(W. Whately Smith)

Believers in spirit photographs generally consider that they are playing their trump card when they point out that thousands of “extras” have been definitely recognised by sitters as portraits of their deceased friends or relatives. But this card, impressive as it looks, will not really take the trick. If it could be shown (i.) that a given “extra” was unmistakably recognisable as a portrait of a deceased—or even of a living—person, and (ii.) that the medium concerned could not possibly have obtained a likeness of that person to work from, then we should be obliged to attach great weight to this factor, even if the conditions were not otherwise such as to exclude fraud. For such a result could not be fraudulently produced. But in spite of the perfectly honest assertions of many investigators, it seems very doubtful whether this state of affairs has ever been realised.

There are two ways in which evidence based on recognition may be defective.

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. A spirit photographer with an extensive clientÈle will find it well worth his while to take the necessary steps to secure photographs appropriate to at any rate his more regular sitters, from whom, in the course of a few sÉances, it will not be difficult to glean enough information to put him on the right track. It is, of course, particularly easy if they happen to be well-known people, photographs of whose relatives may have appeared from time to time in the press. But although this method may sometimes be employed where circumstances lend themselves thereto, or when there is some reason which makes a first-rate “test” especially desirable, I do not think that it is responsible for more than a small percentage of the recognitions which are claimed.

By far the greater proportion appear to be due to the operation of subjective factors which lead the sitter to “recognise unmistakably” an extra which bears no more than a vague general resemblance to the person whom it is claimed to represent.

Recognition can scarcely be assessed objectively; it is essentially a subjective affair, and as such liable to all the distorting factors which affect every mental process.

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. Often, of course, these conflict with one another; but that does not alter the principle involved.

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.

To attempt a full discussion of the psychological process of recognition in general would take us very far, but I think it may be conceded that it is based on some kind of a comparison between the object (“extra”) actually perceived and a visual image of the person concerned which is evoked for the purpose. But visual images are very plastic, so to speak, as anyone who tries to visualise the face of a friend accurately will be able to verify for himself. The general impression may be clear enough, but details of proportion and the like are very elusive. We all know, too, how faces get distorted in dreams (though by somewhat different causes from those which we are considering here), and it may well be that it is for reasons of this kind that recognition is so often unreliable even in ordinary life. Which of us has not been struck by the likeness of a press photograph to someone whom we know, or who has not been momentarily misled by the slight resemblance of a passer-by to his contemporary inamorata? In my judgment it is entirely in conformity with modern psychological views, or, indeed, a necessary consequence of them, to suppose that the process of recognition is as subject to the influence of emotional wish-tendencies as are all the other mental processes which have been studied.

This supposition is immensely strengthened by a consideration of the actual material dealt with. I have seen a good many spirit photographs, and I am sure that those who have seen more will agree with me that the number which are clear enough to be capable of definite recognition at all is extremely small. They are almost invariably blurred, out-of-focus, indistinct things, frequently so covered in “spirit drapery” as to leave no more than two eyes, a nose and a mouth visible, while the shape of the head and the hair are quite indistinguishable. In the great majority of cases it seems to the unbiassed observer nothing short of absurd to claim that such vague and indefinite effigies can be “unmistakably” recognised. 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.

It should also be remembered that in everyday life recognition is a much more sketchy affair than might at first be suspected. Experiments have shown that in reading, or in viewing a drawing, we do not take cognizance of each individual element; on the contrary our attention flits, so to speak, from point to point, skipping altogether the intervening matter. We thus obtain an outline or skeleton impression which we fill up from our own resources. We actually notice a few salient features and interpolate the rest; hence, for example, the well-known difficulty of “spotting” mis-prints in proofs. This process is perfectly satisfactory for ordinary purposes such as reading, and seldom results in our misinterpreting the symbols before us, and when it does the context usually puts us right. But in dealing with spirit photographs the context, if there can properly be said to be any, is much more likely to put us wrong. The “salient features” which “leap to the eyes” are, in this case, those which suffice to locate a face as belonging to a certain general type, while the details which we fill up for ourselves are just those which are necessary for the identification of a particular individual. Consequently, false recognition is easy provided the general type is all right. The “beauty” is emphatically “in the eye of the beholder.” As “M.A. (Oxon),” a famous spiritualist and a believer in spirit photographs, well said:

“Some people would recognise anything. A broom and a sheet are quite enough to make up a grandmother for some wild enthusiasts who go with the figure in their eye and see what they wish to see.... I have had pictures that might be anything in this or any other world sent to me, and gravely claimed as recognised portraits; palpable old women authenticated as ‘my spirit brother, dead seventeen years, as he would have been if he had ...’ etc.”

But, as usual, the empirical test of experience is the best. Considerations such as those outlined above may be valuable in establishing a priori probabilities, but it is far more important to ascertain whether as a matter of fact people actually do make false recognitions with any frequency. The answer to this has already been given by Mr. Patrick in his account of the Buguet case above.[12] The most striking feature of the case, as he rightly points out, was the way in which witnesses swore to having “unmistakably recognised” the extras they obtained, and stuck to their recognitions in spite of Buguet’s own confession of fraud and his description of the methods employed. In the face of this sort of thing, who will be bold enough to maintain that the recognition factor can be assigned any appreciable weight?