The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography
Religion
The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography
Spirit photography; Spiritualism
Now, all this time, I imagine you are wondering how the stereoscopic
camera was behaving itself _as such_. It is due to the psychic entities
to say that whatever was produced on one half of the stereoscopic plates
was reproduced on the other, alike good or bad in definition. But on
a careful examination of one which was rather better than the other,
and which is now about to be projected on the lantern screen for your
examination (see page 35), I deduce this fact, that the impressing of
the spirit form was not consentaneous with that of the sitter. This
I consider an important discovery. I carefully examined one in the
stereoscope, and found that, while the two sitters were stereoscopic
_per se_, the psychic figure was absolutely flat. I also found that the
psychic figure was at least a millimetre higher up in one than the other.
Now, as both had been simultaneously exposed, it follows to demonstration
that, although both were correctly placed vertically in relation to
the particular sitter behind whom the figure appeared, and not so
horizontally, this figure had not only _not_ been impressed on the plate
simultaneously with the two gentlemen forming the group, but had not been
formed by the lens at all, and that, therefore the psychic image might be
produced without a camera. I think this is a fair deduction. But still
the question obtrudes, How came these figures there? I again assert that
the plates were not tampered with by either myself or any one present.
Are they crystallisations of thought? Have lens and light really nothing
to do with their formation? The whole subject was mysterious enough on
the hypothesis of an invisible spirit, whether a thought projection or
an actual spirit, being really there in the vicinity of the sitter, but
it is now a thousand times more so. There are plenty of Tycho Brahes
capable of supplying details of observations, but who is to be the Kepler
that will from such observations evolve a law by which they can be
satisfactorily explained?
[Illustration: ABNORMAL PORTRAIT OF LADY]
In the foregoing I have confined myself as closely as possible to
narrating how I conducted a photographic experiment open to every one to
make, avoiding stating any hypothesis or belief of my own on the subject
generally, and it only now remains to exhibit the results, bad and
fraudulent-looking as they are, on the screen.
REMARKS BY MEMBERS AND VISITORS.
Having finished the reading of his paper, Mr. TAYLOR exhibited by the
aid of the lantern, slides from some of the negatives he had obtained.
A series of “Spirit Photographs,” the work of Mr. Hudson, formerly of
Holloway Road, and some French photographers, were also shown by Mr.
Maltby, a visitor, who was introduced by Mr. Taylor.
Messrs. Downey, P. Everitt, W. E. Debenham, F. A. Bridge, A. Cowan, A.
Haddon, J. S. Teape, A. Mackie, and others took part in the meeting, but
their remarks, for the most part, were characteristic of unacquaintance
with the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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