1 00:00:00,584 --> 00:00:08,584 In 1862, an engraver in Boston, 2 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 4 00:00:13,931 --> 00:00:16,267 an amateur photographer, William H. 5 00:00:16,350 --> 00:00:19,937 Mummler, took a self-portrait in the studios of Helen F. 6 00:00:20,021 --> 00:00:21,230 Stuart. 7 00:00:21,397 --> 00:00:25,192 But what made this self-portrait so remarkable for the time is that 8 00:00:25,276 --> 00:00:29,530 it showed something else besides the jolly bearded photographer himself. 9 00:00:29,613 --> 00:00:34,910 It a spirit, an extra, someone that the photographer would later claim was 10 00:00:34,994 --> 00:00:37,788 the ghost of his deceased cousin. 11 00:00:38,039 --> 00:00:42,335 This would set off a wild storm of involvement, as this was the first 12 00:00:42,418 --> 00:00:44,587 documented photograph of a ghost. 13 00:00:44,670 --> 00:00:47,923 When news spread that Mummler could take photographs of a ghost, people 14 00:00:48,007 --> 00:00:50,801 would line up outside of Stuart's studio. 15 00:00:50,885 --> 00:00:54,597 Mummler would take people's photographs, and sure enough, their deceased loved one 16 00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:56,557 would be standing right next to them. 17 00:00:57,058 --> 00:01:01,395 This turned into a booming business for Mummler, Stuart and the receptionist 18 00:01:01,479 --> 00:01:03,105 at the time, Hannah Green. 19 00:01:04,690 --> 00:01:08,486 As a photographer myself, what's so remarkable to me about Mummler 20 00:01:08,569 --> 00:01:13,032 and the spirit photography images that he created was just how he did them. 21 00:01:13,115 --> 00:01:16,410 We look at them now and we're like, Oh, they're just a double exposure. 22 00:01:16,494 --> 00:01:21,040 We have ideas about how they were made, and they even had ideas back then 23 00:01:21,123 --> 00:01:24,126 about how they were made, but they couldn't prove it. 24 00:01:24,210 --> 00:01:28,381 No one was able to prove just how Mummler was making these images. 25 00:01:28,464 --> 00:01:32,677 He would have the leading photographers of the day come to a studio and watch him 26 00:01:32,760 --> 00:01:33,844 throughout the entire process. 27 00:01:33,928 --> 00:01:37,765 They would watch him do every single step, and they couldn't figure it out. 28 00:01:37,848 --> 00:01:41,560 There was one person who actually backed up from the camera to make sure 29 00:01:41,602 --> 00:01:43,646 that Mumler wasn't touching anything. 30 00:01:43,729 --> 00:01:47,191 It's so wild to me that these photographers couldn't 31 00:01:47,274 --> 00:01:49,777 figure out what a novice photographer like Mummler was doing. 32 00:01:49,860 --> 00:01:54,949 And yet, he somehow is able to capture one of the first spirit photographs ever. 33 00:01:55,032 --> 00:01:56,742 And that, to me, is the great mystery here. 34 00:01:56,826 --> 00:02:01,080 And that's what is driving me to figure out what he was doing. 35 00:02:01,163 --> 00:02:03,040 I want to look at these processes. 36 00:02:03,082 --> 00:02:05,960 I want to look at what people are saying, how he could have done 37 00:02:06,043 --> 00:02:07,127 these images, and I want to try them out. 38 00:02:07,169 --> 00:02:10,339 To do this right, I want to try and find people who can help me. 39 00:02:10,423 --> 00:02:13,968 Experts in their fields, from photography to paranormal research. 40 00:02:14,051 --> 00:02:15,803 What do they have to say about these images? 41 00:02:15,886 --> 00:02:18,347 Was it even Mummler, who was the genius behind them? 42 00:02:18,431 --> 00:02:20,850 Who were the women he worked with to create these? 43 00:02:20,933 --> 00:02:22,852 As well as this sound, what if some of these images 44 00:02:22,935 --> 00:02:24,228 were actual spirit photographs? 45 00:02:24,311 --> 00:02:28,691 What if these images were photographs of people's deceased relatives? 46 00:02:28,774 --> 00:02:30,860 That's something that I don't think people will consider enough 47 00:02:30,943 --> 00:02:33,529 when investigating spirit photography. 48 00:02:33,612 --> 00:02:35,573 Was he able to capture real ghosts? 49 00:02:35,656 --> 00:02:39,702 That's really what brought me to make this film, is finding 50 00:02:39,785 --> 00:02:43,873 out how Mummler made these images. 51 00:02:43,998 --> 00:02:47,960 To make a ghost image, the easiest thing to do is just take a picture 52 00:02:48,044 --> 00:02:51,714 of someone sitting there, have somebody walk in dressed in white, 53 00:02:51,797 --> 00:02:53,549 and walk right out again. 54 00:02:53,632 --> 00:02:58,637 In a 30-second exposure, two or three seconds of that person 55 00:02:58,721 --> 00:03:02,350 standing there and then walking out, you're going to have a great ghost. 56 00:03:02,433 --> 00:03:04,018 But it's not what Mumbler did. 57 00:03:04,101 --> 00:03:10,316 Again, what we were doing was to produce what could have been done 58 00:03:10,399 --> 00:03:13,194 in a room full of skeptics. 59 00:03:13,736 --> 00:03:15,613 And that's very different than just making a ghost. 60 00:03:15,696 --> 00:03:19,158 Making a ghost image is very easy. 61 00:03:22,078 --> 00:03:26,457 Who was he is a question that has haunted me for a long time, 62 00:03:26,540 --> 00:03:28,876 trying to find out who is this man? 63 00:03:28,959 --> 00:03:31,170 Was he Was he a fake? 64 00:03:31,253 --> 00:03:32,588 Was he real? 65 00:03:32,672 --> 00:03:34,548 Did he really believe what he was doing? 66 00:03:34,632 --> 00:03:37,051 Mumler had one of the most... 67 00:03:37,134 --> 00:03:41,972 One of the reasons I say that he's such a child of the 19th century 68 00:03:42,056 --> 00:03:44,975 is because he was also an inventor. 69 00:03:45,059 --> 00:03:46,769 He had a really curious mind. 70 00:03:46,852 --> 00:03:50,439 For someone who left school when he was 14 years old, he was applying 71 00:03:50,523 --> 00:03:52,149 for all kinds of different patents. 72 00:03:52,233 --> 00:03:55,319 He was a really, really clever man. 73 00:03:55,403 --> 00:04:00,700 So something like photography would certainly capture his interest. 74 00:04:00,783 --> 00:04:04,245 Well, as I've always been far more interested in the woman who was 75 00:04:04,328 --> 00:04:10,543 around him, I think of him as being a little bit, perhaps, of an opportunist. 76 00:04:10,626 --> 00:04:16,757 I get a bit frustrated at the fact that he's 77 00:04:16,841 --> 00:04:23,347 continually credited with this development in the history of photography, 78 00:04:23,431 --> 00:04:27,685 because I really think that this woman who was in his proximity 79 00:04:27,768 --> 00:04:31,480 and is always mentioned in footnotes whenever anybody's talking about Mummler, 80 00:04:31,564 --> 00:04:34,859 she continues to be in the background, and maybe that's what she wanted. 81 00:04:34,942 --> 00:04:37,319 But for me, it's a bit frustrating to not see her always 82 00:04:37,403 --> 00:04:40,197 mentioned when his name comes up. 83 00:04:40,281 --> 00:04:46,912 In terms of spirit photography, he was probably not the first, but he's 84 00:04:46,996 --> 00:04:50,207 the first documented spirit photographer. 85 00:04:50,291 --> 00:04:55,421 He occupied a really interesting space 86 00:04:55,504 --> 00:04:57,465 because of his trial, because he 87 00:04:57,548 --> 00:05:02,970 was eventually arrested of for trickery. 88 00:05:03,054 --> 00:05:08,059 His trial really dominated 89 00:05:08,142 --> 00:05:10,353 the headlines in both the United States 90 00:05:10,436 --> 00:05:13,064 and Europe while it was going. 91 00:05:13,147 --> 00:05:17,526 It really represented the modern spiritualist movement on trial. 92 00:05:17,610 --> 00:05:19,862 It represented religion on trial. 93 00:05:19,945 --> 00:05:24,116 It represented all the fears of Americans and the culture clashes 94 00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:29,330 that were taking place and gave voice to 95 00:05:29,413 --> 00:05:31,999 a lot of anger, a lot of fears, 96 00:05:32,083 --> 00:05:35,127 a lot of frustration, a lot of hope. 97 00:05:35,211 --> 00:05:37,463 It was an interesting time. 98 00:05:37,546 --> 00:05:45,546 He was a very small figure who found himself on a very large stage. 