Myths and legend have grown up round spirit photographs till Spiritualists have at last come to believe in their genuineness. Yet the whole of their belief rests on nothing stronger than the “miraculousness” of a conjuring trick. A good sleight-of-hand expert can accomplish card or other tricks which seem perfectly inexplicable to the layman, but we do not acclaim them as evidences of spirit power because we are deceived by them. The spirit photographers deplore and avoid investigation by really efficient scientific men. They welcome the amateur with half-knowledge, as his very cocksureness renders him an easier dupe. He concentrates on the obvious roads to fraud, ignoring those which lie without the slender realm of his knowledge. The phenomena of what may be called lightless photography were long ago described by Dr. Gustave le Bon,[49] who describes instantaneous photography by “Black-light.” Incidentally a common incandescent gas mantle possesses quite enough radioactive properties for ordinary experiments. It is only by the destruction of fraudulent phenomena that the phenomena will be rightly understood and generally accepted. The Spiritualist who accepts and bolsters up dubious phenomena does far more harm to his own cause than the most pronounced sceptic. The main point about spurious spirit photography is this. It claims that mechanical chemical relations are produced by spirit agency--yet though this chemical reaction is said to be produced with ease by certain individuals and circles, it flinches from facing a simple test which would, if proved to be true, convert the bulk of the sceptical world to an acceptance of the truth of spirit photography. I have met many credulous folk who cherish blurred plates, obvious double exposures, “accidents,” such as imperfectly cleaned plates and even the most blatant swindles. Nothing can shake their convictions--but credulity does nothing to _prove_ fact. Mr. Gambier Bolton has experimented for years with spirit photography, but has so far obtained nothing except plates bearing indications of a radiant energy similar to the N-rays of Becquerel. Many expert photographers interested in psychic matters agree that the true spirit photography does not exist and a canvass of both press and studio photographers who are experts in their profession reveals the same unhesitating expression of opinion. The same opinion is held not only by the professional and technical lay element, but by occultists and students of research whose standard of psychic knowledge is infinitely higher than that of the Spiritualists. * * * * * The aura which surrounds the human form is visible to certain people, but the faculty for seeing the aura does not necessarily involve the possession of any psychic gifts at all and is often an indication of a slight degree of colour-blindness.