The Spectral Voyager Episode 1: The Curious Case of William Mumler
Jake and Brad are thrilled to bring you the very first episode of their new mini-series “The Spectral Voyager.” Over the course of ten episodes, they’ll bring you true tales from the edges of reality with a less critical eye, and a focus on the pure enjoyment of paranormal folklore. In the premier episode, they’ll dive into the story of the very first spirit photographer, William Mumler. From Mumler’s humble beginnings to his rise in popularity and eventual fraud trial, the guys will leave no photograph undeveloped. In the second half of the episode, Brad recounts his own personal tale of the paranormal - a close quarters rendezvous with one of the most cursed objects of all time… Robert the doll.
You can subscribe for just five dollars a month on Patreon to gain access to the remaining nine episodes of The Spectral Voyager as it releases, as well as QAA’s other mini-series: Manclan and Trickle Down.
If you’re already a subscriber, thank you! It allows us to make weird stuff like this.
We hope you enjoy it! See you on the other side.
http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous
The Spectral Voyager theme composed by Nick Sena.
Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
QAA’s website: http://qanonanonymous.com
Behind the cracking wallpaper of our reality, there exists another world that science has yet to explain.
In here dwell monsters and madness, and potentially, the answers to our most important questions.
In this world, gravity intensifies, time slows down, and your heart rate quickens.
I'm Jake Rakitansky.
And I'm Brad Abrahams.
and you're listening to the Spectral Voyager.
[Music]
Ghosts.
Spirits.
Wraiths.
We've all seen them.
Hiding just out of sight in the corners of our vision, or ducking under the doors of our bedrooms.
These entities usually stay safely tucked inside of our minds, but every so often, one somehow manages to open a doorway between our world and theirs.
Like most paranormal phenomena, there is a concerted effort by both amateur and professional photographers alike to capture these entities on camera, dating all the way back to the 1800s.
In our premiere episode, we'll be exploring the curious case of William Mumler, the first person to ever capture a ghost on camera.
After that, we'll hear from Brad, who had the pleasure of experiencing a haunting of his own.
Let's get into it!
The Spectral Voyager is a departure from the usual QAA fare you love, but frankly, can depress the shit out of you.
We won't be spending our time debunking claims, or trying to prove if something is either real or ridiculous.
Instead, we'll be operating somewhere in between those poles, where the hard edges of reality start to loosen, get gooey and formless, where empirical science, outrageous anecdotes, and murky history meet.
Put aside the usual cynicism you've grown accustomed to when talking about fringe phenomena, if just for an hour.
Regress back to those earlier years before the dopamine poisoning, when you could still be washed over by wonder and intrigue.
Remember back to when, and why, you became obsessed with the weird in the first place.
Maybe, like Jake and I, you'll realize it's because deep down, in some deeper than others, you also want to believe.
I think this quote from The Resonance of Unseen Things by Susan Lepsalter puts it perfectly, with quote-unquote it being supernatural phenomena or personal experience.
It is something real, though sometimes the only way to think about it is through its effects in story.
The It, the phantom object of the Uncanny or Fantastic Story, never symbolizes a single real thing.
The Uncanny demands to be read as true to some ambiguous but felt and embodied experience.
It is presented and experienced as an actual memory.
While the Uncanny dismantles narrative conventions of realism and replaces them with uncertainty,
its emotional force demands the listener attend to the teller with the same openness demanded
by the genre of any personal narrative.
The Curious Case of William Mummler Even though William H. Mummler is most famous for his
photographs, he was not a photographer by trade.
Instead, he worked as a silver engraver for Bigelow, Cunard & Co., a well-known jewelers in the Boston area in the mid-1860s.
Mumler, a self-admitted tinkerer who had experimented with chemistry in the past, found himself fascinated by the art of photography and photo development.
A relatively new technology.
Having made the acquaintance of a young man who worked in a nearby photography studio, Mumler would often find himself going over there in his free time to play around with the equipment when it wasn't in use.
The shop's owner, a Mrs. Stewart, produced a unique kind of keepsake jewelry where she would often weave the hair or clothing of a deceased or living loved one into intricate lockets and chains.
The pieces would often be accompanied by a photo of the individual worth remembering, and Mrs. Stewart had become proficient enough at taking the photographs herself.
On one occasion, Mrs. Stewart found herself completely frustrated with the process.
No matter what she did, each photograph produced was wrought with streaking comets and large blotches of light, totally obscuring whatever it was she intended to capture.
Knowing that Mumler had a decent understanding of chemistry, she asked if he might take a look at her setup, and figure out just exactly what she was doing wrong.
Mummler was delighted.
He had been given free reign in a photo studio to do as he pleased.
Now there are a few different accounts of what exactly happened next.
In one story, Mummler was experimenting with taking the lens cap off of the camera at the last second as he attempted to photograph an empty chair.
But from his own account, Mummler claims he was trying to take what can only be described as the very first selfie, rigging the camera to flash on its own after he ran around it to sit in the chair.
When he developed the photograph, something strange happened.
Appearing over his shoulder in the picture was a misty outline of another person.
A young girl.
Mumler couldn't believe his eyes.
The girl in the picture looked strikingly like Mumler's cousin, who had passed away some years prior.
According to Christa Cloutier, the author of The Perfect Medium, Photography and the Occult, Mumler knew right away that this was a mistake, the result of not having cleaned the camera's plate properly after the last sitting.
The striking image of his dead cousin was merely a similar-looking girl who had recently been photographed by Mrs. Stewart.
