DISCOVERIES AT THE SPIRITUALIST MUSEUM
 Readers
who are familiar with Spiritualism will know that the Spiritualists
National Union sets very high standards and has a zero tolerance
policy to any medium caught cheating. Mediums who demonstrate
in their churches are carefully vetted so that we can be
absolutely sure that the mediumship we see demonstrated
in churches is of the highest quality and done with integrity.
Similarly, any evidence of survival, such as a spirit photograph,
requires the same level of discernment to ensure that it
really is what it is claimed to be.
The pictures you see here were taken at a time when photography
was in its infancy. Taking a photograph was quite a palaver;
the glass plate had to be coated with a film of collodion
(gun cotton dissolved in ether) which containing iodide
of potassium and this was then sensitised by submersing
it into a bath of silver nitrate. The pictures were taken
while the mixture was still wet. Clearly, it would have
been very difficult for the photographer to tamper with
the glass plates - our equivalent of a photographic negative.
Nonetheless some cheating did take place - not by mediums
by photographers. These trick photographs were usually the
result of double exposures done by superimposing images
on plates before taking the photos of the living sitters.
The first cameras required the person being photographed
to remain absolutely still for periods of up to one minute
while the shutter of the camera remained open. While this
was happening, the photographer's assistant would quietly
appear behind the sitter dressed to look like a spirit.
If the assistant stayed in place for only a few moments
the resulting image would show them to look like a ghostly
person whereas the sitter would appear normal.
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During the First World War many photographers made a lot
of money by superimposing photographs of lost sons into
pictures of a family group. This was not claimed to be spirit
photography but it shows that photography, even using awkward
and messy glass plates, had quickly developed elaborate
techniques.
Modern Spiritualists are also a lot more sophisticated
than their predecessors. The teaching headquarters at the
Arthur Findlay College in Stansted Hall have installed night
vision photographic equipment to ensure that even pitch-black
séance rooms can be monitored. Fraudulent mediums
have been kicked out the movement and exposed in their newsletter
Psychic News. The safeguards for proper mediumship are higher
than ever and getting higher still as Spiritualists, wary
of the trickery seen on some TV programmes, insist on higher
and higher standards of accuracy and verification.
Few modern Spiritualists would consider these photographs
to be the final proof of life after death but some of these
images certainly appear to indicate that a spirit influence
has been involved. If the spirit world can influence our
material world then photography is perhaps one of the easiest
methods as light must be an easier thing to manipulate than
dense matter. And remember, that the images shown here are
not prints that could have been messed with afterwards but
all come from the original glass plates. Also the people
who appeared in these pictures have been positively identified
and are not "just somebody who appeared on the print".
  
See
the Spiritualist Museum
Ghost Photo Archive
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