Before me, as I write, are two spirit photographs which have gone at least part of the round of the Press, and confirmed the consoling belief in thousands of hearts. One is a photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and behind him, peeping over his shoulder, is a strange form which has, he says, "a general but not very exact resemblance to my son." The other photograph is supplied by the Rev. W. Wynne. It bears the ghostly faces of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, with whom Mr. Wynne had been acquainted; and the text says that the plate was exposed for Mr. and Mrs. Wynne and received these ghostly imprints. Both these photographs came from "the Crewe Spiritual Circle," which has done so much in recent years to strengthen the faith.

Let me first make a few general remarks on spirit photography. Everybody to-day has an elementary idea what taking a photograph means. A chemical mixture, rich in certain compounds of silver, is spread as a film over the glass plate which you buy at the stores. The rays of light—chiefly the ultra-violet or "actinic" rays—which come from the sun (or the electric lamp) are reflected by a body upon this plate, through the lenses of the camera, and form a picture of that body by fixing the chemicals on the plate. The lens is essential in order to concentrate the rays and give an image, instead of a mere flood of light. The object which reflects the light—whether it be the ordinary light or the actinic rays—must be material. Ether does not reflect light, for light is a movement of ether.

Spiritualists have such vague ideas as to what can and cannot happen that they overlook these elementary details altogether. Sometimes they ask us to believe that a medium can get the head of a ghost on a plate, without a camera, by merely placing his or her hand on the packet containing the plate. Even if there were a materialized spirit present, it could make no image on the plate unless the rays were properly concentrated through lenses. But the whole idea of spirits hovering about and making images on photographic plates because a man called a medium puts his hand on the camera is preposterous. That would be magic with a vengeance! Even if we suppose that the spirits have material bodies—ether bodies would not do—which reflect only the actinic rays, and so are not visible to the eye, the idea remains as absurd as ever. To say that the invisible material body of Mr. Gladstone (if anybody is inclined to believe in such a thing) only reflects the rays into the camera at Crewe when Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton, the mediums, put their hands on the camera, and do not reflect light at all unless these mediums touch the camera, is to utter an obvious absurdity. The ghosts are either material or they are not.

We must look for a simpler explanation. Now, when we examine Sir A. C. Doyle's spirit photograph, we find at once that the candour of that earnest and conscientious Spiritualist gives us a clue. He tells us how he bought the plate, examined the camera, and exposed and developed the plate with his own hands. "No hands but mine ever touched the plate," he says impressively. We shall see presently that that need not impress us in the least. What is important is that Sir Arthur adds: "On examining with a powerful lens the face of the 'extra' I have found such a marking as is produced in newspaper process work." Very few of the general public would understand the significance of this, but I advise the reader to take an illustrated book or journal and examine a photograph in it with a lens (which need not be powerful). He will see at once that the figure consists of a multitude of dots, and wherever you find an illustration showing these dots it has been at some time printed in a book or paper. During a lantern lecture, for instance, you can tell, by the presence or absence of these dots, whether a slide has been reproduced from an illustration or made direct from the photographic negative.

Sir A. C. Doyle is candid, but his Spiritualist zeal outruns his reason. He goes on to say:—

It is very possible that the picture ... was conveyed on to the plate from some existing picture. However that may be, it was most certainly supernormal, and not due to any manipulation or fraud.

This is an amazing conclusion. It is not merely "possible," but certain, that the photo, which he says resembles his son, had been printed somewhere before it got on to his plate. The marks are infallible. It is further practically certain that, when the son of so distinguished a novelist died on active service, his photograph would appear in the Press. It is equally certain that mediums, knowing well that Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle would presently seek to get into touch with their dead son, would treasure that photograph. When I add that, as I will explain presently, there is no need at all for the spirit photographer to touch the plate, the reader may judge for himself how much "supernormal" there is about the matter.

Let us glance next at the Gladstone ghost. We are not told if it showed process marks, but, of course, they need not always be looked for. It might be taken direct from a photograph in the case of so well known a couple as the Gladstones. But here again there is a significant weakness. When you turn the photograph upside down, you discover that the photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Wynne are on the lower half of the plate, and inverted! You have to come to this remarkable conclusion, if you follow the Spiritualist theory, that either the highly respectable Mr. and Mrs. Wynne or the perfectly puritanical Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were standing on their heads! For my part, I decline to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone have taken to such frivolity in the spirit land. I prefer to think that the spirit photographer has bungled.