But that's no fun.
Mummler took the photograph to a spiritualist friend of his and told him that the image was 100% authentic.
He just wanted to see how his friend would react.
His friend examined the photo very closely and concluded that the girl in the picture was a genuine apparition.
Mumler's photo was published in numerous esoteric newspapers like Banner of Light and the Herald of Progress.
Here's an article from October of 1862.
We have been placed in possession of an account of events transpiring in Boston, which give promise of opening to the world a new and satisfactory phase of spiritual manifestations.
The facts, as narrated by Dr. H.F.
Gardner of Boston, are as follows.
Mr. W.H.
Mumler, an amateur photographer and practical chemist of Boston, was engaged on Sunday, October the 5th, at the photograph gallery of Mrs. Stewart at No.
258 Washington Street in adjusting the chemicals, which had become disarranged, having prepared a plate and placed a chair near the focus of the camera by which to adjust it.
He proceeded to take his own photograph, card size, by quickly jumping into position and standing still the required time.
The picture, a copy of which we have seen, represents Mr. Mumler as an active, rather athletic-looking man, standing with his coat off and the black cloth used to cover the camera in his hand.
Upon the back of this card appears the following statement.
This photograph was taken of myself, by myself, on Sunday, when there was not a living soul in the room behind me, so to speak.
The form on my right I recognize as my cousin, who passed away about 12 years since.
So, I mean, I don't think we can accurately say that this was the first selfie, but it's gotta be pretty close.
Yeah, I do remember seeing an image, like, floating around of the first selfie.
I don't think it was this one, but I don't know if the timing lines up.
There was no ghost in it?
There was no ghost.
Okay, so, well, probably not.
1839, I see, was the first selfie.
Okay.
Alright, so that's, yeah, that's a couple years, that's a couple decades before this.
Yeah, yeah.
Mummler soon began offering to photograph anyone who was willing to pay the exorbitant fee of $10 per sitting, nearly 40 times the usual price of a photo session, which was normally about 25 cents.
The newfound spirit photographer was quick to profess that he was not a medium and had no idea as to why his camera had been chosen to summon the dead.
According to him, the spirits would come and go as they pleased, and patrons were not guaranteed to have a ghost show up during their sitting.
As William began to amass more and more clout, the haters and doubters began to scrutinize his work more closely.
However, of the numerous investigators who arrived at his gallery to prove him a fake, most walked away convinced that Mumler had tapped into something real.
There were, of course, inevitable mishaps that occur when photographing the dead, like when a woman's supposedly dead brother returned home safely from the Civil War.
Instead of accusing Mumler of fraud and demanding her $10 back, she instead insisted that the spirit in her photograph was some sort of evil demon trying to trick her.
Mumler was emboldened.
He began to expand, offering a mail-in service where people could include a description of their passed-on loved one as well as $7.50 and Mumler would send them back a haunted photograph.
So, like, would he add a spirit into the existing photograph?
Yes, I think I think that they would send him I think they would send him a picture and a description of, you know, which dead relative they were sort of trying, you know, hoping to see.
And, you know, for $7.50, he would send you back.
He would send you back something, hopefully, you know, if the ghost showed up that day.
Business was booming.
The market for photos with dead relatives was becoming so desirable that Mumler could barely keep up with the demand.
One man visited the studio and was astounded to see the ghostly image of his wife floating above another patron.
You might think this would be an emotional moment for him, but unfortunately for Mumler, the man's wife was alive and well and had been photographed by Mumler before he shifted his focus to the paranormal.
Oops.
Time to get out of town.
Busted.
Mumler moved his operation from Boston to New York, but a new city brought with it new skeptics.
In his biography, he writes of the move, "Feeling the force at this time of the old adage,
'A prophet is not without honor save in his own country,' I determined to move to New York.
I arrived in that city with my family, having scarcely money enough to sustain ourselves for
a week, and began to look around for business. But I found that my reputation as an alleged
trickster had preceded me, and it was with difficulty I could obtain the use of a gallery."
Soon, Mumler found himself under investigation by a journalist named P.V.
Hickey.
It's a very 1860s New York name.
Oh, the names in this are just fantastic.
Hickey wrote for the Science Division of the New York World Publication.
During a meeting of the Photographic Section of the American Institute, Mummler's fantastic photographs were brought up and Hickey took it upon himself to seek out the spirit photographer and assess whether his methods were legitimate.
Upon visiting Mummler's studio, Hickey discovered he was charging $10 per photograph.
I just looked that up and that's almost $400 today.
Yes, that is insane.
It's a lot.
As if this wasn't bad enough, a young man working as an assistant claimed that the art was so valuable, Mumler could probably charge $1,000 per picture.
That was enough to set off Hickey's bullshit detector, and he immediately went to the mayor of New York and filed a complaint.
Here is his sworn affidavit from March of 1869.
I gotta say, it was so cool reading all of the newspaper articles from this time.
I had an absolute blast just poring through old reporters' notebooks and, you know, scans of all of the newspaper articles while going through it.
And it's just, it's so interesting because at this time, you know, this was the entertainment.
I mean, this was, you know, what we have today as a reality show.
Yeah.
And so it was just, there's so much source material because it was covered, you know, internationally.
Alright, so here's Mr. Hickey's affidavit.
PV Hickey, residing in said city, county, and state, to wit, at number 166 Hudson Street, in said city, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he is connected with the editorial department of The World.
