The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography — John Shaqi
The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography
Religion
The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography
Spirit photography; Spiritualism
The lens was a portrait one of short focus; the figure being somewhat
in front of the sitter, was proportionately larger in dimensions. I
submit this picture (see opposite). It is, as you see, a lady. I do not
recognise her or any of the other figures I obtained as being like any
one I know, and from my point of view, that of a mere investigator and
experimentalist, not caring whether the psychic subject were embodied or
disembodied.
[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH OF A PSYCHIC LADY.]
Many experiments of like nature followed; on some plates were abnormal
appearances, on others none. All this time Mr. D., the medium, during the
exposure of the plates, was quite inactive. After one trial, which had
proved successful, I asked him how he felt and what he had been thinking
of during the exposure. He replied that his thoughts had been mainly
concentrated upon his chances of securing a corner seat in a smoking
carriage that night from Euston to Glasgow.
If the precautions I took during all of the several experiments, such
as those recorded, are by any of you thought to have been imperfect or
incomplete, I pray of you to point them out. In some of them I relaxed my
conditions to the extent of getting one of those present to lift out from
the dark slide the exposed plate and transfer it to the developing dish
held by myself, or to lift a plate from the manufacturer’s package into
the dark slide held in my own hand, this being done under my own eye,
which was upon it all the time; but this did not seem to interfere with
the average on-going of the experiments.
The psychic figures behaved badly. Some were in focus, others not so;
some were lighted from the right, while the sitter was so from the left;
some were comely, as the dame I shall show on the screen, others not
so; some monopolised the major portion of the plate, quite obliterating
the material sitters; others were as if an atrociously badly vignetted
portrait, or one cut oval out of a photograph by a can-opener, or equally
badly clipped out, were held up behind the sitter. But here is the point:
not one of these figures which came out so strongly in the negative was
visible in any form or shape to me during the time of exposure in the
camera, and I vouch in the strongest manner for the fact that no one
whatever had an opportunity of tampering with any plate anterior to its
being placed in the dark slide or immediately preceding development.
Pictorially they are vile, but how came they there?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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