But how could it be done if the plate was never in the hands of the photographer? In the early days of Spiritualism faking was easy. You put on an air of piety, and your sitter implicitly trusted you. It was then quite easy to make a ghost, as every photographer knows. Expose a plate for half the required time to a young lady dressed as a ghost, then put the plate away in the dark until a sitter comes and give it a full exposure with him. He is delighted, when the plate is developed, to find a charming lady spirit, of ghostly consistency, beaming upon him. Double development, or skilful manipulation of the plate in the dark room, will give the same result.

This is how the trick was done in the sixties and seventies. A London photographer, Hudson, made large sums by this kind of trickery. It was easily exposed—any person who has dabbled in photography knows it—and often the furniture or carpet behind the ghost could be seen through it.

At last there was a very bad exposure which for a time almost suspended the trade. At Paris there was a particularly gifted photographer medium named Buguet. Not only were his ghosts very artistic, but Spiritualists were able to identify their dead relatives on the photographs. Buguet came to London and did a roaring trade. But early in 1875 the police of Paris carried Buguet off to prison and searched his premises. They found a headless doll or lay figure, and a large variety of heads to fit it. At first Buguet had had confederates who used to creep quietly behind the sitter and impersonate the ghost. Then he used to take a half-exposure photograph of his doll, and so dispense with confederates. He had a very smart clerk at the door who used, in collecting your twenty francs, to get from you a little information about the dead relative you wanted to see. Then Buguet rigged up and dressed a more or less appropriate doll, gave it a half-exposure, and brought the same plate to use for his sitter.

One feature of the trial of Buguet should be carefully borne in mind. Spiritualists are very fond of assuring us that the spirit voice or message or photograph they obtained from a medium was "perfectly recognizable." They scout any suggestion that they could be mistaken. Do they not know the features of their dead son or daughter or wife? During the trial of Buguet scores of these Spiritualists entered the witness-box and swore that they had received exact likenesses of their dead relatives. But Buguet, hoping to get a lighter sentence, confessed that the same group of heads had served every purpose, and the witnesses in his favour were all wrong![11]

Buguet got a year in prison, and for a time trade was poor. But new methods were invented, and spirit photographers are again at work all over the world, and have been for decades. In country places the old method may still be followed. Generally, however, the sitter brings his or her own plate, and is then supposed to be secured against fraud. The next development was easy enough. A prepared plate was substituted for the plate you brought. This trick in turn was discovered, and sitters began to make secret marks on the plates they brought, in order to identify them afterwards. Then the machinery of the ghost was rigged up in the camera itself, and you might bring your own plate and mark it unmistakably with a diamond, if you liked. The ghost appeared on it when it was developed.

There were several ways of doing this. The first was to cut out the figure of the ghost in celluloid or some other almost transparent material and attach it to the lens. When this trick leaked out, a very tiny figure of the ghost, hidden in the camera, was projected through a magnifying glass (a kind of small magic-lantern) on to the plate when it was exposed in the camera. As time went on, sitters began to insist on examining the camera, and these tricks were apt to be discovered. I remember an honest and critical Spiritualist telling me, about ten years ago, that he offered a certain spirit-photographer (who is still at work) five pounds for a spirit-photograph, if the sitter were permitted to see every step of the process. The photographer agreed; but when my friend wanted to examine the camera he at first bluffed, and then returned the money, saying that that was carrying scepticism too far! He had the ghost in his camera.

Your modern Spiritualist friend smiles when you tell him of these tricks. They are prehistoric. To-day you are allowed to examine the camera, bring your own plate, expose it and develop it yourself. The logic of the Spiritualist is here just as defective as ever. Because he has not on this occasion discovered certain forms of trickery which are now well known, he concludes that there was no trickery. As if trickery did not evolve like anything else! Spiritualists were just as certain twenty years ago that there was no possibility of fraud because they brought their own marked plates; but they were cheated every time.

There are still several ways of making the ghost. Where the sitter is careless, or an enthusiastic Spiritualist, the old tricks (substitution of plates, etc.) are used; but there are new tricks to meet the critical. The ghost may be painted in sulphate of quinine or other chemicals on the ground-glass screen. Such a figure is invisible when it is dry. There may be a trick dark-slide, with a plate which will appear in front of yours. If the photographer develops it for you, he can skilfully get a ghost on it by holding another plate against yours (pretending to see how it is developing) in the yellow light. If you develop it yourself, you use his dish, which is often an ingenious mechanism. It has glass sides or a glass bottom, and, while the whole thing is covered up during development, secret lights impress the ghost on it. An actual case of this sort was exposed in Pearson's Weekly on January 31, 1920.