99 00:05:46,514 --> 00:05:51,477 My initial gut check of Mummler's work, I would say they're faked 100 00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:53,688 because they're too good. 101 00:05:54,021 --> 00:06:00,444 They are very, very detailed, and they also fall into the idea 102 00:06:00,528 --> 00:06:02,947 of what we think a spirit should be. 103 00:06:03,030 --> 00:06:07,118 We don't really know if that's the case or not. 104 00:06:07,201 --> 00:06:12,039 Without obviously talking to him or being 105 00:06:12,123 --> 00:06:14,291 around during that time period, I would 106 00:06:14,375 --> 00:06:17,920 say they're just too good to be true. 107 00:06:18,004 --> 00:06:22,425 When we're talking about spirit photography or anomalies 108 00:06:22,508 --> 00:06:26,595 in photos that we can't explain, there's a couple of different types. 109 00:06:26,679 --> 00:06:30,641 Sometimes you see an apparition or what looks to be a human. 110 00:06:30,725 --> 00:06:36,022 Sometimes you see light anomalies, other times it's shadows. 111 00:06:36,105 --> 00:06:41,736 So there's various different shapes and forms and all sorts of good stuff 112 00:06:41,819 --> 00:06:43,112 that can show up in a photo. 113 00:06:43,195 --> 00:06:46,115 Not all of it is supernatural, of course. 114 00:06:46,198 --> 00:06:49,285 Some things are misidentified, and of course, we don't always know the 115 00:06:49,368 --> 00:06:54,165 environment in which the photos are being taken, so they can be hard to decipher. 116 00:06:54,248 --> 00:06:58,002 On the other hand, when people want to see spirits, it's pretty easy 117 00:06:58,085 --> 00:06:59,920 for them to accept what they see. 118 00:07:00,004 --> 00:07:04,508 The more you see, the less it feels like a spirit. 119 00:07:04,759 --> 00:07:08,971 So the trick is to have something that gives us just enough 120 00:07:09,055 --> 00:07:13,059 to hang on to, but not too much. 121 00:07:13,267 --> 00:07:19,523 So photography in general is really hard, I think, to determine if there's a spirit 122 00:07:19,607 --> 00:07:23,903 in it or not, because number one, we don't really know what a spirit is. 123 00:07:23,986 --> 00:07:27,615 We don't know what's making up the phenomena that people are experiencing 124 00:07:27,698 --> 00:07:30,493 that can't be explained at this moment. 125 00:07:30,576 --> 00:07:34,038 So our ideas of what things should look like or what things 126 00:07:34,121 --> 00:07:35,831 should be are biased to begin with. 127 00:07:35,915 --> 00:07:41,420 But I think the majority of the time I meet people who are showing me photos 128 00:07:41,504 --> 00:07:44,590 and the things that they're getting are just misidentification. 129 00:07:44,674 --> 00:07:47,718 Maybe they're not looking at it the same way I or one 130 00:07:47,802 --> 00:07:49,303 of my colleagues will look at it. 131 00:07:49,387 --> 00:07:54,600 So one of the most common things we see is some light anomaly 132 00:07:54,642 --> 00:07:57,228 that appears to have some mass to it. 133 00:07:57,311 --> 00:08:00,564 And what it normally is, is a spider stuck on a spider their web, 134 00:08:00,648 --> 00:08:05,653 and for whatever reason, the camera or the video is reflecting the light 135 00:08:05,736 --> 00:08:08,656 in a really weird way where it looks odd. 136 00:08:08,739 --> 00:08:11,117 I don't blame them for thinking, Hey, this is odd. 137 00:08:11,200 --> 00:08:12,368 Is this something? 138 00:08:12,451 --> 00:08:15,913 But again, that's where investigators can come in and say, Okay, 139 00:08:15,996 --> 00:08:19,458 well, we've seen this a million times. This is what it is. 140 00:08:20,501 --> 00:08:26,841 The story goes, and when I first researched Mumler, I helped 141 00:08:26,924 --> 00:08:32,638 to spread this story that he was alone in the studio with Mrs. Stuart, 142 00:08:32,722 --> 00:08:36,183 and it was Mrs. Stuart's gallery. 143 00:08:36,267 --> 00:08:38,936 She was ostensibly the photographer. 144 00:08:39,020 --> 00:08:43,941 I collect Mrs. Stuart's images, so I'm a huge fan of Mrs. Stuart. 145 00:08:44,025 --> 00:08:48,654 But I've come to find that there was actually a man working in that studio. 146 00:08:48,738 --> 00:08:56,203 It was a friend of Mummler's, so Mummler would be going to visit him, I believe. 147 00:08:56,287 --> 00:08:59,081 This man was teaching him about photography. 148 00:08:59,165 --> 00:09:01,459 One day, the Mr. Plumber had to leave the 149 00:09:01,542 --> 00:09:06,464 studio, and Mummler, as he says, deciding 150 00:09:06,547 --> 00:09:11,802 to while away an hour, decided to take a self-portrait and see what happened. 151 00:09:11,886 --> 00:09:16,891 He stood next to a chair, which This is an odd choice because this is a time 152 00:09:16,974 --> 00:09:19,352 when exposures are super long. 153 00:09:19,435 --> 00:09:23,773 Usually, you sit in a chair that has two things holding your head in place, 154 00:09:23,856 --> 00:09:25,775 and it was really uncomfortable. 155 00:09:25,858 --> 00:09:29,904 But for some reason, he was able to stand still. 156 00:09:29,987 --> 00:09:33,407 He's even holding that black cloth. 157 00:09:33,491 --> 00:09:35,993 He's holding that next to him. 158 00:09:36,077 --> 00:09:38,245 It's a very handsome picture. 159 00:09:38,329 --> 00:09:40,539 He looks very proud of himself. 160 00:09:40,623 --> 00:09:44,335 When he developed the picture, there was the image of a young girl 161 00:09:44,418 --> 00:09:46,253 sitting in the chair. 162 00:09:46,504 --> 00:09:48,381 He would claim that this was his cousin. 163 00:09:48,464 --> 00:09:50,383 He recognized her as his cousin. 164 00:09:50,466 --> 00:09:55,012 What is important was that there was a woman in that picture, 165 00:09:55,096 --> 00:09:56,722 and she hadn't been there in real life. 166 00:09:56,806 --> 00:09:59,308 To me, it all comes down to this first photograph. 167 00:09:59,392 --> 00:10:04,146 This, to is the keystone of the whole thing. 168 00:10:04,397 --> 00:10:10,319 Who exactly was with Mummler when he took this photograph? 169 00:10:10,403 --> 00:10:12,113 That's the thing. 170 00:10:12,196 --> 00:10:14,407 If we're able to figure out who was in the room with him, 171 00:10:14,490 --> 00:10:18,160 I think we'll have a good idea of how this narrative takes place here. 172 00:10:18,244 --> 00:10:21,038 Was it Stuart, the owner of the studio? 173 00:10:21,122 --> 00:10:24,667 Was it Green, the receptionist who would later become Mummler's wife? 174 00:10:24,750 --> 00:10:27,712 Or was it this man, Mr. Plumber? 175 00:10:28,629 --> 00:10:31,465 It's almost like a weird game of clue. 176 00:10:31,549 --> 00:10:36,345 Stuart, Green, Plumber in the studio with Mummler with the Ghost. 177 00:10:36,721 --> 00:10:42,143 I think if we're able to nail that down, we'll be able to have a better 178 00:10:42,226 --> 00:10:43,853 understanding of what happened here. 179 00:10:44,270 --> 00:10:47,356 If you look at the photograph, it's unusual to me. 180 00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:51,986 For one thing, as Chris has said, he is standing up. 181 00:10:52,069 --> 00:10:55,906 I've had one of these photographs taken of me, and you have to be still 182 00:10:55,990 --> 00:10:57,450 for something like 30 seconds. 183 00:10:57,533 --> 00:11:03,080 For him to be standing is unusual, and I think that's something to call out. 184 00:11:03,164 --> 00:11:05,583 I also think it's unusual how the photo is framed. 185 00:11:05,666 --> 00:11:09,253 Normally, when you're taking a portrait like that, I don't think you would have 186 00:11:09,337 --> 00:11:13,007 the chair be empty and in picture. 187 00:11:13,090 --> 00:11:16,135 Usually, if you're taking that self-portrait, you're going to be 188 00:11:16,218 --> 00:11:18,596 center frame, and you would be sitting. 189 00:11:18,679 --> 00:11:23,184 I think he intended for the spirit to be in that chair. 190 00:11:23,267 --> 00:11:25,561 It's just framed up too perfectly for me. 191 00:11:25,644 --> 00:11:29,190 We can deduce from that that this was intentional. 192 00:11:29,273 --> 00:11:33,361 It wasn't just him wiling away an hour just for a self-portrait. 193 00:11:33,444 --> 00:11:37,073 There was an intent behind this because of how the photograph was framed, 194 00:11:37,156 --> 00:11:39,158 at least to me, in my opinion. 195 00:11:42,453 --> 00:11:48,459 Even though I think Mumbler's photos are probably explainable, it doesn't 196 00:11:48,542 --> 00:11:51,087 mean that all photos are explainable. 197 00:11:51,170 --> 00:11:54,006 It doesn't mean all video is explainable because I've seen 198 00:11:54,090 --> 00:11:56,759 some really weird stuff. I've experienced it. 199 00:11:56,842 --> 00:12:01,806 And there was one show I worked on where the director of photography 200 00:12:01,889 --> 00:12:04,016 changed the sensors on his camera. 