Spirit Photography | Some Spooky Fun Historic Hoaxes

William Mulmer was born in 1832. For historical context, the oldest known Daguerrotype is from 1837, so Mulmer was born right around the same time as photography, and he loved the new medium, but started off as a hobbyist. Mulmer worked as a jewelry engraver, but in his spare time, he liked taking photographs of his family and friends. In 1860 though, he took a selfie that would change the course of his life. In his self portrait, he noticed something strange. There appeared to be a ghost behind him. It just so happened that his wife was a healing medium who would help people make contact with the spirits of dead loved ones. The spiritualist movement was quite popular in the late 19th century and William Mulmer had found a way to use the latest scientific technology to photograph spirits providing dramatic and compelling images as evidence to validate the seances.

While Mulmer created his spirit photographs using double exposure, basically he would put a plate of the “ghost” in front of the sensitive photographic plate while he took the spirit photo, double exposure is not the only trick people can use to capture a ghost on film.

A famous ghost image was created in 1891 without a double exposure. In the image we see a seemingly empty room with a faint image of a ghostly man on a chair. We barely see the man as really only his head and arm are visible. He seems to be fading from the image and just a part of the ghostly body hangs in the air. The photo was taken in the library of Combermere Abbey shortly after Lord Combermere died in a riding accident. He was being buried at the time the photo was taken leading many to the seemingly obvious conclusion that the man in the picture was the ghost of Lord Combermere. In reality, it was a quirk of a long exposure photograph.

Learn more about early photography with these episodes of Who ARTed:

The World's First Photobomb

Louis Daguerre The Artist's Studio

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