirit slides"](https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/spirit-slides). Curated collection.
- Science Museum Group. ["Album of Crewe Spirit Circle"](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8228836/joe-thomas-photograph). National Science and Media Museum, Bradford.