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
(_Mrs. Jones relates how on two occasions she obtained an
excellent likeness of her deceased husband. The second
photograph referred to shows a remarkable likeness on
comparison with a normal photograph._)
I had a sitting at Crewe, about four years ago, and again this last
March. Success attended both sittings. The March sitting took place in
my own house; Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton stayed with us a couple of days
and we got a photo with three “extras” on one plate. We consider the
last one a perfect likeness of my husband just as he was before his last
illness. The first was very good, only rather too much like what he was
at the time of passing over, so, you see, it was rather painful, but a
truthful likeness. My son was with Mr. Hope the whole time he developed
the plates. He knows quite a lot about photography, and we used our own
plates.
(_Signed_) ELLEN JONES.
_Rees Cottage, Kempston, Beds._
* * * * *
From THE REV. G. VALE OWEN
I have had several sittings with Mr. Wm. Hope and Mrs. Buxton at Crewe. I
will briefly relate one experience.
In 1910 I was just dropping off to sleep when I saw, in the far corner of
the room, a beautiful girl’s face smiling at me. It slowly disappeared
sideways behind a screen. I wondered who the owner was. It was slightly
oval, radiant with joy, and the eyes were laughing at me with just
a touch of roguish enjoyment at my perplexity. There was a certain
efflorescence permeating it, a light which did not proceed from an
exterior object, but which seemed to be one with the substance of which
the face was composed. But it was not a mask. It was a living face.
About eight years later I saw the same face again, this time about six
inches from my own. On this second occasion there came into my mind, as
if intentionally projected there, the name “Ruby.” Ruby is my daughter
who passed away at the age of fifteen months in 1896.
In August, 1917, my wife and I paid a visit to the Crewe Circle. On one
of the negatives appeared the face I had already seen clairvoyantly.
It was not full-face, as I had seen it on the two previous occasions,
but in profile. This disposes of the theory that it might have been a
thought-form of my own.
Later on, we were having a talk with this spirit-child of ours in our own
home at Orford, and I took the opportunity to ask her if it was she who
had managed to get her picture on the plate at Crewe. Her reply was: “I
don’t know, daddy. I was there and tried to. I should love to have done
it. Did I?” My answer was that I was satisfied that she had done so.
I also asked her why it was in profile and she said it was in order that
she might shew her hair. Even when she passed away as a baby her abundant
light-brown hair was an exceptional feature. On the photograph it was
also conspicuous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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