When the Spiritualist airily assures us that he has guarded against all these things (some of which could not be seen at all) we have to remember that Spiritualist literature teems with cases in which, we are told, "all precautions against fraud were taken," yet sooner or later the fraud is discovered. But the possibilities are not yet exhausted. I once saw a remarkable photograph which Sir Robert Ball had taken of the famous old ship, the Great Eastern. Along the side of it, in enormous letters, was the name "Lewis"; yet this name was totally invisible to the naked eye when one looked at the ship. A coat of paint had been put over the name—the ship had been used by Lewis's as an advertisement—and concealed it from the eye, yet the sensitive plate registered it. No scrutiny of the camera or the studio or the dark room would reveal conjuring of that sort. In fine, there is the possibility of some compound of radium, or radio-paint, being used at one or other stage in the process.

No sensible man will pay serious attention to spirit photographs until one is taken in these conditions; neither plates nor any single part of the apparatus shall belong to or be touched by the medium. The spirit photographer shall be brought to an unknown studio, and shall not be allowed to do more than, under the eye of an expert observer, lay his hand, at a sufficient distance from the lens, on the outside of a camera which does not belong to him. That has not been done yet. Until it is done fraud is certainly not excluded; and any man who uses the medium's own premises and apparatus is courting deception.

That the ghost on a photograph often resembles a dead relative of the sitter will surprise no sensible person. It is well known that mediums collect such photographs, as well as information about the dead. Mr. Carrington describes in his Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism the elaborate system they have. They have considerable knowledge of likely sitters in their own town. In fact, I have clearly enough traced in some cases that they first gathered information about a man, and then got an intermediary to persuade him to visit them. He, of course, tells everybody afterwards that the medium "could not possibly" know anything about him. Sometimes a Spiritualist takes the precaution of going to a spirit photographer in a distant town. If he is quite able to conceal his identity, he will get nothing, or only a common or garden ghost. But he makes an appointment for a sitting in a few days to try again, and gives his name and address; and the next mail takes a letter to a medium in his town asking for information and photographs. As I have previously said, when the Berlin police arrested Frau Abend and her husband they found an encyclopÆdic mass of information about possible sitters.

A case, with which I may conclude this section, is given by Dr. Tuckett in his Evidence for the Supernatural (pp. 52-3). Mr. Stead was once delighted to find the ghost of a "brother Boer" on a photograph, and the clairvoyant photographer mystically informed him that he "got" the name "Piet Botha," and gathered that he had been shot in the Boer War. Mr. Stead was jubilant, and the Materialist was nowhere, when he learned that Piet Botha had been shot in the war. Who in England knew anything about Piet Botha and his death? But the wicked sceptic got to work, and he presently discovered that on November 9, 1899, the Graphic had reproduced a photograph of Piet Botha, who had been shot in the war! A magnificent case fell completely to pieces.

Spirit-drawings and paintings have drawn out just the same ingenuity on the part of the mediums. A favourite and impressive form is to let the sitter choose a blank card and see that it is blank. Then the medium tears off the corner and hands it to the sitter, so that he will recognize his own card at the close. The lights are completely extinguished, the card is laid on the table, and when the gas is re-lit a very fair picture (still wet) in oil is found to have been painted on the card. David Duguid persuaded thousands of people of this marvel in the later decades of the nineteenth century. It was represented that he was merely a cabinet-maker who, in 1866, came under the control of the spirits of certain Dutch painters, and was used by them. I learned long ago in Scotland that the statement that he had never practised drawing or painting was untrue. It is, in any case, probable that he had torn the corners off the little paintings he had prepared in advance, and that it was these corners which he palmed off on the sitter. In the dark he substituted his painting for the blank card, and the corner naturally fitted. The fact that the paint was "still wet" need impress nobody. A touch of varnish easily gives that impression.

Innumerable tricks have been invented by American mediums for fooling the Spiritualist public in this respect, and in many cases it taxes the ingenuity of an expert conjurer to find out where the fraud lay. Mr. Carrington gives a long series of frauds which he has at one time or other studied. One medium offers you an apparently blank sheet of paper, and, although nothing more suspicious than laying it under an innocent-looking blotting-pad can be seen, and there is certainly no substitution, a photograph appears on it while you wait. If you happen to be one of those people whom the medium had had in mind as a possible sitter, or whom he (through an intermediary) induced to come to him, it may be a photograph of your dead son. The photograph was there, invisible, all the time. It had been taken on a special paper (solio paper), and bleached out with bi-chloride of mercury. The blotting-pad was wet with a solution of hypo, and this suffices to restore the photograph.