A daily paper published in said city that it is a part of his duty to procure scientific news for said journal, that in performance of that duty, he attended the meeting held in the month of March, 1869, the meeting of the photographic section of the American Institute at the Cooper Union Building, that at said meeting, photographic pictures were exhibited having thereon an image which was said to be of a living person and an indistinct or shadowy outline of a person in the background.
That the cards exhibited were stated to be specimens of cards taken by a person named Mumler and doing business as a photographer at number 630 Broadway and that at the time were said to be by said Mumler or his agents at said place likenesses of living persons undergoing the process of having their pictures taken and that the shadowy face was that of some deceased relative or friend of the person so operated on, or in other cases,
the resemblance of some distinguished historic or other personage, and that said mumbler or his
agents represented such cards to be produced by supernatural causes. Or, in other words,
that the shadowy face was the likeness of the spirits present at the time of taking
such likenesses.
Deponent was furnished with the business card of said mumbler, of which the following is a copy.
W.M.H.
Mumler, Spirit Photographic Medium, number 630, Broadway, New York.
Very catty.
Yeah.
Sounds like he's jealous.
The mayor of New York read the complaint, and within days sent his marshal, Joseph Tuker, to Mumler's studio to conduct an investigation of his own.
Upon its conclusion, William H. Mumler was arrested and brought to the Tombs Courthouse in New York under felony charges of fraud and trickery.
The trial garnered international interest, with the story appearing in dozens of newspapers across the world.
With the social-religious movement of Spiritualism surging to popularity in the mid-1800s, people had become very interested in how the judicial system would fare for Mumler.
After all, if he wasn't convicted of fraud, one could argue that the photographs must be real.
Justice Dowling presided over the case, Eldridge T. Gary represented the people, and a John D. Townsend Esquire represented the defendant.
The first witness called by the prosecution was Joseph Tooker, the marshal who had been sent at the mayor's behest down to Mumler's studio.
Fortunately for us, and with the help of QAA's resident attorney, Ali Metzi, we were able to obtain photo scans of a notebook from 1869 from a journalist who tracked the entire trial as it was reported in the press.
So here is a portion of Marshal Joseph Tucker's testimony.
What is your name?
Joseph H. Tucker.
Have you any other name?
No.
Is your name Bowditch?
No.
Do you go by any other name?
Not often.
What is your real name?
Joseph H. Tooker.
Do you go by the name of Bodich?
Sometimes.
Is that your real name?
No.
Now what made you visit Mr. Mumler's gallery?
I was directed to do so by the mayor of New York.
For what purpose?
It was on account of a complaint laid before the mayor with regard to certain swindling operations on Broadway.
Was it your idea to go there?
Mr. P. V. Hickey of the New York world made a complaint to the mayor, and his honor told me to work the case up and find whether there was any truth in the statement, so I went there.
What did you expect to get there?
I expected, uh, according to the representations.
Now I ask you yourself.
Well, I thought to get my photograph taken.
Did you get it taken?
Yes.
Did you notice any deception practiced on the part of the photographer?
I thought... Now, not at all.
I ask you, did you see any trick?
I am not an expert.
Did you see any trick or device?
Answer, yes or no.
Yes.
State the trick or deception that you noticed.
Well, when I went into the room, there were certain representations made to me.
I do not ask you what representations were made.
I... Mr. Gary from the prosecution jumps in.
Now, one moment!
He addresses the court.
If he asks him to state the trick or deception, it is not only proper but right to state what occurred and not merely to point out any specific act where the whole performance was a trick and deception, as we insist.
The court answers.
I think he should answer, from the very fact that he says the trick or deception was practiced upon him.
Tooker answers.
They promised to give me a portrait of pictures of a deceased relative or one nearest in sympathy with me.
They did not do it.
I was therefore deceived.
So he's basically saying, look, I went there and I was promised a picture with a ghost in it.
They took my picture.
There was no ghost.
So therefore it's trickery and fraud.
He just felt disappointed.
Tooker's investigation, along with a complaint made by a man by the name of Oscar G. Mason, were what triggered Mumler's arrest.
Mason at the time was the secretary to the photographic section of the American Institute and had reproduced a number of spirit photography photos using a handful of different methods.
While testifying for the prosecution, Mason detailed the various quote-unquote unnatural means he used to reproduce Mumler's effect.
Are you familiar with spirit photography?
I am.
And have you produced any?
I took spirit photographs of Dr. Fry and Mr. Rice on Saturday, and took some since.
The counsel for the prosecution then exhibited some more spirit photographs, and the witness said, These are of those I have taken.
I took others also.
Three more were shown, identified by the witness, and marked by the court.
Describe how they are produced.
By various means.
The prosecution then handed Mason a photograph he had recently taken.
It was of a colleague, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Rice, with the apparition of a ghostly woman with her arm wrapped around his chest.
Mason looked over the photograph and explained to the court the process in which it was created.
This was done by first taking the negative of the lady, and then the positive from the negative.
This positive was slightly manipulated, and then used in producing the subsequent picture of Mr. Rice.
If in this case the camera was used only in making the negative, the ghost picture of the lady was produced by the process known in technical phrase as stopped out, or intercepting the rays of light.
The first negative the ghost pictured showed full, as no light passes through the opaque surface.
That was left free for the subsequent picture.
And both figures appeared on one negative.
It was not done by double printing, but by erasing a portion and then exposing it to a ray of light for an instant before developing.
For the light, I used a common flame of a lamp in this case.
Mason was handed more pictures he had taken, and explained for each how the quote-unquote ghost was created.
