C. Vincent Patrick

“ But if a plate is duly exposed with camera and lens, and unseen faces appear on development, the matter is not quite so simple. For it is well recognised that the camera may record what is invisible to the eye; invisible stars are detected by the photographic plate, and anyone who has examined a nebula or comet through a telescope, after seeing a photograph of the same object, realises this fact to his disappointment. Similarly a can of hot water may be photographed, by a long exposure, in a perfectly dark room ”

“ So if a spirit photograph is to be classed as possibly genuine, the spirit may either appear self-luminous and cast no shadow, or may appear to be illuminated from the same point as the sitter, and cast a shadow on the background, if the latter be of a suitable nature to show it. But on examining a collection of spirit photographs taken by various professional mediums, we find that as often as not the spirit and sitter are lighted from opposite sides; or that a spirit face with a well-marked shadow on one cheek throws no shadow on the background. ”

“ If only believers in spirit photographs would take the trouble to learn a little more about fraud and tighten up their control accordingly, instead of inventing strange hypotheses to bolster up their imperfect observations, we should hear less of photographic mediums and fewer people would be duped in this deplorable fashion. ”

“ Note.—Some believers in spirit photography will dissent from this view on the ground that experiment has shown that when a photograph is taken the extra is not produced by the reflection of ultra-violet light from an “object” (partial materialisation or the like) but by the use of a “psychic transparency” applied to the plate and exposed to “spirit” light. With the first part of this we cordially agree, but the hypothesis of the “psychic transparency” seems to be no more than a resolute attempt to evade the plainest indications of fraud. ”

“ The conjurer’s audience knows that it is a trick; the medium’s does not. Even the most hardened sceptic will probably have a lingering doubt in his mind as to whether there may not possibly be “something in it” after all. This is all to the medium’s advantage, and it must be remembered that not only does he work for much of his time under lighting conditions which are peculiarly favourable to fraudulent manipulation, but also that the great majority of his sitters start with a considerable prepossession to the effect that they are encountering something inexplicable. ”

“ In some cases the plates are not exposed in a camera, but merely submitted to “spirit influences,” which results in more or less distinct faces, or even screeds of writing, appearing on development.
It is not perhaps surprising to find that the spirit photograph originated in America, where it dates back to the days of the wet-plate process. The first recorded case comes from Boston, in 1862. One Mumler, an engraver by trade, made chemistry and photography his hobby; and having among his friends a professional photographer, he was frequently dabbling with plates and chemicals in his studio. ”

“ Buguet pointed out to the court one face which had been recognised as the mother of one sitter, the sister of a second, and the friend of a third. One spirit, recognised by a sitter as his lifelong friend, was declared by another man to be an excellent likeness of his still-living—and much annoyed—father-in-law. ”

“ Since spiritualists claim that the presence of invisible spirits may be detected by photography, it seems reasonable to inquire how far this is compatible with established physical facts. If a plate is wrapped in paper and submitted to “spirit influences”—whatever these may be—never being exposed in a camera at all, and on development shows faces or writing, I personally can only find one explanation—trickery. ”

“ A very little mechanical ingenuity will enable a medium who takes a pride in his work to rig up an arrangement of this kind which can be switched off and on at will and which will project an image on a predetermined spot on the bench. By the simple expedient of having the bench so cluttered up with bottles and miscellaneous rubbish that this spot is the only unencumbered one, the unsuspecting sitter may be forced to lay a plate on this spot while, for example, he is marking another. ”

“ The reliability of witnesses is a crucial question in the study of psychical phenomena and has for long been a bone of contention between spiritualists and their critics. If honesty, care, and intelligence alone sufficed to make a man’s testimony reliable the whole range of spiritualistic phenomena, including spirit photography, might long ago have been taken as proved beyond all possibility of doubt. ”