201 00:12:04,100 --> 00:12:06,727 And he was not into ghosts at all. 202 00:12:06,811 --> 00:12:09,188 It was purely for cinematic reasons. 203 00:12:09,271 --> 00:12:14,652 And when he did that, we caught five different anomalies on his camera. 204 00:12:14,735 --> 00:12:17,113 And Our other cameras never caught those. 205 00:12:17,196 --> 00:12:20,116 Those are the cameras that had the standard sensors on them. 206 00:12:20,199 --> 00:12:27,248 It does beg the question, are we not looking at things the right way? 207 00:12:27,331 --> 00:12:31,502 Are we not taking into consideration all the things we need to think about 208 00:12:31,585 --> 00:12:36,090 when we're talking about trying to capture this type of activity on camera. 209 00:12:36,173 --> 00:12:38,759 This is what he said, that he would just show it to people as a lark, 210 00:12:38,843 --> 00:12:42,805 and then people got sick of it, and then he decided to let it go. 211 00:12:42,888 --> 00:12:46,392 But one day, Dr. Garner came in to see him. 212 00:12:46,475 --> 00:12:50,813 Dr. Garner was a big spirit. 213 00:12:50,896 --> 00:12:53,691 He was really big in the spiritual movement, and Mumler knew this. 214 00:12:53,774 --> 00:12:57,486 Mumler very mysteriously showed him this photograph and said, 215 00:12:57,570 --> 00:13:02,867 It's my cousin, and Dr. Dr. Garner was, of course, entranced by this. 216 00:13:02,950 --> 00:13:03,784 What is this? 217 00:13:03,868 --> 00:13:07,663 He made Mumler sign something to this effect. 218 00:13:07,747 --> 00:13:10,708 I think he even took the foot, asked Mummler if he could have the picture. 219 00:13:10,791 --> 00:13:12,877 Mummler signed it and said, This is my cousin. 220 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:18,299 He dated it and thought, Oh, I'll just let the fool have his toy, is what he said. 221 00:13:18,382 --> 00:13:22,011 Dr. Garner then took it to the papers, the newspapers, 222 00:13:22,094 --> 00:13:24,138 which Mummler did not count on. 223 00:13:24,221 --> 00:13:29,560 That's how things started to really take off, where people showed up at 224 00:13:29,643 --> 00:13:33,481 the studio demanding spirit photographs. 225 00:13:40,112 --> 00:13:45,451 The important thing to note about this first photo and why I think everything 226 00:13:45,534 --> 00:13:51,123 boils down to this first photo is just how different the ghost looks compared 227 00:13:51,207 --> 00:13:52,333 to the ghosts that come later on. 228 00:13:52,375 --> 00:13:57,922 If you look at the body of this ghost, you can see shadowing, you can see detail 229 00:13:58,005 --> 00:14:00,716 in the dress that she's wearing. 230 00:14:00,800 --> 00:14:03,761 The ghosts that come later on in Mummler's work, they're almost blob-like. 231 00:14:03,844 --> 00:14:05,805 They don't have any detail. 232 00:14:05,888 --> 00:14:07,014 There's not really any shadowing. 233 00:14:07,098 --> 00:14:09,809 It's just like this spectral entity of a body. 234 00:14:09,892 --> 00:14:12,770 In this first one, there's definition. 235 00:14:12,853 --> 00:14:16,315 Later on, the most important thing becomes the face, because you want the sitter 236 00:14:16,399 --> 00:14:18,067 to recognize the deceased loved ones. 237 00:14:18,150 --> 00:14:21,028 The face becomes the most important thing later on. 238 00:14:21,112 --> 00:14:25,491 Now, this one almost looks like a typical double exposure. 239 00:14:25,574 --> 00:14:30,079 I think that speaks to the process 240 00:14:30,162 --> 00:14:33,582 develops between now and then. 241 00:14:33,666 --> 00:14:36,210 Later on, he's under the scrutiny of people watching him. 242 00:14:36,293 --> 00:14:42,425 I think he has to be quick, and he has to do something where he can't 243 00:14:42,508 --> 00:14:43,843 get that definition in the body. 244 00:14:43,926 --> 00:14:47,930 Whereas now, he's either alone, which I don't think he's alone, 245 00:14:48,014 --> 00:14:51,934 or someone is in the room with him, whether it's Stuart, Green, or Plumber. 246 00:14:52,018 --> 00:14:54,478 And so he has time to get that definition in the body. 247 00:14:54,562 --> 00:14:57,314 We can learn a lot from this first photograph. 248 00:14:57,398 --> 00:15:01,736 What I think is interesting about Mumler in his day, and what we see today, 249 00:15:01,819 --> 00:15:05,406 is that during times of extreme stress 250 00:15:05,489 --> 00:15:09,452 and sorrow, and chaos in the world, in 251 00:15:09,535 --> 00:15:11,662 Mummler's time, we're talking Civil War. 252 00:15:11,746 --> 00:15:15,583 In our time, we just got out of a pandemic, and 253 00:15:15,666 --> 00:15:17,126 a lot of people lost people. 254 00:15:17,209 --> 00:15:21,797 When you see things like that, there's an interest in the supernatural. 255 00:15:21,881 --> 00:15:24,759 And whenever there's an interest, you're going to have people 256 00:15:24,842 --> 00:15:26,677 who want to take advantage of that. 257 00:15:28,054 --> 00:15:34,769 Grief is, it's It's a natural human emotion to the loss of an 258 00:15:34,852 --> 00:15:38,481 important object or person in your life. 259 00:15:38,564 --> 00:15:43,819 Human beings experience grief at the loss of anything that's important to them. 260 00:15:43,903 --> 00:15:50,159 The problem in our culture is that we deny death, we act as if people don't 261 00:15:50,242 --> 00:15:56,624 die, and therefore, grief is very hard for Americans because if you don't 262 00:15:56,707 --> 00:16:00,294 believe people die, then you don't know how to respond when they do die. 263 00:16:00,378 --> 00:16:02,588 People are afraid of grief. 264 00:16:02,672 --> 00:16:06,801 That's one of the reasons I work in hospitals to teach ministers 265 00:16:06,884 --> 00:16:09,637 about how to do grief ministry because they don't know, because 266 00:16:09,720 --> 00:16:14,725 our culture doesn't acknowledge grief and teach us how to grieve. 267 00:16:15,017 --> 00:16:21,107 But also the pictures of people who are dead, there are stages of grief. 268 00:16:21,190 --> 00:16:22,942 I mean, you go in and out. 269 00:16:23,025 --> 00:16:29,323 But one of the things, the second stage, first is a psychic numbness. 270 00:16:29,407 --> 00:16:32,076 You cannot believe that the person is gone. 271 00:16:32,159 --> 00:16:33,577 It's just shock. 272 00:16:33,661 --> 00:16:38,624 Then after that is a yearning, longing for the person. 273 00:16:38,708 --> 00:16:42,962 I think that's more the stage that you're talking about, like 274 00:16:43,045 --> 00:16:49,802 looking for the person, that yearning, longing, thinking you've seen them. 275 00:16:50,469 --> 00:16:56,851 There are cultures earlier than ours where they had morning rings and anything 276 00:16:56,934 --> 00:17:03,691 that reminds them strongly of the person that they've lost, including photographs 277 00:17:03,774 --> 00:17:05,901 of that person that are done. 278 00:17:05,985 --> 00:17:08,320 What does that say about just 279 00:17:08,362 --> 00:17:13,659 the need to visualize what is felt? 280 00:17:13,743 --> 00:17:18,622 So the bereaved feel the lingering presence of the deceased, 281 00:17:18,706 --> 00:17:23,753 and it's helpful to have a place to focus 282 00:17:23,836 --> 00:17:29,717 that grief and to visualize what is felt. 283 00:17:29,800 --> 00:17:33,304 I think it can be really therapeutic. 284 00:17:33,387 --> 00:17:38,225 And I'm glad that you're considering that aspect of it, because I think it's 285 00:17:38,309 --> 00:17:42,438 so often overlooked in favor of this... 286 00:17:42,521 --> 00:17:46,859 Every year around Halloween, somebody gets 287 00:17:46,942 --> 00:17:49,737 in touch with me about this, and it seems 288 00:17:49,820 --> 00:17:56,619 to be the extent of people's interest in it is, how could people fall for this? 289 00:17:56,702 --> 00:17:59,413 It's like, well, because they wanted it. 290 00:17:59,497 --> 00:18:05,378 It wasn't They wanted something that proved the existence 291 00:18:05,461 --> 00:18:07,922 of what they felt, I think. 292 00:18:08,005 --> 00:18:11,008 But lots of times in grief groups, I've had people talk to me 293 00:18:11,092 --> 00:18:13,219 about bereavement support groups. 294 00:18:13,302 --> 00:18:18,265 I've had people talking to about, I felt like she was in the room 295 00:18:18,349 --> 00:18:20,017 with me talking to me. 296 00:18:20,101 --> 00:18:24,480 That's part of the whole process of we 297 00:18:24,563 --> 00:18:27,525 lose the person in person, the physical 298 00:18:27,608 --> 00:18:30,111 reality, but we keep them alive. 