The other methods involved inserting a glass positive in the plate holder before exposing it.
When the photograph was taken, the positive from the glass was transferred to the sensitized plate, causing both figures to appear in the same photograph.
At first, the trial seemed to be in great support of the prosecution.
After all, a longtime member of the American Institute had been able to recreate an effect similar to Mumbler's using numerous camera tricks.
But then something peculiar began to take place.
As more and more witnesses were called to the stand, they testified that the whole argument of the case was pointless, because spirits were real, and they had seen them before.
A prominent New York justice, Judge Edmunds, took the stand.
Edmunds sat for Mumler twice.
The first photograph cost him $10, and the second one $5.
He testified that during both sittings he could detect no trickery whatsoever.
And of course, he being a judge and of high intellect, would have easily sniffed out if Mumler had been pulling a fast one.
Edmonds went on to say that he believed the photographs were made by natural means, because, well, ghosts themselves are naturally occurring phenomenon.
In fact, once on the stand, Edmonds testified that only a couple of days ago, he had seen a ghost in one of his courtrooms.
Do you believe that those pictures are photographs of spirits?
I believe them to be produced by mechanical means.
I do not believe that they are produced by supernatural means.
It is in the obeisance to a law which we do not know of.
I have seen spirits, and there are very many who have seen them.
If a spirit is visible to the eye, why is it not visible to the camera?
When you looked at the wall, did you see any spirit form or substance?
Nothing.
There was no ethereal being between you and the wall?
I did not see anything.
Do you believe that the immatured form of the photograph was placed before the camera?
There are two propositions in that question.
I do not believe there is anything immaterial.
There are things unknown to our senses, of course, as gas and air, that is one thing, and I believe, therefore, that spirits are material, but with a fine degree of materiality far beyond the gross existence which we occupy.
But still, as there is sufficient matter to be visible to the naked eye, why can it not be to the camera?
The camera can bring forth substances invisible to the naked eye.
Then the picture is a representation of the substance that the spirit possesses.
A quasi-materiality?
Yes.
Then you believe that the spirit form is the representation of a materiality?
Yes.
Then you believe that this is an immaterial form?
Yes.
Yet you do not see any material form between you and the wall?
No.
Then you believe that a camera can photograph a form that is immaterial to the spectator?
I was present at the trial of a case a few weeks ago in Brooklyn.
It was upon an accident policy.
I saw Standing behind the jury, when the case was going on, the spirit of the man whom the case concerned, he told me that he had committed suicide and that they ought not to recover.
In that courtroom?
Yes, yes, and described the place where he said he killed himself and gave me a diagram of it.
I showed it to the council, and he said it was the very place where the death occurred.
Then the spirit gave me four questions to ask the superintendent of the Hartford Lunatic Asylum who was present.
Judge is definitely ghost-pilled.
I know, this is amazing. They're like, "So, okay, so you believe that like a spirit does exist in our world somehow
and it is made up of material stuff."
And he's like, "Yeah." And they're like, "But you didn't see anything, you didn't see anything material behind you."
And he's like, "No." And then they're like, "Okay, so what, you know, what's the deal?"
And he's like, "Well, you know, a couple days ago I saw the, I saw a ghost sitting behind the jury."
It's just, I mean, it's amazing.
And of course, in the 1860s, you know, especially as spiritualism, you know, was becoming more and more popular, you're going to encounter a lot of people who, you know, believe that ghosts are just a part of science that we don't understand yet.
Exactly, yeah.
Further along in the trial, the defense called a WP Slee to the stand to testify.
Slee was himself a professional photographer who had gone to Mumler's studio to see the process in person.
Slee claimed that everything he observed Mumler do was totally above board.
In his testimony, he claims the only difference between Mumler's process and his own was that Mumler, quote, put his hand on the camera while taking the photographs.
To further Mumler's defense, Slee also testified that Mumler, at Mumler's request, traveled to Slee's photography studio to produce the same effect.
He would use Slee's own equipment under careful observation, both in the studio and in the darkroom.
So the attorney questioning Slee is a gentleman by the name of Mr. Day.
So I'll play Mr. Day and you can play W.P.
Slee.
Sounds like he is right out of Peter Pan.
I.P.
Freely?
Is that?
W.P.
Sleely!
Alright, alright.
Okay.
Mr. Day, what is your profession?
I am a photographer.
How long have you been so engaged?
Eleven or twelve years.
And where are you carrying on business?
In Poughkeepsie.
Have you any experience in spiritual photography?
By the invitation of Mr. Mumler, I went into his room to investigate matters and saw him develop three different faces.
I watched him as closely as possible, but I could detect no deception.
Did you notice anything unusual in the mode of proceeding?
Nothing more than what I would do in taking pictures.
Was his hand upon the camera?
He placed his hand upon the camera.
And that was the only difference?
Yes.
Is that all?
Mr. Mumler afterwards visited my gallery.
At your request?
Well, when in Mumler's gallery.
Mr. Gary objects, We don't want to know what took place there, but what took place in Poughkeepsie?
The judge answers, You can tell what was done in Poughkeepsie.
The investigation here is with reference to what took place in Mumler's, uh, any other gallery.
Mr. Day pipes in, We want to show that he took pictures too, in, in his office.
Well, his office is not the subject of inquiry, but I have no objection to allow the question if the real truth can be got at, Mr. Gary.
The only reason was to circumscribe the evidence within some legitimate bounds.
If the purpose is to show that they in Poughkeepsie have been defrauded too, of course it is for the attorney there to take the matter up.
