Back in 2005, I was lucky enough to see an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York called The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, which included everything from 19th century cartes de visite of spirits haunting their still-living loved ones to the shadowy images in “thoughtography” Polaroids conjured up in the 1960s. On display was an assortment of photographs in which tables and dolls levitate, ectoplasm erupts from the mouths of mediums, and ghosts hover in backgrounds (and play guitars, even). Fairies are documented taking sunbaths in an English garden. A “skotograph” taken via brainwave and without a camera captures a pair of eerie eyes staring in the dark.

For those inclined to delve further into the wide-ranging world of spirit and unexplained photography, a number of archival repositories around the United States hold some fascinating collections. Here are a few otherworldly highlights:

J. Paul Getty Museum

Spirit photography began in the mid-19th century, gaining in popularity after the massive losses of the Civil War. Some studio photographers began offering their services as mediums of sorts for bereaved portrait-sitters, their cameras purportedly capturing the spirited images of loved ones hovering nearby or embracing the living. Many were convinced these photographic manifestations were real (including, famously, Mary Todd Lincoln), but there were skeptics. Spirit photographer William Mumler (1832-1884), for example, was sued for fraud in 1869. He was acquitted due to lack of evidence when it could not be demonstrated precisely how he created his ghostly images.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles holds a photo album of Mumler’s work, which has been digitized. There are 39 images in the album, including those that illustrate this essay.

William H. Mumler (American, 1832-1884); Mrs. Tinkham, 1862-1875, Albumen silver print; 9.5 x 5.7 cm (3 3/4 x 2 1/4 in.); The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.

American Philosophical Society

For more 19th century spirit images, the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia holds the papers of French “psychic scientist” Albert de Rochas (1837-1914). The collection contains 69 photographs collected by de Rochas of “spirits, psychic forces, séances, mediums, and ‘sensitives’ taken between circa 1875 and 1900,” some of which are available on the APS website.  

Harry Ransom Center

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, was a devotee of spiritualism for decades. In 1920 he published The Coming of the Fairies, a book that popularized recent photographs taken by two young girls—Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths of Cottingley, England—that show themselves mingling in a garden with several fairies. The book caused an immediate sensation and the so-called “Cottingley fairies” created controversy for decades until 1981 when Griffiths admitted the photographs were faked, the fairies copied from published illustrations.

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds the Arthur Conan Doyle Photography Collection Literary File, which contains images of spirits, séances, mediums,  ectoplasm, and, of course, fairies.

Image (L): William H. Mumler (American, 1832-1884); [Unidentified woman seated with a female “spirit” in background], 1862-1875, Albumen silver print; 9.8 x 5.7 cm (3 7/8 x 2 1/4 in.); The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In the 1960s a Chicago elevator operator named Ted Serios discovered an apparent talent for “thoughtography”—that is, producing photographic images through psychokinesis. Working with researcher Jule Eisenbud, Serios produced about 1,000 Polaroids, many of which contained blurry buildings, cars and everyday objects supposedly conjured up by Serios in controlled conditions, often after being given a “target” image.

Serios’ images can be found in the Jule Eisenbud collection on Ted Serios and thoughtographic photography, Collection 23, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD) and many are available for viewing online.

Elsewhere

In addition to the above archival sources, UCLA Library Special Collections has several books about spirit photography, many of them in the Drury collection on psychic phenomena and spiritualism (Coll 1633).

Further afield, check out the collection of the College of Psychic Studies, London.

Melissa Haley is a Processing Archivist at UCLA Library Special Collections. She previously worked at the New York Public Library, New York University, and the New-York Historical Society.

Sources

Cheroux, Clement, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, Denis Canguilhem, and Sophie Schmit. The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Kaplan, Louis. The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Image (R): William H. Mumler (American, 1832-1884); [Three "spirits" with a photograph on a table propped against a vase with flowers], 1862-1875, Albumen silver print; 9.5 x 5.6 cm (3 3/4 x 2 3/16 in.); The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.