299 00:18:30,194 --> 00:18:31,529 And the memories. 300 00:18:31,612 --> 00:18:36,742 And early on in the grief process, there is a sense that they're still with you 301 00:18:36,909 --> 00:18:39,412 and then later on and talk to you. 302 00:18:39,495 --> 00:18:44,542 Hearing people talk to you, maybe in the middle of the night, wake up and 303 00:18:44,625 --> 00:18:46,919 be sure that you've heard their voice. 304 00:18:47,003 --> 00:18:49,880 That's all a normal part of grief. 305 00:18:49,922 --> 00:18:55,011 When you're talking about spirit photography and the photographs, say, 306 00:18:55,094 --> 00:19:00,599 of a person, a son that you've lost who's behind you in the picture, most 307 00:19:00,683 --> 00:19:06,647 often you would see that as your son, because number one, 308 00:19:06,731 --> 00:19:10,151 you want to believe it's your son, and you do believe he's still with you. 309 00:19:10,234 --> 00:19:17,158 And so you would see that image, find a way to make that image into your son. 310 00:19:21,037 --> 00:19:26,250 Mummler claims that he was alone during this whole thing, although later 311 00:19:26,333 --> 00:19:32,631 he credits his wife, Hannah, with with helping him develop spirit photography, 312 00:19:32,715 --> 00:19:38,179 and he says, including the first time. 313 00:19:38,304 --> 00:19:41,432 That might insinuate that she was there. 314 00:19:41,515 --> 00:19:47,188 I think Hannah, his wife, certainly played a huge part 315 00:19:47,271 --> 00:19:50,441 in whatever it was that he was doing. 316 00:19:50,524 --> 00:19:55,237 Mrs. Stuart knew how to profit from it, certainly. 317 00:19:55,321 --> 00:19:58,741 I believe Hannah is the one who gave him the language for it. 318 00:19:58,824 --> 00:20:02,995 Hannah and her mother gave the language since they were already spiritualists. 319 00:20:03,079 --> 00:20:04,580 So who is Helen F. 320 00:20:04,663 --> 00:20:08,000 Stuart, and who is Hannah Francis Green? 321 00:20:08,084 --> 00:20:12,213 Well, we may never know who these women are, but I think that it's one woman, 322 00:20:12,296 --> 00:20:14,423 and I think it's Hannah Francis Green. 323 00:20:14,507 --> 00:20:21,305 And I think that for a short period of time, she was using the name Helen F. 324 00:20:21,389 --> 00:20:22,723 Stuart as an alias. 325 00:20:22,807 --> 00:20:25,434 I think that there might be several reasons why she would 326 00:20:25,518 --> 00:20:32,149 create this persona. She was potentially trying to a negative 327 00:20:32,233 --> 00:20:34,068 relationship or maybe had been abandoned 328 00:20:34,151 --> 00:20:37,279 and was just trying to recreate herself and find a way to support herself and her 329 00:20:37,363 --> 00:20:40,616 two children at a time when that would have been exceedingly 330 00:20:40,700 --> 00:20:42,451 difficult, I imagine. 331 00:20:42,535 --> 00:20:48,582 So I think it was easier for her as a single woman at that time, 332 00:20:48,666 --> 00:20:50,793 for whatever reason, whether she was fleeing the relationship 333 00:20:50,876 --> 00:20:55,006 or had been abandoned with the kids, it would be easier for her to build 334 00:20:55,089 --> 00:20:59,468 herself as a professional photographer, build this business first as a producer 335 00:20:59,552 --> 00:21:02,221 of hair jewelry, She's first listed as a producer of hair jewelry, 336 00:21:02,304 --> 00:21:05,933 and then as a photographer, the first to be listed 337 00:21:06,017 --> 00:21:11,313 in Boston Directories as a woman working as a photographer, which is really 338 00:21:11,397 --> 00:21:14,358 among about almost 70 photographers. 339 00:21:14,442 --> 00:21:16,944 So that's really worth noting. 340 00:21:17,028 --> 00:21:21,615 It would have been easier for her to do so as a missus. 341 00:21:21,699 --> 00:21:27,747 So I built a timeline because I kept hearing these women 342 00:21:27,830 --> 00:21:32,460 noted in always as a footnote, 343 00:21:32,543 --> 00:21:35,379 they were never central to the story. 344 00:21:35,463 --> 00:21:40,509 And then the more I tried to map out what their roles might have been, it just 345 00:21:40,593 --> 00:21:47,016 became increasingly clear that they were in all likelihood the same woman. 346 00:21:47,308 --> 00:21:51,437 Doing away with the possibility of magic, which I think is certainly possible. 347 00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:55,232 And I always want to leave open that possibility that we just don't know. 348 00:21:55,316 --> 00:22:01,322 But I think if we are going to assume some 349 00:22:01,405 --> 00:22:04,825 calculated effort here, I think that it 350 00:22:04,909 --> 00:22:10,039 was likely Hannah Francis Green, Helen F. Stuart's idea. 351 00:22:10,122 --> 00:22:13,751 She was already working in hair photography. 352 00:22:15,878 --> 00:22:20,174 There are reports of her having had mesmeric abilities from a very young 353 00:22:20,257 --> 00:22:24,095 age, like Hannah Francis Green. 354 00:22:24,261 --> 00:22:28,391 And then she had already been establishing herself in the production 355 00:22:28,474 --> 00:22:32,228 of hair jewelry, which is already connected to bereavement. 356 00:22:32,311 --> 00:22:35,773 It's already part of this industry. 357 00:22:35,856 --> 00:22:39,652 And then photography, which would often be incorporated into this hair 358 00:22:39,735 --> 00:22:42,279 photography, this hair jewelry, rather. 359 00:22:42,363 --> 00:22:46,450 Plus, by the time this first photograph had been created, 360 00:22:46,534 --> 00:22:50,579 she'd already photographed a lot of people in the community, 361 00:22:50,663 --> 00:22:56,252 and she'd likely kept all of the negatives so that people could come back to her 362 00:22:56,335 --> 00:22:59,797 on the case of somebody's passing and get a reprint to have it worked 363 00:22:59,880 --> 00:23:02,425 into the locket, which she always advertised 364 00:23:02,508 --> 00:23:04,969 on the back of her carte de visite. 365 00:23:05,052 --> 00:23:11,517 Most photographers would say reprints available upon request, but she would 366 00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:13,561 note that she produced hair jewelry. 367 00:23:13,644 --> 00:23:18,941 And of course, Stuart was an established photographer, and that's downplayed 368 00:23:19,025 --> 00:23:19,274 in these stories, too. 369 00:23:19,316 --> 00:23:24,989 But I have right in front of me right now about 20 of her carte de visite that 370 00:23:25,072 --> 00:23:27,033 I was able to find on eBay and whatnot. 371 00:23:27,116 --> 00:23:31,287 And I've seen many more in Boston Holdings. 372 00:23:31,370 --> 00:23:34,081 So she was really prolific. 373 00:23:34,165 --> 00:23:36,584 So she would have had a ton of negatives. 374 00:23:36,667 --> 00:23:42,256 And all accounts say that they were her studios that he was working 375 00:23:42,340 --> 00:23:45,009 at at the time of the discovery. 376 00:23:45,092 --> 00:23:46,761 And then she just disappears. 377 00:23:46,844 --> 00:23:49,138 She just disappears. 378 00:23:49,221 --> 00:23:53,851 And we have spirit photographs that are attributed to Stuart that are of 379 00:23:53,934 --> 00:23:59,774 a higher quality than his that can be positively dated and attributed before 380 00:23:59,857 --> 00:24:02,651 any of his can be. Different examples of her backstab. 381 00:24:02,735 --> 00:24:08,157 And as you can see, it always says hair jewelry made to order, which is notable. 382 00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:12,828 I haven't encountered that on any other carte de visite. 383 00:24:13,496 --> 00:24:15,873 But she always made sure that people knew that they could order it. 384 00:24:15,956 --> 00:24:19,126 So here's an example of vignetting, which is not unusual at all. 385 00:24:19,210 --> 00:24:24,924 It's a way of isolating the face from a group photo or from a three-quarter 386 00:24:25,007 --> 00:24:29,929 length portrait, if you wanted to, say, put their face in a locket. 387 00:24:30,012 --> 00:24:34,809 Something like this, often after somebody had passed. 388 00:24:41,107 --> 00:24:44,652 But as you can see, she was a pretty accomplished photographer. 389 00:24:44,735 --> 00:24:50,449 Anyway, All that to say that I feel that it's very unlikely that it was a mistake, 390 00:24:50,533 --> 00:24:53,119 and there are a lot of reasons to assume 391 00:24:53,202 --> 00:24:58,457 that she would have recognized that there 392 00:24:58,541 --> 00:25:02,169 would be an interest in this product. 