The Case for Spirit Photography: With corroborative evidence by experienced researchers and photographers — John Shaqi
The Case for Spirit Photography: With corroborative evidence by experienced researchers and photographersDoyle, Arthur Conan
Religion
The Case for Spirit Photography: With corroborative evidence by experienced researchers and photographers
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Spirit photography; Spiritualism
In 1919 the Society which I have already referred to as the S.S.S.P.
presented Hope with a new camera. Mr. Barlow, Mr. Pearse and Mr.
Walker—all experienced photographers—were the three delegates who
conveyed it to Crewe. On this occasion photographs were taken with the
new carriers and camera, _Mr. Barlow loading the carrier with his own
plate alone in the dark room_. In developing, all three delegates went
into the dark room, but Hope did not accompany them. Three out of four
slides showed no supernormal result, but the fourth showed three faces,
one clearly recognised. “We were carefully watching Mr. Hope all the
time and are absolutely sure that there was no trickery.” The document,
which contains a detailed account of these facts, is signed by all three
observers. Could any case be more satisfactory and more final?
I have said that professional photographers were among the sitters. I
would instance as a good example Mr. A. R. Gibson, of Nottingham, who
testifies that he took every possible precaution against deceit, and that
none the less he received an excellent likeness of his dead son which
does not correspond to any existing photograph and is recognised by all
who knew the lad.
There is one final case to which I would particularly desire to draw
attention because it is exactly parallel to that of Mr. Price, but had a
diametrically opposite result. The inquirer, too, has the advantage of
being absolutely impartial, which cannot be said of the two conjurers nor
of Mr. Dingwall, who was behind them—and even with every intention to be
honest, a strong bias can distort the results. The case to which I refer
is that of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, of 7, Turners Wood, Hampstead Garden
Suburb, who sat to Mr. Hope in March, 1921. Before the sitting Mrs.
Stobart’s plates were marked with a secret mark, which she herself did
not know, by the Kodak Company. The result is told in full in _Psychic
Science_ for October of this year. Briefly, after every conceivable
precaution by Mrs. Stobart and her husband, two extras were got in four
attempts, one a head only and the other a full-length figure of a woman,
clothed in the usual filmy drapery. “Mr. Hope never handled the plates
at all.” Mrs. Stobart concludes: “I took the negatives to the Kodak
Company—to the manager and chief assistant. ‘Are these the plates you
marked? Can you see the marks?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes,’ they replied. ‘Look,
here they are—a tiny circle enclosing a cross.’ And for the first time I
saw the marks which they had put. The Kodak Company allow me to say that
their affirmation as to this can be used freely.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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