Well, if the examination goes beyond that, I will check him.
Mr. Day, back to the witness.
Well, go on.
Well, Mr. Mumler came there and used my apparatus from beginning to end, and produced the same effects.
He was thoroughly watched, and the only difference was his placing his hand upon the camera, and the same effects were produced.
That is all.
Things got a little cagey during the testimony when Mr. Gary from the prosecution began to ask Slee if he himself believed in spirits.
Despite the defense objecting, Justice Dowling allowed the case to continue.
Are you a believer in the existence of spirits?
I object to that!
It is a question of credibility.
You might as well ask him if he was a Jew.
He may decline to reply if the answer tends to incriminate or degrade him.
The court.
I think I will allow it.
I do not believe in anything that I have not evidence of.
I would like to have the question put down.
Then put the question again.
I do object.
He ought to say what spirits?
Answer the question.
Inardent spirits?
The court rather severely.
Do you understand the question?
I believe nothing that I have not the evidence of.
What I am convinced of is true, that I believe.
The question is not about art and spirits.
Your Honor, the question covers so large a ground that it's difficult to answer it, but I do not believe in all manifestations.
Are you what is popularly known as a spiritualist?
Define the question.
Are you what is popularly known as a spiritualist?
How high is the grade?
Well, I believe in photography.
I believe the pictures can be produced beyond the control of human nature.
And how long have you been a believer in the so-called spiritual powers?
several years My god, that's so good
(laughing)
He's like, do you believe in ghosts?
He's like, what kind of ghosts?
What do you mean?
And he's like, I only believe in what I know to be true.
I mean, hey, what's wrong with that?
And he's like, and how long have you believed in ghosts?
And he's like, several years.
Is an ardent spirit like something like absinthe?
I think so, yeah.
That's why the audience exploded into laughter.
This is a great moment for them.
But perhaps maybe the biggest headline of the trial was that New York's own P.T.
Barnum, the founder of Barnum & Bailey Circus, destroyer of humbugs, came to testify against Mumler.
Jake, what is a humbug?
OK, so this is something that I just learned recently on the last episode of Jake's Takes, where our very own Travis View brought in a section from, I believe it was a book written by P.T.
Barnum called Humbugs of the World.
And a humbug is essentially a fraud, a trickster.
It's a funny, you know, I think it's a sort of slang or catchy term that was very popular at the time because you'll see in the testimony, anytime that P.T.
Barnum says the word humbug or fraud, the audience just explodes in laughter.
They love the idea.
They're so tickled by the idea that somebody could be exposed as a fraud.
Yeah, they love that.
Yeah, I have a screenshot here from the headline on the day that P.T.
Barnum took the stand, and it is from The World newspaper, and it reads, Thursday, April 29th, 1869.
Spirit photography.
Conclusion of evidence in the Mumler case.
P.T.
Barnum on the stand.
He makes some very interesting statements.
Testimony of experts!
The case closed on both sides, and to be summed up, on Monday.
So P.T.
Barnum hated Mumler.
He believed him to be a total fraud, and was called to the stand as an expert at sniffing them out.
Earlier that week, Barnum had enlisted the help of his photographer friend, Abraham Bogerdus, to create a photograph of Barnum with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln behind him.
Bogartas was well credentialed, having founded the National Photographic Association and served as its president for five years.
In his statement before the court, Bogartas assures his audience that Mumler's pictures are taken by using the same plate, one to photograph the ghost, and then that same plate, without being scrubbed, to photograph the sitter.
Testimony of Abraham Bogartas.
Mr. Bogartas was then examined by Mr. Blunt as follows.
I am a photographer and am connected with the National Photographic Association of the United States.
It was formed for the purpose of protecting photographers from patents, so-called, that annoyed us, and putting down humbugs.
Would that have afforded some applause from the audience?
I'm sure it would have.
Mumler is not a member of that society.
I have heard the testimony as regards the different ways in which these ghost-like pictures have been produced.
The processes of taking them can be changed to any extent.
Almost.
I can take a man with an angel over his head, or with a pair of hands on his head, without being detected by an ordinary man, though perhaps an expert could follow me through.
He here produced a number of pictures that he himself had taken.
He explained that he took a plate, coated it in the usual way, and then the picture is taken and the plate can be left for half a day in the battery.
By and by, the sitter comes in and an impression is taken.
He is then requested to go to the darkroom, and by a proper manipulation of the plate, lo, the ghost is there!
Exhibit number 20, shown to me, is a lady standing behind the sitter, with her hand in his hair.
It can be made just as well with her arm around him.
The same kind of pictures can be taken from a live ghost.
That is, from a person dressed up to represent one.
And I believe that many of Mumbler's pictures are taken this way.
They can be preserved for a great length of time, and can be introduced into the picture of the sitter without any trouble.
These are too good.
I can take them less distinct, though I suppose I have not been a medium for long enough to take them as poor as those others.
The pictures can be made less distinct by taking them out of focus.
That will produce an indistinct picture, which will answer for your grandmother.
Or for mine, if you like.
In such photographs as these, I defy a man to tell whether the nose of that lady is a Roman, a Grecian, or a Pug.
[laughter]
How about the recognition?
That depends upon the quality of imagination of the sitter.
This is the first time in the trial where the imagination of the sitter is called into play.
It brings into question the will of the person of being photographed to believe.
This will come into play later.
And then, P.T.
Barnum takes the stand.
A natural showman.
It was widely reported that Barnum had the courtroom crowd roaring with laughter.