393 00:25:02,253 --> 00:25:07,466 And again, she was already a noted Ms. Marek... 394 00:25:07,550 --> 00:25:13,139 She wasn't a mesmeric physician at this point, but she already was known 395 00:25:13,222 --> 00:25:17,393 to have mediumistic abilities as Hannah Francis Green, not as Stuart. 396 00:25:17,476 --> 00:25:21,981 Stuart was known as a photographer and the one who ran the studios. 397 00:25:22,064 --> 00:25:26,652 But of course, they were likely the same person. 398 00:25:28,529 --> 00:25:31,824 We just It's got some incredible news. 399 00:25:31,907 --> 00:25:35,619 The Eastman Kodak Museum just emailed me back. 400 00:25:35,703 --> 00:25:39,248 I've been in talks with them to view their Mummler collection 401 00:25:39,331 --> 00:25:41,667 in person, and also film it for the film. 402 00:25:41,751 --> 00:25:46,339 They normally do not allow filming of these pieces, and even 403 00:25:46,422 --> 00:25:48,257 viewing them is a rarity. 404 00:25:48,341 --> 00:25:53,721 But we were just given permission to both view the pieces and film it. 405 00:25:53,804 --> 00:25:57,433 This will be the first time that I will see a Mummler piece 406 00:25:57,516 --> 00:26:01,354 in person, and I I'm through the moon. Through the moon? 407 00:26:01,437 --> 00:26:02,938 I'm through the moon, through the roof. 408 00:26:03,022 --> 00:26:04,690 I'm over the moon and through the roof. That's it. 409 00:26:04,774 --> 00:26:06,150 That's where I'm at. 410 00:26:06,233 --> 00:26:08,069 It's going to be incredible. I can't wait. 411 00:26:08,152 --> 00:26:10,946 It's going to be amazing. 412 00:26:21,791 --> 00:26:23,709 Smaller than I thought. Yeah. 413 00:26:25,044 --> 00:26:26,295 I've just seen the scans in there. 414 00:26:26,379 --> 00:26:28,964 They're absolutely huge. 415 00:26:29,048 --> 00:26:33,928 See how the and it doesn't look like a hand at all. 416 00:26:34,053 --> 00:26:37,515 That's gorgeous. 417 00:26:42,353 --> 00:26:44,313 I just got overtaken. 418 00:26:44,397 --> 00:26:50,111 That's just how I've been doing this research since, I guess, 419 00:26:50,194 --> 00:26:53,823 2015, so seeing one in person is just really remarkable for me. 420 00:26:53,906 --> 00:26:54,990 It's Boston Mass. 421 00:26:55,074 --> 00:26:56,575 It was before he went to New York. 422 00:26:56,659 --> 00:27:00,746 So this is an earlier one. 423 00:27:03,290 --> 00:27:06,627 It's incredible. 424 00:27:06,711 --> 00:27:11,007 The hands are what's so strange. 425 00:27:11,090 --> 00:27:13,259 They definitely look like they've been drawn on. 426 00:27:14,385 --> 00:27:20,891 It almost looks like you have them up against the body, and there's 427 00:27:20,975 --> 00:27:23,769 a laring effect with the hands over top. 428 00:27:23,853 --> 00:27:25,563 It's like they've been adding on. 429 00:27:25,646 --> 00:27:29,442 We can almost see where it starts on it. 430 00:27:29,984 --> 00:27:36,240 Even the neck of the person, 431 00:27:37,158 --> 00:27:40,119 it just goes into this form. 432 00:27:40,202 --> 00:27:47,001 The form doesn't have any detail at all, except where the hands meet. 433 00:27:48,627 --> 00:27:52,882 There's no shadowing on the spirit form, except for in the face, 434 00:27:53,674 --> 00:28:01,640 which would explain using Hannah's images that she would choose to use for jewelry. 435 00:28:02,933 --> 00:28:06,896 You can almost see right around the neck where it just goes into 436 00:28:06,979 --> 00:28:09,899 this amorphous blob of a body. 437 00:28:09,982 --> 00:28:13,319 On these old ones, too. 438 00:28:20,117 --> 00:28:26,916 Yeah, you can immediately tell the difference here in the style. 439 00:28:26,999 --> 00:28:31,045 It's interesting that they would have different spirit photographers 440 00:28:31,128 --> 00:28:33,214 in their personal album. 441 00:28:33,964 --> 00:28:39,011 And these are what Mummler did later in life. 442 00:28:39,095 --> 00:28:41,597 Mail-in spirit photography. 443 00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:47,853 Yeah, so I think when we're looking at modern day spirit photography or people 444 00:28:47,937 --> 00:28:52,316 who just happen to capture things on film versus Mummler, 445 00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:57,446 if we're thinking or making the case that Mummler was faking things on purpose, 446 00:28:57,530 --> 00:29:03,411 then the parallel I see with that is that it certainly happens today 447 00:29:03,494 --> 00:29:06,831 with people faking things to make money, people faking things for power, 448 00:29:06,914 --> 00:29:09,625 for fame, for likes, for clicks. 449 00:29:09,709 --> 00:29:13,170 It's really no different, I don't think. 450 00:29:14,005 --> 00:29:16,924 It's interesting about Mummler and Money. 451 00:29:17,008 --> 00:29:22,054 He charged $10 a picture at a time when most people were charging anywhere 452 00:29:22,138 --> 00:29:29,103 between $0.50 and $0.50. So yeah, he made a lot of money. 453 00:29:29,186 --> 00:29:31,397 Certainly when he was in Boston, 454 00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:36,652 he had people lining up outside his door. 455 00:29:36,736 --> 00:29:39,196 At first, that changed. 456 00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:40,698 His fortunes fell. 457 00:29:40,781 --> 00:29:44,035 He ended up moving to New York after trying a few different things 458 00:29:44,118 --> 00:29:46,954 in Boston that he couldn't seem to get off the ground. 459 00:29:47,038 --> 00:29:48,205 So he moved to New York. 460 00:29:48,289 --> 00:29:51,500 He picked up spirit photography again. 461 00:29:51,584 --> 00:29:56,255 In the months, let's see, I think he started photographing in New York 462 00:29:56,339 --> 00:30:03,304 around December 1868, and his trial was arrested in March, April. 463 00:30:03,387 --> 00:30:07,016 I think he was arrested in April, 1869. 464 00:30:08,476 --> 00:30:15,524 He had photographed probably 500 people was the guess during that time? 465 00:30:15,608 --> 00:30:18,319 So, yeah, he did really well. 466 00:30:18,402 --> 00:30:23,574 Then they thought that with the publicity from the trial 467 00:30:23,657 --> 00:30:25,368 that he would really make a lot of money. 468 00:30:25,451 --> 00:30:27,620 But in fact, he struggled after that. 469 00:30:27,703 --> 00:30:29,205 Again, fortunes up and down. 470 00:30:29,288 --> 00:30:30,998 That's the story of Mummler. 471 00:30:31,082 --> 00:30:34,919 One of the most challenging things in the paranormal field is that 472 00:30:35,002 --> 00:30:37,505 this phenomena isn't proven yet. 473 00:30:37,588 --> 00:30:42,593 And because it's not proven, you're always going to have people that will 474 00:30:42,677 --> 00:30:45,179 say whatever they want to make a buck. 475 00:30:45,262 --> 00:30:47,973 Or to be famous or for power, whatever it is. 476 00:30:48,057 --> 00:30:54,188 They will always try to prey on others who will believe what they say. 477 00:30:54,271 --> 00:30:54,605 Okay. 478 00:30:54,647 --> 00:31:00,194 If spirit photography were fake, if there was some a charlatan that was 479 00:31:00,403 --> 00:31:05,032 impressing images on photographs so that people would get a picture of their lost 480 00:31:05,116 --> 00:31:11,330 loved one and believe that they were with them, I don't see how that hurts them. 481 00:31:11,414 --> 00:31:16,127 Because that's a part of grief is the experience of feeling like they're with 482 00:31:16,210 --> 00:31:18,462 you and you see them from time to time. 483 00:31:18,546 --> 00:31:24,927 So I don't see how that would hurt them at all, depending on 484 00:31:25,011 --> 00:31:26,262 where they are in the grief process. 485 00:31:26,345 --> 00:31:30,141 But early on, if that's comforting to them, I I think it's important 486 00:31:30,224 --> 00:31:32,852 to have that comfort. 487 00:31:43,237 --> 00:31:50,161 It's like the medicine men, the people that sold patent medicines. 488 00:31:50,244 --> 00:31:53,164 There's a great story of a man who would set up a table and 489 00:31:53,247 --> 00:31:59,003 he'd put a candlestick, a Bible, and a length of rope, and he'd go back 490 00:31:59,086 --> 00:32:01,672 and he'd rearrange it, and then go back and rearrange it again. 491 00:32:01,756 --> 00:32:04,675 By the time he rearrange it three or four times, he had 492 00:32:04,759 --> 00:32:06,469 an entire crowd of people around. 493 00:32:06,552 --> 00:32:09,305 Once he had the crowd of people, he put the table away and started 494 00:32:09,388 --> 00:32:11,182 his pitch selling medicine. 