“ What matter if all appearances and all reasoning are against our beliefs? Did not Satan put marine fossils on the tops of hills to shake our faith in Genesis? Did not stupid spirits carelessly leave false beards and dirty muslin in the pockets of Williams and Rita—those wonderful materialising mediums? ”

“ If the plates are not marked, it will be a simple matter to substitute, during the focussing operations, a duplicate slide containing a faked plate.
4. Little accidents are apt to happen in the unaccustomed light of the red lamp; while the sitter is groping on the floor for a wrapper he has dropped, or while his attention is in some other way diverted for a moment, the exchange is made.
I am aware that many will ridicule the idea of such a simple trick being played upon an intelligent observer; but any conjuror, whose business it is to do this kind of thing, knows that it is remarkably easy. ”

“ The more usual type of “spirit photograph,” with which this article is chiefly concerned. Here a plate is exposed upon a sitter or sitters, and on development an “extra” appears, varying from splashes of light to fully-formed features or figures. The presence of a medium is usually regarded as being essential for such phenomena; but similar appearances have occasionally been obtained by amateurs on several well-attested occasions, either unexpectedly, or upon plates deliberately exposed for the purpose, no professional medium being present. ”

“ The argument most frequently brought forward, in favour of the genuineness of spirit photographs, is that the conditions employed in their taking leave no loophole for fraud. It has been pointed out in the preceding section that the usual “test conditions” leave not one, but many, such loopholes. Evidence of fraud has at some time or other been brought against most spirit photograph mediums, and they have consequently been more or less discredited. Other mediums have been more clever—or more fortunate—and many people therefore argue that they are not all to be tarred with the same brush ”

“ And when it comes to recognition being instantly claimed from the negative and before a print is made—as in a case I heard of not long ago—one almost gives up hope!
One need hardly point out that, although a medium who merely trusts to luck will probably score a good proportion of “hits” by ringing the changes on a few common types of face, he can greatly increase this proportion by a little adroit “pumping” of the sitter which will give him a guide to at least the general type of face expected, thus enabling him to “deliver the goods,” at any rate approximately, at the next séance. ”

“ If I had to summarise the whole of modern psychological doctrines in one line I should quote the popular saying, “The wish is father to the thought.” The whole of our mental activity, our thoughts, actions, opinions, and dreams are moulded by wishes or innate tendencies of one kind or another. ”

“ Patrick do not involve touching the plates at all. It would not be at all impossible for an artist in such work to allow a sitter to use his own plates, camera, slides, dishes, and chemicals in his own studio and dark-room, to load, unload, and develop the plates himself without their ever being touched by the “medium” and yet to produce a perfectly good extra. ”

“ Radiant heat and ultra-violet rays are the ether waves nearest in wave-length and properties to light; X-rays and the waves responsible for wireless telegraphy appear to be similar waves further removed along the scale of wave-length.
Now in order to photograph an invisible object we require rays that (a) affect a photographic plate; (b) are capable of refraction by a lens; and (c) are invisible to the eye. The properties of the principal known rays concerned may be summarised as follows:
It appears, then, that ultra-violet rays are suitable for our purpose ”

“ First, the recognition may be perfectly well founded, but the “extra” may have been derived from an existing photograph of the deceased; second, and more frequently, the recognition is illusory and exists only in the sitter’s imagination.
As regards the first of these points, it should be remembered that most people are photographed at one time or another, some of them frequently, and that it is not very difficult to obtain a photograph of a given person if one goes about it in the right way. ”

“ So, to anyone who thinks that in the mouth of two or three witnesses the genuineness of spirit photographs shall be established, I would say, “Go home and invest a few shillings in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, [39] vols. iv. and viii.—it will be more profitable than the same amount laid out in photographic séances—and when you have carefully read their account of the Davey experiments in conjunction with Mr. Patrick’s paper, see whether your confidence in spirit photographs is as strong as ever!” ”

