Part 8

Mr. A. Glendinning, who brought about the sittings, deserves the thanks of all Spiritualists.

GHOSTS AND THEIR PHOTOGRAPHS.

By THE REV. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A.

“I suppose there is nothing more difficult than for scientific people to realise that the dead are living.”—Rev. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A.

Ever since the appearance of the more than sensational “Real Ghost Stories” and “More Ghost Stories”—which are, like the ghosts, still appearing—a great and calm tolerance of the occult made manifest seems to have diffused itself throughout English society. People are bringing out their own private little bogey stories, of which they used to be quite ashamed, and, what is more curious, they are bringing out their bogey photos, both of which things reveal the fact how many more ghost stories and ghost photos are about than people seem generally to have imagined. Only the other day I was told of a young lady who went down to Brighton to an ordinary photographer. She sat as an ordinary sitter, suspecting nothing. The plate came out blurred all over; photographer surprised, and on point of casting plate aside, when sitter begs to see it, and further begs to have it printed off. Result—photo blurred all over, sitter unrecognisable; when subjected to high magnifyer, milky way of blue reveals innumerable faces, but all the same face! Recognised by young lady at once as face of dead lover. This is the kind of story which is becoming tiresomely common, and often bewilderingly well evidenced.

Now, unless I had thought this question of alleged appearances—palpable enough to be seen, perhaps photographed—might have a grave side to it, I should not have for two Sundays rung the changes, and the pros and cons. in the pulpit, and pointed out the momentous connexion between such manifestations and our interests here and hereafter. People seemed much impressed with this view. The fact is that every time I announced the subject at St. James’s, Westmoreland Street, Marylebone, crowds were unable to get seats, and I was in a way compelled to resume the topic next Sunday, while thousands struggled in vain to get into my tolerably spacious vestry after the sermon to catch glimpses of the selected photos and spirit drawings there exposed to view. Well, this shows, I suppose, that I had, if possible, under-estimated the toleration which I solicited for this dubious subject, but which I hardly expected to win.

“WILL YOU SHOW ME THE GHOST?”

The physical philosopher (and we are all physical philosophers, whatever else we may be) naturally asks, when he is told that this or that person has seen a ghost, “Will you show me the ghost?” Sometimes he is informed that if he sleeps in the haunted room he will be quite satisfied. Sometimes he does, and isn’t—sometimes he does, and is; when he is, like a wise man he is apt to keep what he has seen (as Johnson said every man did his religion) to himself. Perhaps he may have been in the habit of laughing at ghosts and sneering at people who believed in them, and doesn’t want to eat his own words. Perhaps he resembles the man who said “he did not believe in ghosts, but was very much afraid of them;” or, perhaps, he had no taste, after making a full confession about what he may have seen, for the retort courteous, that he was probably a fool or a liar—or both. Anyhow, the physical philosopher might next inquire, Did several people see the ghost at once, or independently at different times? Is there reason—that is to say—to suppose the ghost was really an objective (external to the spectator) or merely a subjective hallucination? A very reasonable inquiry. “Photograph me a ghost; chemicals have no fancies, plates don’t get nervous, and lenses tell no lies!” Good. So we proceed to get a medium into the studio; we photograph away, and a ghost comes out behind the medium!

“Ah! but did you examine the plate before it was slipped in?”

“No.”

“Then the plate was cooked; the ghost was already on it.”

“Try again.” This time you bring your own plate; but again comes a ghost.

“Ah! but did you change the screen behind you—shift it, or put your own screen?”

“No.”

“Well, the ghost was in chemicals on the screen.”

So next time you remove the photographer’s screen, and put your own, and bring your own plate, too; but again comes a ghost.

“Ah! but did you examine the inside of the camera? Did you watch the developing process? Did you watch your plate from beginning to end? Nay, did you spy everything—windows, &c.—outside thoroughly? A ghost might be shot on to the exposed camera. Did you allow any one to dress up in a sheet behind you, and do the partial exposure trick?”

Well, next time you take every precaution, and if still you get a ghost, “that gives to reflect,” as the French say; so let us reflect a little.

“AUTHENTIC” GHOST PHOTOS.