495 00:32:11,265 --> 00:32:14,352 I had nothing to do with what he was doing. 496 00:32:14,435 --> 00:32:19,732 Maybe the act of putting a hand on a camera was just to have people think that 497 00:32:19,815 --> 00:32:23,819 he had some mesmer effect on the camera. 498 00:32:23,903 --> 00:32:28,366 But there's nothing to be gained by touching the camera. 499 00:32:28,449 --> 00:32:33,120 Are these images of ghosts on Mummler's prints? 500 00:32:33,162 --> 00:32:36,874 They're ghost-like on Mummler's prints. 501 00:32:36,957 --> 00:32:40,961 They may be spirits, but they're 502 00:32:41,295 --> 00:32:45,508 conjured spirits by the photographer. 503 00:32:45,591 --> 00:32:49,428 Mummler was using the process of the day, which was the wet collodium negative. 504 00:32:49,512 --> 00:32:55,476 It's a process by which you have to pour collodium onto a glass plate. 505 00:33:02,692 --> 00:33:10,692 It has to be dipped into a silver solution 506 00:33:12,576 --> 00:33:14,120 while the coating is wet. 507 00:33:14,203 --> 00:33:17,790 It has to be taken and then developed before it dries. 508 00:33:17,873 --> 00:33:21,669 So that's the negative making process. 509 00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,558 And then once he had the negative, he would make an albumin print. 510 00:33:35,641 --> 00:33:40,771 The albumin process is a paper that's coated with egg white 511 00:33:40,855 --> 00:33:42,648 that bears a chloride. 512 00:33:42,732 --> 00:33:44,316 It was purchased that way. 513 00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:50,156 He didn't have to make that part, but he would have to float the paper on silver 514 00:33:50,239 --> 00:33:52,366 nitrate just before he would use it. 515 00:33:52,450 --> 00:33:54,118 And then it was printed in the sun. 516 00:33:54,201 --> 00:33:58,164 It was essentially a sun printing process. 517 00:33:58,414 --> 00:34:01,584 And so when When you're asking, how did he make the images? 518 00:34:01,667 --> 00:34:03,961 There are many ways to make ghost images. 519 00:34:04,045 --> 00:34:08,007 But I think what you really mean to ask is, how could he have made 520 00:34:08,090 --> 00:34:10,468 these images with people watching? 521 00:34:10,551 --> 00:34:15,389 The way he made the photographs was that he made the ghost image So 522 00:34:15,473 --> 00:34:19,894 a separate negative, a ghost image, before the sitter came in 523 00:34:19,977 --> 00:34:24,774 to have the life portrait made. 524 00:34:27,860 --> 00:34:33,741 We have a cabinet card This is an 1870s cabinet card. 525 00:34:33,824 --> 00:34:37,828 And what we're going to do is we're borrowing the head from this image, 526 00:34:37,912 --> 00:34:40,623 and we've made a copy of it. 527 00:34:40,706 --> 00:34:45,086 But in monotone, we don't want the brown color for refotographing. 528 00:34:45,169 --> 00:34:46,504 And all we need is the head. 529 00:34:46,587 --> 00:34:48,881 Now we're going to decide. 530 00:34:48,964 --> 00:34:51,759 I think we want her facing down. 531 00:34:51,842 --> 00:34:55,721 So we're going to decide on a body. 532 00:34:55,805 --> 00:34:58,599 They would photograph the photograph and 533 00:34:58,683 --> 00:35:04,480 then make a negative and make a print. 534 00:35:17,201 --> 00:35:22,915 The hands never look right, so I'm trying to follow that tradition. 535 00:35:22,998 --> 00:35:24,959 It's like AI hands. 536 00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:34,885 Let me see if that will work. 537 00:35:36,095 --> 00:35:38,889 I'm going to have the photographer 538 00:35:39,056 --> 00:35:44,353 like this, looking down, and most 539 00:35:44,437 --> 00:35:49,400 of this we're going to have to get rid of chemically on the negative. 540 00:35:49,483 --> 00:35:53,863 We're going to actually eat it away on the negative to leave room for the person. 541 00:35:53,946 --> 00:35:57,074 So we're only going to have this much. 542 00:35:57,825 --> 00:35:59,535 He says confidently. 543 00:35:59,910 --> 00:36:03,039 Yeah, that'll work. There you go. 544 00:36:03,289 --> 00:36:04,665 That's what we're going to shoot. 545 00:36:26,062 --> 00:36:27,271 This is where the ghost is now. 546 00:36:27,355 --> 00:36:29,565 It's like looking at the final picture. 547 00:36:32,193 --> 00:36:34,278 That's the layer. 548 00:36:34,362 --> 00:36:35,821 Oh, my goodness. 549 00:36:35,905 --> 00:36:37,823 You got to see that. 550 00:36:37,907 --> 00:36:39,825 That's where it gets so surreal. 551 00:36:39,909 --> 00:36:40,993 Here we go. 552 00:36:41,077 --> 00:36:45,790 Plate holder in the camera. 553 00:36:45,873 --> 00:36:49,460 Cap on, dark slide out. 554 00:36:49,543 --> 00:36:54,590 Then we're going to expose for about 10 seconds. 555 00:36:54,674 --> 00:37:02,674 1,001, 1,002, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 556 00:37:05,601 --> 00:37:10,147 And then we develop the plate. 557 00:37:19,115 --> 00:37:27,081 1,002, 1,03, 4,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 558 00:37:31,252 --> 00:37:34,630 12, 13. 559 00:37:35,631 --> 00:37:38,009 Well, there she is. 560 00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,681 What he would do is make the ghost negative. 561 00:37:43,973 --> 00:37:47,184 Then he would take the life image. 562 00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:51,188 The life image was made with, again, the collodian process, but typically 563 00:37:51,272 --> 00:37:57,278 the collodian process yields a negative that has a creamy coffee 564 00:37:57,361 --> 00:38:00,072 with cream color highlight. 565 00:38:04,952 --> 00:38:12,543 What we have here is a contact printing frame. 566 00:38:12,626 --> 00:38:19,175 It's a wooden frame, and And the first thing that would go in is the glass. 567 00:38:19,258 --> 00:38:26,015 Then we'd put a negative into the frame, and the negative goes image side up, so 568 00:38:26,098 --> 00:38:28,559 the side that the collodian was poured. 569 00:38:28,642 --> 00:38:32,480 Then the paper would sensitive side down. 570 00:38:32,563 --> 00:38:35,399 So it's essentially sensitive side to sensitive side. 571 00:38:35,983 --> 00:38:38,319 Then the back cover goes on. 572 00:38:38,402 --> 00:38:41,197 And these are called split back printing frames. 573 00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:47,453 And the reason they're called split back is that the lower end holds the paper 574 00:38:47,536 --> 00:38:55,536 and the negative in contact while you tilt this back and inspect the printing. 575 00:38:55,670 --> 00:38:59,382 You would take the paper and you would inspect the image. 576 00:38:59,465 --> 00:39:03,386 If it's not enough, you close it up and then you put it back in the sun again. 577 00:39:03,469 --> 00:39:07,348 Now, if I show it to you this way with the albumin paper 578 00:39:07,431 --> 00:39:13,562 in contact with the negative, you can see that it has a picture. 579 00:39:13,646 --> 00:39:16,816 However, in most cases, and even on this one, there are tack holes 580 00:39:16,899 --> 00:39:23,489 all over this one because what they did was to put tracing paper over this side. 581 00:39:23,572 --> 00:39:28,369 The reason they did that is if you slow down the sun's rays going through 582 00:39:28,452 --> 00:39:33,708 this paper, it makes more contrast, so you can get a stronger image that way. 583 00:39:33,791 --> 00:39:37,336 That's what would have happened in Mummler's era, because he definitely 584 00:39:37,420 --> 00:39:39,922 wouldn't want to have people see that. 585 00:39:40,006 --> 00:39:42,758 That would be bad. 586 00:39:42,842 --> 00:39:44,760 I'll show you what he would have done. 587 00:39:44,844 --> 00:39:46,887 And there are different ways we could approach this. 588 00:39:46,971 --> 00:39:49,974 The first thing we could do is just hand this around to the audience. 589 00:39:50,057 --> 00:39:54,687 And so the audience is inspecting us, make sure that it's... 590 00:39:54,770 --> 00:39:56,397 You could take the glass off. 591 00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:59,191 There's nothing secretive in there. 592 00:39:59,275 --> 00:40:01,277 There's no bunny on the side. 593 00:40:02,236 --> 00:40:06,532 That would go around, and then they would take the negative. 594 00:40:06,615 --> 00:40:09,410 Now, the negative just has you on that negative. 595 00:40:09,493 --> 00:40:10,536 There's no ghost. 596 00:40:10,619 --> 00:40:13,164 So let me hand this to you. 597 00:40:13,831 --> 00:40:15,916 And now that would go around the audience. 