Everyone likes to see a humbug stripped of his mystique and exposed as a fraud.
Many considered Barnum's testimony to be the nail in the coffin for Mumler's defense.
And fortunately for us, we have the entire transcript.
In the beginning of Barnum's testimony, both Prosecutor Gary and Defense Attorney Day go back and forth about whether there was evidence for a correspondence between Barnum and Mumler.
Barnum claims that he did have communication with Mumler.
He wanted to purchase one of Mumler's photographs that contained the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte for his book, Humbugs of the World.
So is Napoleon a humbug?
Well, no, he wanted to use... So I guess Mumler had taken a picture in which Napoleon Bonaparte...
You know, appeared as a spirit.
And he basically, Barnum was like, hey, can I buy your most ridiculous picture to put in my book about, like, what frauds are?
I'm still sort of getting a handle on what a humbug is.
It's clear the courtroom audience found this wildly entertaining, and it's noted in the archives that there was great laughter anytime Barnum mentions the word fraud or humbug.
Eventually, the prosecution begins to question Barnum about how he had reproduced Mummler's effect in the photo taken by Abraham Bogerdus.
Did you call at Bogartist's gallery yesterday?
Yes.
Do you believe in spooks?
Yes, I do.
I saw many when I was a boy.
It is only necessary to believe in them to see them.
Will you be kind enough to state what took place at the gallery?
I went in to ask him if he could take a spirit photograph, as I would like to have my likeness taken with a spirit in the background, but I told him that I did not want to have any humbugging in the matter.
He said he could do it.
I told him I wished to examine the things.
He gave me liberty to do so, and so I investigated about the plate glass, went into the dark rooms, and saw the process of pouring over the first liquid.
After it was placed in the nitrate of silver bath, then it was put in the camera.
There was a little break upon the glass so that I could distinguish it all the time.
Went through the operation, had my shadow taken, and that of the departed Abraham Lincoln came also upon the glass.
Is that it?
Yes, that's the critter.
Now, when did you see the ghost-like photograph?
As soon as I came into the darkroom.
Did you detect the mode in which it had been done?
No.
Were you conscious of a spiritual presence?
I did not feel anything of that sort.
When cross-examined by Mr. Townsend, he says, How long have you been in the humbug business?
I was never in it.
I never took money from a man without giving him the worth for it four times over.
These pictures that I exhibited, I did so as a humbug and not as reality.
Not like this man, who takes ten dollars from people.
He's so petty, I love it.
The defense then calls into question Mr. Barnum's own attractions, the woolly horse and the
mermaid.
Barnum claims that he merely presented these curiosities as they were presented to him.
The bill of sale from the owner states that these specimens were labeled as such and Mr.
Barnum sought no reason to claim otherwise.
He goes on to say that many of the curiosities he charged the public to view were not, in
That he had merely hired them and wasn't in a position to investigate their validity.
All these humbugs that you have taken money for, did you tell the people at the time that they were humbugs?
I never showed anything that did not give the people their money's worth four times over.
Take the woolly horse!
That was a remarkable curiosity and a reality without the slightest preparation or disguise or humbug or deception about it in the world.
It was exhibited as a curiosity at 50 cents a head in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and there I bought it.
Was it what you represented it to be?
It was a peculiar kind of creature.
But I say that it was what I represented it to be.
Was it actually a woolly horse?
It was actually a woolly horse.
Was it not a horse woollied over?
Not the slightest, and I am very happy to enlighten the public upon that point.
The horse was born just as he was, and there was no deception about him in the world.
There was nothing artificial about it, and I was happy to get it to draw the people, but there was no deception about it, I take my oath.
The mermaid, sir.
The mermaid, at the time it was exhibited, was represented to be as I represented it, and I have not seen anything to the contrary.
Did you find it subsequently to be otherwise?
I never did.
Did you represent it as you bought it?
I represented it as I bought it, and I found it as I bought it.
I've grown older since, and there was something which made me doubt it, but at the time... You never presented it to the public in any way other than it was.
I had no reason from an examination of the animal to doubt what it was represented to me at the time.
I never owned it, I hired it.
Do you wish to state that the mermaid was precisely the same as you intended the public to believe it?
Mr. Gary objects.
I submit that question!
The judge interrupts him.
You can ask him what he presented it for.
I will ask you generally one question.
Have you, as a public entertainer, presented to the mass anything which you knew to be untrue and took money for it?
Have you falsified the facts and taken money for it?
Well, I think I have, given it's a little drapery sometimes, founded on fact.
Which was not checked for some moments.
Talk about an unreliable narrator.
But everybody loves it.
It's like when P.T. Barnum is kind of like, you know, nod, nod, wink, wink, like, "Eh,
well, yeah, hey, look, you know, the bill of sales said it was a mermaid and not, you
know, a monkey stitched to a fish.
Um, you know, hey, like, who am I?
Who am I?
I'm no expert.
You know, I merely, I merely put it on exhibit."
With all of the witness testimony concluded, William Mumler took the stand to read his
final statement.
"In 1861, in the city of Boston, while engaged in business as an engraver, I was in the habit
of visiting a young man who was employed in a photographic gallery kept by a Mrs. Stewart
on Washington Street.
Occasionally, I would experiment with the instruments and chemicals.
One Sunday, while entirely alone in the gallery, I attempted to get a picture of myself.
And then it was that I first discovered, while devolving it, that a second form appeared on the plate.
At this time, I had never heard of spirit pictures, although I had been somewhat interested in the doctrine of spiritualism.