In other cases the medium, with solemn air, enters his cabinet and draws the curtain. There is a fantastic theory in the Spiritualist world that this cabinet, or cloth-covered frame (like a Punch and Judy show), prevents the "fluid" or force which the medium generates from spreading about the room and being wasted. Nearly all these convenient theories and regulations come from the spirits through the mediums; that is to say, are imposed by the mediums themselves. The closed cabinet, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. In the case of the spirit-painting it may have a trap-door or other outlet, through which the medium hands the blank canvas to a confederate and receives the previously painted picture.

Another medium shows you a blank canvas, and, almost without taking it out of your sight, produces an elegant, and still wet, oil painting on it. The painting was there from the start, of course, but a blank canvas was lightly gummed over it, and all the conjuring the medium had to do was to strip off this blank canvas while your attention was diverted. Mediums know that their sitters are profoundly impressed if the paint is "still wet." I have heard Spiritualists stubbornly maintain that this proves that the painting had only just been done, and done by spirit-power, since no man could do it in so short a time. It is a good illustration of the ease with which they are duped. The picture may have been painted a week or a month before. Rub it with a little poppy oil and you have "wet paint."

Mr. Carrington's Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism, one of the richest manuals of mediumistic trickery, has a number of these picture-frauds. A painting is, when thoroughly dry, covered with a solution of water and zinc-white. It is then invisible, and you have "a blank canvas." The picture comes out again by merely washing it with a sponge. In other cases a painting is done in certain chemicals which will remain invisible until a weak solution of tincture of iron is applied; and it may be applied to the back of the canvas. The medium, Carrington suggests, begs the sitters to sing "Nearer, my God, to Thee," to drown the noise, while his confederate creeps behind the canvas and sprays it with the solution. The picture dawns before their astonished eyes.

Perhaps the best illustration is one that Carrington gives in his Personal Experiences, to which I must send the reader for the full story. Two spinster-mediums of Chicago had a great and profitable reputation for spirit-painted photographs. I take it that their general air of ancient virtue and piety disarmed sitters, who are apt to think that a fraudulent medium will betray himself or herself by criminal features. You took a photograph of your dead friend, and asked that the spirits might reproduce it in oils. The medium studied it, and made an appointment with you at a later date. Perhaps the medium then studied it again, and made a further appointment. On the solemn day the medium held a blank canvas up to the window before your eyes, and gradually, first as a dim dawn of colours, then as a precise figure, the picture appeared on the canvas. Carrington suggests that she held up to the window two canvases—a thin blank canvas a few inches in front of the prepared picture. By deftly and slowly bringing these together with her fingers she brought about the illusion; and only a little ordinary sleight of hand was required to get rid of the blank canvas.

These illustrations will suffice to show the reader what subtle and artful trickery is used in this department of Spiritualism. He will know what to think when a Spiritualist friend, who could not detect the simplest conjuring trick, shows him a spirit-photograph and says that he took care there was no fraud. The ordinary members of the Spiritualist movement are as honest as any, but their eagerness—natural as it is—puts them in a frame of mind which is quite unreasonable. The trickery of this class of mediums has been developing for nearly sixty years, and it has to find new forms every few years as the older forms are exposed. The mediums have become expert conjurers and even, in some cases, expert chemists—or they have expert chemists in collusion with them—and it is simply foolish for an ordinary person to think that he can judge if there has been fraud. We must have at least one elementary safeguard. No part of the apparatus employed must belong to the medium or be manipulated by him; and the photograph must not be taken on his premises. Every Spiritualist who approves a photograph taken under other conditions is courting deception and encouraging fraud.

And instead of finding even the leading Spiritualists setting an example of caution in face of the recognized mass of fraud in their movement, we find them exhibiting a bewildering hastiness and lack of critical faculty. Most readers will remember how Sir A. C. Doyle sent to the Daily Mail on December 16, 1919, a photograph of a picture of Christ which had, he said, been "done in a few hours by a lady who has no power of artistic expression when in her normal condition." The picture was, he said, "a masterpiece"; so wonderful, in fact, that "a great painter in Paris" (not named, of course) "fell instantly upon his knees" before such a painting. It was "a supreme example" of a Spiritualist miracle. The sequel is pretty well known. On December 31 the artist's husband wrote a letter to the Daily Mail, of which I need quote only one sentence:—

Mrs. Spencer wishes definitely to state once and for all that her pictures are painted in a perfectly normal manner, that she is disgusted at having "psychic power" attributed to her, and that she does not cherish any ludicrous and mawkish sentiments about helping humanity by her paintings.

[11] I might add that Mrs. Gladstone is not at all recognized by her own son in Mr. Wynne's photograph. The other figure seems to me certainly a reproduction of a photograph or bad picture of Gladstone.