598 00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:22,715 While the plate is passed amongst the audience, the photographer, Mummler, 599 00:40:22,798 --> 00:40:27,762 would take the plate with the ghost image and just by palming in his hand. 600 00:40:27,845 --> 00:40:30,723 There's a reason why he only does these as small images. 601 00:40:30,806 --> 00:40:36,437 Palming the plate, all he has to do is go like that, bring the other plate 602 00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:41,609 in place, lay it on top like so. 603 00:40:41,692 --> 00:40:47,448 You can tilt it up as long as it's against As long as it's against something dark, 604 00:40:47,531 --> 00:40:49,408 you don't see the ghost image. 605 00:40:49,492 --> 00:40:53,287 Here it is in the printing frame with the ghost negative, which you can't see 606 00:40:53,371 --> 00:40:55,331 because it's against the dark background. 607 00:40:55,414 --> 00:40:59,877 But if I put white paper behind, you can see it very easily. 608 00:40:59,960 --> 00:41:03,547 Of course, that would be the worst thing that could possibly happen in front of an 609 00:41:03,631 --> 00:41:05,800 audience, especially an angry audience. 610 00:41:06,967 --> 00:41:10,262 The photographic paper would go in place. 611 00:41:10,346 --> 00:41:15,976 So the sensitive side down towards the image side and the back 612 00:41:16,060 --> 00:41:18,729 of the printing frame would go on. 613 00:41:18,813 --> 00:41:21,148 It's a pressure printing frame. 614 00:41:21,232 --> 00:41:28,406 Now, before he prints, he must put a diffusion paper on the facing side. 615 00:41:28,489 --> 00:41:33,703 So I'm going to turn this around you can't see the front of this because I have it 616 00:41:33,786 --> 00:41:35,996 at an angle or you can't see it. 617 00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:40,292 I'm going to put the diffusion paper on top, and then he would 618 00:41:40,376 --> 00:41:42,545 put this in the sun to print. 619 00:41:42,628 --> 00:41:47,425 After a certain amount of time, he would bring this back, take 620 00:41:47,508 --> 00:41:52,138 the diffusion paper off, open the back, 621 00:41:52,221 --> 00:41:56,350 and then peel back the image 622 00:41:56,434 --> 00:42:03,733 and show the actual photograph with the head and the ghost at the same time. 623 00:42:03,816 --> 00:42:07,528 If it's fine to print, then he would take it out completely. 624 00:42:07,611 --> 00:42:14,285 So go like this, take out the entire print to show, which is something 625 00:42:14,368 --> 00:42:16,662 we're going to do next. We're actually going to do the printing. 626 00:42:16,746 --> 00:42:17,788 Show the entire print. 627 00:42:17,872 --> 00:42:21,584 Again, you can't see the ghost in the printing frame, but you would 628 00:42:21,667 --> 00:42:27,048 see the ghost in the sprint, which would be pretty amazing. 629 00:42:27,423 --> 00:42:32,053 Take this and put it in the on. 630 00:42:37,933 --> 00:42:40,603 So you take the object, and then 631 00:42:40,686 --> 00:42:45,232 as you grab the object, and you look it 632 00:42:45,316 --> 00:42:51,572 where you grabbed it, then you bring out the object that you dropped. 633 00:42:51,655 --> 00:42:52,865 It's called the drop. 634 00:42:52,948 --> 00:42:54,367 It's a simple thing. 635 00:42:54,450 --> 00:42:57,370 It's dropping what you have. 636 00:42:57,453 --> 00:43:02,375 And if you're good at it, you can open your hand so that it doesn't 637 00:43:02,458 --> 00:43:03,918 look like you're holding something. 638 00:43:04,710 --> 00:43:08,673 So you go in, you drop it. 639 00:43:08,756 --> 00:43:10,841 You know it's in here because that's squeezed. 640 00:43:10,925 --> 00:43:13,594 It can't be in there because look, the hand's open. 641 00:43:13,678 --> 00:43:19,392 Then gone, and there it is. 642 00:43:24,855 --> 00:43:27,400 So here we have the printing frame. 643 00:43:27,483 --> 00:43:31,237 The printing frame has the diffusion paper on in the face. 644 00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:32,029 There's the back. 645 00:43:32,113 --> 00:43:36,701 We're going to open up half of the printing frame. 646 00:43:36,826 --> 00:43:39,995 I'm going to tilt it this way so people can't see the negative. 647 00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:46,085 And then as I pull back the printing paper, you'll see 648 00:43:46,669 --> 00:43:54,010 the live subject and the ghost on the same print, which is baffling 649 00:43:54,093 --> 00:43:57,847 to anyone who's seen this demonstration because they saw the negative. 650 00:43:57,930 --> 00:44:03,144 They saw the printing frame was empty, and yet there is something done in front 651 00:44:03,227 --> 00:44:05,479 of them that actually works. 652 00:44:06,147 --> 00:44:11,819 Mark did such a fantastic job of really capturing the essence and beauty 653 00:44:11,902 --> 00:44:13,779 of what Mummler was doing. 654 00:44:13,863 --> 00:44:20,202 To me, these are just wonderful and truly works of art that he created here. 655 00:44:20,286 --> 00:44:22,705 Is this the final piece of the puzzle? 656 00:44:22,788 --> 00:44:25,833 Is this the answer to what I've been searching 657 00:44:25,916 --> 00:44:30,046 for for the last seven, eight years? 658 00:44:30,129 --> 00:44:31,339 I don't know. 659 00:44:31,422 --> 00:44:34,925 For me, though, there's a few things that I want to call out. 660 00:44:35,009 --> 00:44:41,599 The first thing is, if you look at the face here, the face doesn't have 661 00:44:41,682 --> 00:44:44,393 as much detail as some of Mumbler's work. 662 00:44:44,477 --> 00:44:48,397 I think that, to me, is the biggest call. 663 00:44:48,481 --> 00:44:54,153 It looks more spectral. 664 00:44:54,236 --> 00:44:58,282 It has more of the look of the body than it does the actual faces 665 00:44:58,366 --> 00:44:59,700 that Mummler was able to do. 666 00:44:59,784 --> 00:45:02,870 If you remember, the thing that was so remarkable about Mummler's piece 667 00:45:02,953 --> 00:45:08,209 is that the detail in the face versus the detail in the body. 668 00:45:08,292 --> 00:45:10,169 I think there might be a step missing. 669 00:45:10,252 --> 00:45:11,879 I will say that I think the body looks great. 670 00:45:11,962 --> 00:45:16,384 I think Mark is right on track with saying that the body was cut out or drawn on. 671 00:45:16,467 --> 00:45:19,220 I think there's some real validity there. 672 00:45:19,303 --> 00:45:23,599 To me, the body looks more similar to Mummler's than the actual face does. 673 00:45:23,683 --> 00:45:28,896 The one thing that doesn't really fit for me, though, is that it wasn't 674 00:45:28,979 --> 00:45:33,067 just people off the street looking at how he was doing it. 675 00:45:33,150 --> 00:45:38,989 The leading photographers of the day were in his studio watching his every move. 676 00:45:39,073 --> 00:45:44,245 They were investigating every piece of equipment, every step he was doing. 677 00:45:44,328 --> 00:45:49,333 While I do think there was a sleight of hand, I don't think that 678 00:45:49,417 --> 00:45:54,672 these photographers would let Mumler keep the negative away from them. 679 00:45:54,755 --> 00:45:56,340 I think they would need to hold the negative in their hands. 680 00:45:56,382 --> 00:45:59,427 I think there's something missing here. 681 00:45:59,510 --> 00:46:03,764 I think there's a step missing that we don't know what it is yet. 682 00:46:03,848 --> 00:46:05,933 I think there definitely could have been a sleight of hand. 683 00:46:06,017 --> 00:46:12,857 As I mentioned, Hannah Green, Stuart, would have had 684 00:46:12,940 --> 00:46:14,817 a ton of plates to choose from. 685 00:46:14,900 --> 00:46:18,571 Most people who came into the studio, she 686 00:46:18,654 --> 00:46:22,450 might be able to find, if not an actual 687 00:46:22,533 --> 00:46:25,536 photograph of somebody from their family. 688 00:46:25,619 --> 00:46:27,788 It was so blurry. 689 00:46:27,872 --> 00:46:31,959 It could have been I forget the name of the author now, but there was 690 00:46:32,043 --> 00:46:36,005 some article that was written where they talk about the poor mothers coming in and 691 00:46:36,088 --> 00:46:38,299 recognizing some foggy doubling. 692 00:46:38,382 --> 00:46:43,429 If the bereaved wanted 693 00:46:43,512 --> 00:46:48,392 to see somebody, they were going 694 00:46:48,476 --> 00:46:49,685 to complete that illusion. 