At first, I labored under what is now the general impression that the plate upon which the picture was taken could not have been clean, and that the form which showed itself beside my own must have been left on the glass, and so I stated to my employer and others.
Subsequent attempts, however, made under circumstances which preclude such a possibility, have confirmed me in the belief that the power by which these forms are produced is beyond human control, and the experts that have been called by the prosecutor have failed to produce a picture made in that manner.
After getting the form on the plate, at the suggestion of several friends to whom I showed the plate, I made other attempts, and generally with most remarkable results.
I then determined to leave my own business and devote myself to photography.
I positively assert that in the taking of these pictures on which these forms appear, I have never used any tricks or device or availed myself of any deception or fraud in producing them.
That these forms have appeared in each and every instance when they have been presented without any effort except my willpower to produce them.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the case as a whole is not the testimony or even the photographs themselves, but instead, its outcome.
Mumler was acquitted of all charges.
Justice Dowling believed that even though the photographs could be fakes, the prosecution hadn't sufficiently proven how Mumler himself faked the pictures.
It was also true that the reproductions submitted by other photographers and Barnum himself weren't as good as the ones Mumler had taken.
And then, perhaps, the most important part of his statement.
Dowling stated that what really mattered at the end of the day was if the patrons themselves left satisfied, and that real or fake, if the pictures were able to bring them comfort or closure about a deceased loved one, and they believed the price to be fair for those assurances, he could not in good conscience throw Mumler in jail.
This reminds me of a case a hundred years later of this man named Ted Sirios who was a bellhop and a raging alcoholic and claimed that he could take photos with his mind and he could just sort of direct thought energy onto a Polaroid film plate.
And the photographs were incredibly ghostly and ethereal and they captured the attention of this pretty well-renowned psychologist at the time, I think his name was Jules Eisenbud, who spent years with Sirius trying to experiment with him and prove that these were real, that this man could really take photos with his mind.
You can see I put some photos in, Jake.
Yeah, they're really, they're really creepy.
Yeah, he's shirtless and he's sort of throwing his thoughts at the camera and then there's a couple photos of what was generated with his mind with these kind of like ghostly buildings.
I sometimes make a similar face if I'm sitting on my couch.
And I've got a can of Coca-Cola or something on the coffee table and, you know, I'm really sort of sunk into the groove, you know?
I'll kind of reach my hand out and just try to will the can, you know, to float across the living room carpet and into my hand.
To no success so far, but I'm gonna keep trying.
Yeah, and so the photos were deemed to be fakes that he was somehow producing these in a fraudulent manner.
And the psychologist had just become so taken that he couldn't see them for what they were.
But I don't think it really matters like the photos themselves.
Yeah, there are in In their own way.
The same with Mumler.
I actually went on eBay to see if people were still selling these spirit photography cards.
And they are!
There was a couple on eBay in the couple thousand dollar range.
So it seems like they definitely do have some value.
So one final fact about Mumler.
After he was sort of run out of New York, but at least with his freedom.
He basically abandoned spirit photography altogether, but he did invent a photographic process which is called the Mummler process, which is a way that photoelectrotype plates could be reproduced and printed more easily.
So he actually ended up doing something that sort of advanced the technology of photography development and picture taking, which is cool.
But he did take Take one final spirit photograph before he died, and that was a picture of Mary Todd Lincoln, and of course, when the photo was developed, you can guess who was standing behind her.
None other than the great Napoleon Bonaparte.
No, her passed on husband, President Abraham Lincoln.
Wow.
So this leads me to, I guess, the most pertinent question.
Brad, you are a professional photographer, a cinematographer.
You know cameras, you've taken pictures, you shot video.
Have you ever had an encounter with a ghost?
Nothing that I've filmed has produced something sort of supernatural or something that I can't explain.
And I'm not a ghost guy.
Like, out of all the sort of paranormal phenomenon, ghosts and spiritualism are the least appealing or interesting to
me, but I'm still open-minded.
And so I will go on ghost hunts.
And I've gone on a couple, actually, and one in particular was really the most cursed.
It was December of 2021, and I was ensconced in tropical foliage at the most southern tip of the continental United
States.
More simply, I was participating in an artist residency in Key West.
Learning of my odd proclivities, a local told me that one of the world's most haunted objects resided on the island.
It was a doll named Robert, and it was kept in a Civil War era fort for some reason.
He was said to be the inspiration for both Chucky and Annabelle.
Now Key West is fantastic and bizarre in its own right, but there's only so much one can see and do in a month on a seven square mile island.
And while ghosts and hauntings aren't my thing, it was nearing the end of my residency, so I booked a tour to see Robert.
Little did I know that I'd be told a personal story that night that would be even more bizarre than the haunted doll.
It was night, of course, and myself and the three other tour takers met at the entrance of the fort, waiting for our guide.
Even before seeing the doll, the abandoned 1860s fort of East Martello seemed cursed in its own right.
The stone fort was never completed, since new exploding cannonballs rendered it pretty much useless militarily.
It instead became a coffin for soldiers dying of yellow fever and heat stroke.
We were eventually met by a man calling himself The Doll Tender, author and ghost hunter David Sloan.
David proceeded to give us the standard ghost hunting warnings and guidelines, but this wasn't your average haunting.
What we may experience that night could be so utterly terrifying that we may never be the same again.
Those with a weak heart should not cross the threshold.
And David was not one for hyperbole, he claimed.
He was also incredibly excited to hear that I'd made a film about the skunk ape, South Florida's Bigfoot, as he contributed to a book about the creature.
