There is nothing new under the sun: the history of the photo editing is almost as old as photography itself. Spirit photography was first widely employed by William H. Mumler in the 1860s, but the earliest pieces were made by Sir David Brewster for his 1856 book The Stereoscope: Its History, Theory, and Construction. Even though he was using the simple double exposure technique and was revealed as a fraud, some other spirit photographers came up in the next decades. Here are some of the most interesting pieces of spirit photography before Photoshop.
https://gizmodo.com/the-amazing-world-of-photo-editing-before-photoshop-461170976
Sir David Brewster: The Ghost In The Stereoscope, 1856
Eugène Thièbault: Henri Robin And A Specter, 1863
William H. Mumler’s Spirit Photos, 1860s-1880s
Mary Todd Lincoln’s portrait with the ghost of her husband, Abraham Lincoln, was taken in the early 1870s.
Left: “Master Herrod (a young medium) in a trance. His Spiritual Body Withdrawn and Appears Behind.”, ca. 1868 Center: “Mrs. French of Boston with Spirit Son”, ca. 1868 Right: Moses A. Dow, Editor of Waverley Magazine, with the Spirit of Mabel Warren”, ca. 1871
H. P. Moore: The Guardian Spirit (1871)
William Hope: Three people with two spirits
Hope: Family group with two spirits
Hope: Woman with two boys and a female spirit
Hope: Man with a mysterious face appearing
Hope: Man with the spirit of his deceased second wife
Hope: Man With The Spirit Of His Helper
Hope: Will Thomas With An Unidentified Spirit
Unknown: A Haunted Lover’s Proposal, 1890s
Strohmeyer & Wyman: A Dream Of Christmas, a stereocard from 1897
William Hope: Elderly couple with a young female spirit
Unknown from the early 1900s
Sir Victor Goddard’s photo of his squadron in World War I, 1919
The ghostly face belongs to Freddy Jackson, who had been actually killed two days before the photo shot.
Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss): Houdini and the Ghost Of Abraham Lincoln, c. 1920
William Hope: A Seance, circa 1920
Ada Emma Deane’s photographs from the early 1920s
The Brown Lady Of Raynham Hall, 1936
The most famous ghost photograph belongs to a London-based photographer named Captain Hubert C. Provand, who took photographs in the Raynham Hall Mansion in Norfolk, England. After the negatives were developed, it’s said that a ghostly lady appeared on the picture of the building’s main staircase. The woman was Lady Dorothy Walpole (1686-1726), the sister of the first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
(via Macabre Museum, National Media Museum/Flickr, Framed Network, Flickr/depthandtime, evpmanuk/Flickr, vintag.es, Wikimedia Commons, Photography Museum, Mirtesen.ru, Library Of Congress, Mlkshk and Laughing Crow Knits)
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