695 00:46:49,769 --> 00:46:54,857 It didn't have to be an amazing end result 696 00:46:54,940 --> 00:46:57,985 because ultimately, 697 00:46:58,069 --> 00:46:59,612 it's what they wanted to see. 698 00:46:59,695 --> 00:47:01,864 So Yeah, I do think there could be a sleight of hand. 699 00:47:01,947 --> 00:47:06,410 I imagine that these sessions would be emotional, and so there'd be 700 00:47:06,494 --> 00:47:08,496 a lot of occasion for distraction. 701 00:47:08,579 --> 00:47:15,211 And certainly, if Hannah Green was in the room trying to amp things up, and 702 00:47:15,294 --> 00:47:21,092 it was a seance, a therapeutic session 703 00:47:21,175 --> 00:47:25,054 that ultimately is what they 704 00:47:25,137 --> 00:47:26,764 wanted and needed, so who cares? 705 00:47:26,847 --> 00:47:29,684 Who cares if they weren't taking advantage. 706 00:47:29,767 --> 00:47:34,355 They they were producing something that was much 707 00:47:34,438 --> 00:47:37,233 wanted and needed and sought out. 708 00:47:37,316 --> 00:47:40,319 It's an interesting thought 709 00:47:40,403 --> 00:47:44,699 who was in on it because that assumes, 710 00:47:44,782 --> 00:47:46,742 again that it was fake. 711 00:47:46,826 --> 00:47:48,160 I'm not saying it's not. 712 00:47:48,202 --> 00:47:51,455 It's super suspect. 713 00:47:51,539 --> 00:47:57,586 But I don't really know if I'm comfortable making that assumption since we can't... 714 00:47:57,670 --> 00:48:03,092 Here we are over 100 years later and we're still trying to prove it, 150 years, 715 00:48:03,759 --> 00:48:06,012 and no one could during his lifetime. 716 00:48:06,095 --> 00:48:08,848 Well, if you're going to do this in front of people who are watching, 717 00:48:08,931 --> 00:48:12,643 I can see no other way, period. There is no other way. 718 00:48:12,727 --> 00:48:18,024 If you're doing this as a product for people coming to your studio 719 00:48:18,107 --> 00:48:26,107 who are longing to see their long lost husband or wife, child, 720 00:48:26,407 --> 00:48:29,535 then he doesn't need this light of hand. It's done in the dark room. 721 00:48:29,618 --> 00:48:33,164 Also, they would be the ones providing the picture. 722 00:48:33,247 --> 00:48:39,128 So I can't imagine a person coming in with an existing picture, 723 00:48:39,211 --> 00:48:40,921 handing it to the photographer. 724 00:48:41,005 --> 00:48:46,969 And then two days later, he gives them a spirit photograph that has the same 725 00:48:47,053 --> 00:48:51,724 picture and not have them know that that's from the picture they handed him. 726 00:48:51,807 --> 00:48:57,104 Now, if it's just an amorphous ectoplasm 727 00:48:57,188 --> 00:48:59,357 cloud, that's a different story. 728 00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:05,363 But if it's actually from a photograph, they knew, they had to know 729 00:49:05,446 --> 00:49:06,781 that it was from that photograph. 730 00:49:06,864 --> 00:49:10,159 Of course, people are gullible when they're in grief. 731 00:49:10,242 --> 00:49:15,915 As I said about grief, what we in our society do is avoid it. 732 00:49:15,998 --> 00:49:20,961 So whether you're talking about spirit photography in my mind, or whether you're 733 00:49:21,045 --> 00:49:25,883 talking about the idea that someone comes to the foot of your bed and stands and 734 00:49:25,966 --> 00:49:32,723 talks to you during a certain part of the grieving process, that's normal. 735 00:49:32,807 --> 00:49:36,394 At some point, it gets to be not normal grief. 736 00:49:36,477 --> 00:49:41,190 But that's down the road because we try to rush grief in our society. 737 00:49:41,273 --> 00:49:44,819 Okay, we give you a week off or maybe two weeks for bereavement. 738 00:49:44,902 --> 00:49:47,488 Grief takes a year at least. 739 00:49:47,571 --> 00:49:50,574 So I think any way that spirit photography 740 00:49:50,658 --> 00:49:54,662 or the sense, any way that you can 741 00:49:54,745 --> 00:49:56,330 feel closer to the one that you've lost. 742 00:49:56,414 --> 00:50:01,627 And one of the things that I do for anniversaries of, say, mother's death 743 00:50:01,711 --> 00:50:06,090 is I cook something that was something I love that she cooked. 744 00:50:06,173 --> 00:50:11,303 So you're just talking spirit photography is just another way to feel close 745 00:50:11,387 --> 00:50:12,847 to the person that you've lost. 746 00:50:12,930 --> 00:50:16,017 I think it makes great sense. It makes sense. 747 00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:21,480 At the end of the day, I don't think there is a clear answer 748 00:50:21,522 --> 00:50:25,234 to how Mumler made these images. 749 00:50:25,443 --> 00:50:30,281 But at the same time, I don't think this was an exercise in futility 750 00:50:30,364 --> 00:50:34,952 for the very reason that I hope this film 751 00:50:35,036 --> 00:50:38,164 shed a lot of light on the role 752 00:50:38,247 --> 00:50:42,376 that his wife played in the creation of these spirit photographs. 753 00:50:43,085 --> 00:50:50,134 She seems to have been this keystone of this whole operation to me. 754 00:50:50,217 --> 00:50:54,013 The more that I look into her, the more it seems just 755 00:50:54,096 --> 00:50:56,223 what a heavy hand she had in this. 756 00:50:56,307 --> 00:51:02,355 While history books have always We just talked about Mummler, and 757 00:51:02,438 --> 00:51:07,943 like Felicity said, his wife was always in the footnotes, I think she needs to be 758 00:51:08,027 --> 00:51:13,949 right there with him because you don't have spirit photography without her. 759 00:51:14,033 --> 00:51:15,368 You just don't. 760 00:51:15,451 --> 00:51:22,249 Now, whether that's Hannah or Mrs. Stuart, or they weren't the same, I'm not sure. 761 00:51:22,333 --> 00:51:28,547 I'm leaning that they are the same person, but I don't think that takes away from 762 00:51:28,631 --> 00:51:32,968 the impact that had on what Mummler did. 763 00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:36,764 So I don't know. There's still a mystery here. 764 00:51:36,847 --> 00:51:38,182 There's still a mystery. 765 00:51:38,265 --> 00:51:42,937 There's still something to find on how he made these images. 766 00:51:43,020 --> 00:51:46,023 I'm sorry, on how they made these images together. 767 00:51:46,107 --> 00:51:50,444 But at the end of the day, I'm really happy because this was 768 00:51:50,528 --> 00:51:51,195 such an important journey for me. 769 00:51:51,237 --> 00:51:57,410 I really stepped out of my comfort zone and went on this journey and traveled up 770 00:51:57,493 --> 00:52:02,581 the Coast of the United States, up into Canada Hannah, to follow Mumbler, 771 00:52:02,665 --> 00:52:05,584 to literally chase ghosts. 772 00:52:05,710 --> 00:52:09,755 It was an incredible experience for me, and I wouldn't 773 00:52:09,839 --> 00:52:11,799 take that away for anything. 774 00:52:11,882 --> 00:52:18,848 While I don't have a definitive answer, I'm just glad that we could shed a light 775 00:52:18,931 --> 00:52:24,103 onto the impact that his wife, Hannah or 776 00:52:24,186 --> 00:52:27,273 Mrs. Stuart, had with spirit photography. 777 00:52:27,356 --> 00:52:31,694 I also think that's beautiful that they were able to create 778 00:52:31,777 --> 00:52:36,949 something so wonderfully magical that it endures today. 779 00:52:38,075 --> 00:52:39,368 I mean, that's wonderful. 780 00:52:39,452 --> 00:52:44,040 That's what I love, and that's what keeps drawing me to these images 781 00:52:44,123 --> 00:52:49,628 is the mystery, yes, but also just the magic of them. 782 00:52:49,712 --> 00:52:54,592 I hope I've been able to share some of that magic with you all. 783 00:52:54,675 --> 00:52:57,219 So thank you. 784 00:53:00,348 --> 00:53:04,935 Film Junior tonight as 785 00:53:05,019 --> 00:53:08,898 I step down for a walk. 786 00:53:08,981 --> 00:53:15,404 In the right light, I can turn back the clock. 787 00:53:15,488 --> 00:53:20,951 These streets are filled with ghosts, hard to crack a smile. 788 00:53:21,035 --> 00:53:26,999 I miss you the most, stay with me a while. 789 00:53:27,083 --> 00:53:33,547 Trees like memories bend in sway, they echo with your name. 790 00:53:33,631 --> 00:53:39,845 You've gone away, and yet you remain. 791 00:53:39,929 --> 00:53:46,477 These streets are filled with ghosts, hard to crack a smile for you. 792 00:53:46,560 --> 00:53:51,399 I miss you the most, stay with me a while. 793 00:53:51,482 --> 00:53:56,320 I miss you the most, stay with me a while. 794 00:53:56,404 --> 00:54:00,116 You bring a light even now. 795 00:54:00,199 --> 00:54:02,451 Twinkling stop.