The longer version: There were so many interesting threads to this conversation that we couldn't include in the final edit, including Erica's take on whether folks in the 19th century knew William Mumler might be a grifter (yes) — and whether that really matters (maybe not). Why do you think spirit photography took off? Were people not aware that technological trickery was being used? EF: It actually was controversial from the beginning. In fact, William Mumler went on trial in 1869 for fraud. So from the get-go, it was controversial. People were immediately saying, “This is a hoax.” This is the era also of P.T. Barnum, so lots of trickery. But then there are also people saying, “No, this is real.” Those who believed it were primed in two ways. One, they probably were already what we called Spiritualists. Spiritualism was a religious movement that started in Rochester, New York, in the 1840s but really took off around the Civil War. Spiritualism is this religious belief that the living can communicate with the dead, that the dead do not leave, that their souls, in some way, remain on Earth with us. So already you have people who are open to this Spiritualist idea that the dead live among us and that we can access the dead. Combine that with the Civil War, America's bloodiest war to date. People were never not reading in the newspapers about the massive death toll or experiencing it themselves with family dying. We have Mathew Brady's Civil War photography being disseminated through mass media — images of deceased soldiers killed in battle. And so people would be especially primed to want to believe in these spirit photographs, both because of this already prevalent Spiritualist idea, not shared by everyone but widespread enough, that the living can communicate with the dead, and by the sheer toll of death, and how many people were experiencing grief on such a scale and trying to grapple with what this all means. What are some famous spirit photographs you discovered during your research? EF: The most famous one by far is Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her deceased husband, Abraham Lincoln. This was taken in 1872 by Mumler. His reputation was already somewhat besmirched by the fraud trial from 1869, but if anyone has seen the Broadway show, Oh, Mary!, or knows much about Mary Todd Lincoln, she was very invested in the Spiritualist idea that you can communicate with the dead. So I think that was probably one of the more striking photos I saw. That photo was actually the one that got me thinking I really need to look into not just the technology behind the spirit photograph, but I also wanted to know what's the philosophical or scientific or religious principles that need to be in place for a spirit photograph to exist? And some of those principles that need to be in place are the Spiritualist idea that the living can communicate with the dead. If we didn't have Spiritualism, we wouldn't have spirit photography. What’s the deal with aura photos? EF: The colors these aura photos have go back to a kind of offshoot of Spiritualism that developed in the late 1800s and early 20th century. This was an offshoot called Theosophy, and it was started by a woman named Helena Blavatsky, who is American but spent a lot of time in India, and she more or less appropriated some Hindu and Indian religious beliefs in chakras and various kinds of belief systems, and came up with these colors. Theosophy believes in the unity of souls — we're all a universal human soul, everyone is connected through energetic matter. This all comes back to this Spiritualist idea of the soul as energetic matter, which we see happening in aura photography. So these pictures pick out the energetic matter and then the colors that are associated with particular kinds of electromagnetic waves, those colors are rooted in Blavatsky's theosophical philosophy of individual chakras and energy fields. Go deeper Erica also shared some of her favorite articles about spirit photography, including this 2017 Smithsonian Magazine article about what happened when an esteemed photographer and skeptic sat for a photograph in Mumler’s studio, and this 2019 History.com article on what became of Mumler after his 1869 trial for fraud. The Smithsonian Magazine article was adapted from The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost, a historical nonfiction book about Mumler written by Peter Manseau. Seeing Ghosts: A Brief Look at the Curious Business of Spirit Photography discusses the techniques employed by spirit photographers to create their images. Spirit Photography and the Occult: Making the Invisible Visible looks at the role played by imaging technologies such as photography and X-rays in the history of the supernatural, and how photographers and scientists tried to use images to reveal a hidden world. The Alice Austen House Museum published a brief history on aura photography and its connection to Helena Blavatsky’s 19th-century Theosophy. Shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association first book prize, Fretwell’s 2020 book, Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling, explores the history of psychophysics and how the science of the five senses offered late-19th century writers new conceptual foundations for representing lived experiences of racial and gender difference. Episode credits Audio editing and production by Scott Freedman and Zach DurocherInterview and written by Bethany Bump The Short Version is produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing at the University at Albany, which is part of the State University of New York. Comments, ideas, suggestions? Send them to mediarelations@albany.edu and be sure to put The Short Version in the subject line.
