The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Frauds, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost
Since it is October it’s time to look at the things that go bump in the night, making this weeks book The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Frauds, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost by Peter Manseau.
The Apparitionists takes us back to the Spiritualist movement of the 19th century, which we first learned about back in 2021 with Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg, and then revisited in 2023 with Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances by Lisa Morton. But Manseau focuses his story on William Mumler, who became well known as a spirit photographer. And yes, that is as crazy as it sounds. For two reasons. First, he famously got a picture of Abraham Lincoln’s ghost...yes, ghost, the picture here of Mary Todd Lincoln was taken in 1872, so the president was 7 years in his grave at this point.
Mary Todd with Lincoln’s Ghost
But reason number two is the most perplexing: No one knows how he did it. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
The book does take us through a bit of the history of photography in America, from it’s most famous practitioners, i.e. Samuel Morse, who is more famously known for inventing the telegraph and Morse code, but was a well known photographer in his day, to Mathew Brady, who ran the preeminent shop in New York, stationed on Broadway directly across from PT Barnum’s American Museum and who took one of Lincoln’s most other famous photographs, from his campaign trail, as well as Mary Todd Lincoln’s photograph shortly after the president was inaugurated.
He covers in brief the career of Alexander Gardner, who is the most well known battlefield photographer, I mean even today you can buy his book of Civil War photographs, initially published in 1866, as a reprint off Amazon for $14.00.
But mostly the brief biographical sketches of the others was a backdrop for Mumler’s story. William Mumler was born in 1832 and his initial training was as a jewelry engraver. But, his infatuation with Mrs. Hannah Green Stuart, who operated a photo studio and gallery between Mumler’s former place of business and his new place of business. And it was this infatuation that brought this amateur photographer into the spotlight of the day. Mrs. Stuart, who would eventually divorce her husband and marry Mumler, was quite adept at supporting her self...and no, I do not mean in the oldest profession. This was Boston, not Tombstone. She would support herself by braiding hair, specifically hair that was cut off a deceased family member as a keepsake, which was a very common Victorian custom. She was an adept herbalist and sold herself as a healer, and as a medium, promising to get those for whom she was braiding the hair in touch with the original owners of the hair in question.
And, of course, she ran a photography studio and gallery. And almost without meaning to, Mumler learned photography by watching Mrs. Stuart, until one day he took a self-portrait inside her studio. And the image he developed, showed Mumler standing, and what was very clearly a not person, sitting in the chair beside him.
Mumler and his “cousin”
Now, Mumler did not believe he had captured a spirit image. Mrs. Stuart believed. And H.F. Gardner, who had brought the Fox sisters to Boston, he believed. Mumler just thought it was a novelty, and transferred the image from the glass to paper to sell as, well, as a novelty.
However, he slowly came to believe….I’m cynically going to say his infatuation with Mrs. Stuart probably had something to do with it...as he eventually said the girl in the chair was his deceased cousin. Whether or not she is...or was...whatever...we’re never gonna know. I don’t know that we have pictures of Mumler’s cousin from when she was alive to compare it to the ghost.
Regardless, a phenomenon was born. And at exactly the right time. Spiritualism had been knocking on deaths door as a movement...pun intended...and then on November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the presidency. That day, South Carolina seceded. He was sworn in on March 4, 1861 and on April 12, the war officially began with the battle at Fort Sumter. And while no one knew it yet...I mean, both sides thought the war would be over by June...spiritualism was saved. Because once the dust had settled, EVERYONE wanted to find a way to say good bye to those they’d lost in the fighting.
And Mumler...well, his talent was in hot demand. People were all too happy to pay for a picture of themselves with one who had crossed over.
Not everyone believed. There were definitely naysayers, including one very much alive woman who said the spirit appearing in more than one picture was her. But enough believed that skeptics of the day became alarmed, and started sending investigators to try and figure out how he did it. Here’s the thing though: more than one professional sat in and watched Mumler throughout the process, and none of them could find him doing ANYTHING that would produce the results he was getting. At least one investigator became an ally of Mumler’s and would later testify on his behalf during his fraud trial. Because that is the ultimate denouement of the book.