The most authentic ghost photos are the hardest to get hold of. They are in the hands of private amateur photographers, who are shy of lending or showing them because they are shy of being accused of fraud or folly; besides, to them these photos are often sacred, or they seem to portray the features of the beloved dead. I believe Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., one of the greatest scientists living—the renowned inventor of the radiometer—has obtained spirit photos of a materialised form that appeared apart from the medium, and moved about the room freely while a continuous current of electricity was being passed through the entranced medium, so that she could not move without betraying the motion. But, like the wise man he is, Mr. Crookes, after having tasted the quality of scientific bigotry, and already suffered somewhat for his ardour in the pursuit of unpopular and novel truth—Mr. Crookes, I say, keeps certain experiences, together with his abnormal photos, to himself, and will not now even show them. It is of no importance to him what those who do not and cannot know the facts think about them. They belong to his laboratory work. Why should he bother himself with a crowd of outsiders? Of course, no spirit photo, of itself, can bear conviction, nor is it possible to produce about it in a journal any evidence that will. The two spirit photos I have been prevailed upon to allow the Editor of the Daily Graphic to use with this open letter are, nevertheless, of considerable interest. (1) The lady seated went with her daughter. She did not tell the photographer who was in her thoughts. She thought of and longed for her father to appear. She did not even tell her daughter or any one else the mental test. She thought that her father should appear wearing a peculiar black cap which he commonly used during the last days of his illness. That test was never revealed before the plate was developed; but it was answered, as may be seen in the photo (see opposite); the features also are too marked to allow of any doubt.

(Lent by the Editor of “The Daily Graphic.”)]

THE LATE EDITOR OF “LIGHT.”

The picture on page 83 represents Mr. Stainton Moses and a figure unknown to him. The accomplished Editor of Light is best known to the public as M.A. Oxon. The Rev. Stainton Moses, a graduate of Oxford University, was for many years Classical and English master at University College, London. From his investigations he became convinced of the general truths of what is vaguely called Spiritualism, and has devoted himself for some twenty years to making the public familiar with the higher aspects, while warning them against its ridiculous, dangerous, or degrading tendencies. The only interest of the photo is that it was taken under all those strict test conditions which I have alluded to above in this open letter. The chief professional spirit photographers are M. Buguet, of Paris, frightened by the priest into a recantation of his spirit photos, which recantation no one who tested Buguet believes any more than does Buguet himself; Mr. Hudson, who was, I am told, not always above suspicion, but, like other mediums, was also successful under rigid test conditions; Mumler, Beattie, and many others I know nothing about. Mr. Stead is now occupied in testing spirit photography, and that being the case, we are soon likely to hear more about it from an abler pen than mine. So great was the interest shown in the labelled spirit photos and the spirit drawings by the late Mrs. Watts, daughter of William and Mary Howitt, exposed in my vestry, St. James’s, Westmoreland Street, Marylebone, that I kept them up for a second Sunday. There is nothing like publicity as a means of getting at truth. Let in the light! Sift facts! “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”—1 Thess. v. 21.

(Lent by the Editor of “The Daily Graphic.”)]

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY.

By JAS. ROBERTSON, Glasgow.

The most striking phenomena associated with what comes under the name of Spiritualism are those connected with photography. It was very naturally thought that nothing was so capable of bringing conviction to the inquirer as a record made by the camera, which might be considered free from all imagination, unconscious cerebration, expectancy, &c., and yet there has been no part of the phenomena that has been more fiercely assailed as being fraudulent. No matter how clear and searching and honest has been the experimenter, if success attends his work suspicion and cruel innuendo invariably follow him. The truths pertaining to the spiritual are not received in the same calm, critical, and philosophic spirit as the discoveries that are presented in other realms. People gladly welcome a new planet, or a new metal, and laud the discoverer; but the explorer in spiritual phenomena is at once set down as either a madman or a fraudulent person. One can scarcely estimate the loss the world has sustained by its want of fair treatment; sensitive souls fear to speak out and tell all they know. Robert Chambers kept his Spiritualism in the background, and walked through life honoured and respected, but he made the battle of unpopular truth all the more difficult to fight for the men and women who did speak out. Spiritualists, though set down as credulous, are as far removed from this condition as it is possible to be; they have had to fight their way step by step, critically examining, but honestly yielding when the facts were too much for them.

Very many photographic artists are in their ranks who have again and again met with strange and weird markings on the sensitive plate, which they could not understand; they have sought only to get at the truth. Fraud lives but for the hour, and the person who has joined the ranks of an unpopular cause knows that a fierce light will beat upon all his actions, so that he need be more than ordinarily cautious in all he sets down; but though bogus spirit pictures can be made, must we cease to present those which are got by honest people under conditions that have been considered perfect? Over twenty years since, in New York, a photographer named Wm. H. Mumler succeeded in getting hundreds of pictures of the so-called dead, which were recognised by their friends as portraits; the great body of people who went to him were total strangers, one of them, thickly veiled, being the wife of the murdered President Lincoln. On the plate was seen her husband and one of her children, who had passed on. I had the good fortune to come in contact with those who went to Mr. Mumler shortly after arriving in New York, and who got test pictures which were beyond cavil or suspicion. In hundreds of cases the camera saw and reported what the physical senses did not cognise.