“ The lighting of the fairies is badly wrong; they are brightly illuminated from a point behind the camera, whereas Alice is less brightly illuminated, and from the left-hand side. Sir Arthur, in his article, [35] points out that this is accounted for by the “fairy psychoplasm” having a “faint luminosity of its own.” To appear brighter than the sitter, photographed by 1⁄50th of a second exposure at three o’clock on a sunny July afternoon, the fairies would have to resemble in luminosity a battery of arc lights! ”

“ We know that the camera can detect, or rather that the photographic plate is sensitive to, ether waves which produce no effect on the retina of the human eye, and it seems, on the whole, less improbable that “spirits,” if they exist, should produce subtle and relatively minor etheric disturbances of this kind than that they should be responsible for the movements of gross material objects in the way which is often claimed for them. ”

“ A little spirit drapery was added round the face, and the whole thrown slightly out of focus; it is really a most clumsy piece of work, and should deceive no one.
In some spirit photographs produced by double exposure there is a double background, as occurred in my own photograph referred to above. There may be either two different backgrounds, or a double outline of the same background; in either case the “spirit’s background” is usually fainter than the “sitter’s background,” and shows through the darker parts of the sitter. ”

“ Let us suppose that an eminent physicist watches a sleight-of-hand conjuror, who produces a dozen or more eggs from a small velvet bag, which was unquestionably empty when examined by the audience a few seconds previously; he will certainly not assume mediumistic powers on the part of the conjuror, or postulate the materialisation of a spirit hen. ”

“ It has been several times pointed out that spirit extras in some cases show the characteristic dots produced by the half-tone newspaper illustration process; if the medium cannot obtain a real photograph of the required spirit, he has to copy a newspaper reproduction. If he is clever, he can eliminate these process marks by printing in his spirit slightly out of focus; but very often he does not take the trouble. ”

“ If one could be sure that the results obtained were not due to trickery one would be in a far better position as regards the problems of their origin and so forth than one is in the case of other types of “physical” phenomena. One could collect spirit photographs, compare them with one another, correlate their differences with the varying conditions of their production, and generally study them at leisure—a procedure which is not possible with table-levitations, materialisations, or direct-voice phenomena. ”

“ They pointed out that some of the plates had been exposed twice, as shown by the marks on the edges caused by two different patterns of dark slide. The spiritualists, on the other hand, reported that “the photographers were not in a proper frame of mind” to obtain results.
In America the movement has always found rather more adherents than in this country. Spirit photography has been practised in different parts of the United States practically since Mumler’s time to the present day; the same medium usually producing other kinds of spirit phenomena as well. ”

“ I believe that the great majority of the recognitions of spirit photographs are determined either by the definite wish to find evidence of survival or by the vaguer desire to obtain “positive” results of some kind, for positive results are always pleasanter and more satisfactory than negative. ”

“ Noteworthy points are that the spirits are always without legs, and are usually on the right of the sitter. A considerable number of his extras, indistinct though they were, were recognised by the sitters and their friends as the dead person whose photograph they were expecting. (The value of these recognitions is dealt with in a later section.) Naturally, cries of fraud were raised, and investigators, consisting of men of science and newspaper representatives, devised “test conditions” to eliminate this possibility. ”

“ Josty discovered himself to be possessed of clairvoyant faculties, and declared that he [11] saw spirits at the séances; the marks on the plates would then appear in the positions he had indicated. These marks had only the very slightest resemblance to human figures: one is described as being like a dragon. Out of several hundred plates, thirty-two bore these marks. Beattie’s integrity was never challenged; but it has been suggested that Josty produced the smudges on the plates—as he very easily could do—in order to keep himself in employment of a light and lucrative character. ”

“ But as already pointed out, the loopholes left for fraud are so numerous that it is vain to hope to guard against them all. In fact, the most suspicious feature about the whole of psychic photography is the fact that a procedure is insisted on which must give these innumerable loopholes and the obvious “safe” procedure is never, so far as I know, allowed at all. ”