After the war, Mr. and Mrs. Mumler...Hannah had divorced Stuart and married Mumler...headed to New York and set up shop there, also on Broadway, which was not unusual. I mean, yes, this is where Brady had the most famous studio. But Mumler famously took pictures of spirits. And it was in New York that news correspondent PV Hickey, who believed Mumler was a fraud, would file a complaint with the mayor’s office. The mayor at that time was A. Oakey Hall. And he had appointed a team to run down crime, of which fraud most certainly is one.
The leader of this team was Joseph Tooker. Tooker went to Mumler’s studio and had a portrait taken. Tooker asked Mumler if a spirit would be present and Mumler said he didn’t know, they didn’t always appear, and made no promises. But when Tooker came to pick up his results, there were spirits. And Mumler was arrested for fraud and taken to the Tombs...which I think is still where arrestees are taken in New York. Some things never change.
And then a most unusual trial took place. It was a bench trial, not a jury trial, meaning the Judge Dowling was the only one whose opinion mattered in this case. Mumler did hire himself a very good attorney, who used, of all things, extensive bible quotes to prove the existence of spirits. And the prosecutor’s whole case basically boiled down to he’s a fraud and here’s how he COULD HAVE done it. And no question, author Peter Manseau outlines seven techniques which had been used by other photographers to produce similar ghostly results in photography.
1. The photographer could take an image on one plate then hide it in his camera. This would produce a ghostly image over the next photo taken.
2. he might have an accomplice hide behind a curtain then come out and pose behind the sitter, before re concealing themselves behind the curtain.
3. He might insert a miniature image of a spirit inside the camera behind the lens. Then when light passes through the aperture, the miniature would distort it, causing this faint ghostly image.
4. After the picture is taken, the photographer could place a spirit image behind the glass and re-expose it to light.
5. He might impose a blurred image on the slide while the glass plate is in it’s silver nitrate bath, using a secret light to transfer the image.
6. He might print the spirit image onto paper, then use THAT paper to print a new image of the sitter on top of it.
7. A glass plate used to take an image of one person just might not be cleaned off properly before reusing it for the next image.
And the defense team, after hearing all of this, calmly pointed out that they never argued that spirit photographs could not be produced by such methods. Only that, as testified by multiple expert photographers, the prosecution had not proven that Mumler had used ANY of them.
And indeed, no one could prove he had. Because, again, many experts watched him from beginning to end of the process, and at no point could people see when he would have engaged in any such activities.
My own thought...well, I mean, nothing is impossible. Maybe he did find a way to pierce the veil and take unique photos. However….well, realistically, if any spirits were around to be captured, I would think Alexander Gardner would have been far more likely to capture the restless dead still hovering over their own corpses. But Gardner never caught a one.
The one detail that sticks out...again and again...from each expert witness, is that Mumler would at some point put his hand on the camera. This isn’t necessarily wrong, but was unusual. Because this was in the days when you had to be very still, or the image would blur to unrecognizability. The first known photograph of people is this image from 1838 taken by Charles Dageurre. It was taken on a very busy street during a busy time of day. Yet the only two people in the image are the shoe shine and his customer, who were the only ones stationary enough to imprint.
Oldest picture of people…circled in blue
All of that is to say, putting his hand on the camera risked BUMPING the camera, which would then queer the shot, requiring a complete reset. So why do it? Well, personally think, of the seven options the prosecution provided, I think option 3 is the most likely. I think Mumler was adept at sleight of hand, and was never caught in the act. He undoubtedly had a deft touch, to have worked as a miniature engraver. So he’d have been used to working with very small objects. And then the human willingness to believe and desire to contact loved ones lost provided the remaining details. That blurred image is now your lost child, husband, mother, sister.
Ultimately, we’ll never know the truth of it. If you believe, then they were spirits. If you don’t, he was a huckster who got away with it, because Judge Joseph Dowling, after hearing closing arguments, rendered verdict in less than a minute:
“After careful attention to the case, I have come to the conclusion that the prisoner should be discharged.”
This does not mean he was a spiritualist or believed Mumler to be innocent, only that the prosecution failed to prove he was guilty of fraud.
This book was interesting. A little disjointed. I found the information Alexander Gardner interesting, but did not seem to add anything to the overarching story of Mumler and his trial. But it was interesting, and very fast read.