He handed us flashlights, dowsing rods, and EMF detectors, all the better to lead us towards spectral entities.
That's electromagnetic field detectors for those not versed in ghost hunting equipment.
He then led us through the dark and circuitous bowels of the fort.
The first room was filled with some odd but interesting metal sculptures by a folk artist named Mario Sanchez.
David tells us these have nothing to do with Robert or the fort.
They're just kind of creepy looking and set the tone.
You can see one of them there, Jake.
It's like a naked lady out of metal parts.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, this is, um, you know, without proper light, this could be incredibly scary.
Yeah, yeah.
This is a woman made out of like what looks like the siding of old gasoline cans.
She's got these almost like peacock A darkened tunnel led us to the next chamber.
On the walls hung a bunch of old dolls, each with an EMF meter above it.
She looks like Lilith from Diablo 4 in Minecraft.
A darkened tunnel led us to the next chamber. On the walls hung a bunch of old dolls, each with an EMF meter above it.
I asked David where all this came from, and he said he searched for haunted dolls on eBay.
As he speaks, we see and hear periodic flashes and beats from the EMF meters, a sign that a spirit is passing
through the various dolls.
He then asks for the bravest among the four of us to brandish our dousing rod and slowly walk down a pitch black corridor while asking the spirits to show themselves.
Not afraid of no ghost, I'm the first to go.
As I penetrated further into the darkness, I hear a faint static distortion and disembodied voices.
A hazy object begins to materialize at the end of the corridor.
Is that a cross?
I start to get just a little spooked before realizing the sounds are coming from a radio he's put on a ledge and the cross was something that he'd fastened to the wall.
I did appreciate his vibes curation.
And there's some some of the dolls that he had put on the wall there.
Yeah, the dolls are really scary looking.
I'm not gonna lie.
These are super creepy.
Even the cabinet that he's got them in is very creepy and old looking.
We're taken into a large room, where finally, Robert is revealed.
He's enclosed in a plexiglass case, sitting in a wooden chair.
He's nearly three feet tall, wearing a sailor's uniform, and cradling a stuffed dog.
Upon closer inspection, there are pock marks all over his felted face, where chunks of stuffing had been eaten away by termites.
What do you think of his mug there?
I mean, he looks like he's just a sailor in New York trying to have a good time.
Maybe he drank a little bit too much and some of his face is falling off.
But no, it's incredibly scary.
These beady, beady black eyes.
The features have long sort of melted away.
The stuffed dog he's holding looks rigid and afraid.
The plexiglass case adds to it.
I mean, this reminds me of the story that Lorraine Warren tells.
You know, she is of the famous demonology duo Ed and Lorraine Warren, of which the Conjuring films are sort of based on.
And they they have a haunted museum and she tells the story of a you know this guy who who came to visit the haunted museum on one of their tours and you know he's basically kind of being a dick he's tapping on the Annabelle glass and he's going you know you're just a doll you can't you know you Can't hurt me.
And you know, just sort of being generally obnoxious.
And she claimed that when he left on his motorcycle, he got into a horrible car accident on the way back from the haunted museum and died that day.
So look, plexiglass, it's not always gonna protect you.
That's all I'm saying.
So Brad, you might have this doll, you know, just leering over your shoulder for eternity and you would never know it.
We learn he was originally a Viennese clown doll from the early 1900s, which sounds and looks even creepier.
I have a photo of him in his original outfit here, which is way worse.
Yeah, these are super creepy, yeah.
His outfit was changed when he was gifted to Robert Eugene Otto as a little boy.
The sailor suit was something the real Robert would often wear.
Robert Eugene was an artist and eccentric from a prominent Key West family.
He was obsessed with the doll, spending all of his free hours with it, having long, involved conversations in the privacy of his room.
Whenever he misbehaved or anything went awry at home, the boy would always have the same response.
Robert did it!
Robert did it!
After some decades of absence away from Key West, the real Robert eventually returned to the family home as a newlywed with his wife.
She was understandably creeped out by her husband's childhood doll, and suggested he keep it hidden away in the attic.
But eventually the doll grew angry, and real Robert told her it was demanding a room with a view.
It was positioned by a window on the second floor, where children passing by on the street said they could see it moving in the shadows.
Visitors to the house were similarly spooked, saying they could hear Robert giggling and see his facial expressions change.
Plumbers would, like, they just couldn't retain a plumber because they would get so creeped out they'd run from the house, apparently.
Whoa.
Real Robert's behavior started to grow erratic and abusive, especially towards his wife.
His outbursts were always followed by him claiming, It was Robert!
Robert did it!
Years later, Robert Eugene was bedridden with a prolonged illness.
He wasted away until his death in that second floor room, with his doll by his side.
The house was sold to a woman named Myrtle, who became Robert's new caretaker for the next 20 years.
She said he would move about the house on his own, but that these supernatural tendencies were relatively harmless.
That is until one day Robert pushed her into a room and held the door shut, keeping her from leaving.
After what seemed like hours of pleading, the door opened.
Robert was sitting perched where he'd always been.
Fed up, she packed him up for good, and for some reason dropped him off at the East Martello Fort, where he has since resided.
When I asked why he was in a Plexiglas case, David answered that his nocturnal movements scared the employees so much they demanded he be caged.
Shifting gears, he showed us a huge stack of letters written to Robert.
These are mostly from tourists who came to gawk and disrespect the doll.
They later found themselves victims of inexplicably bad luck.
They wrote to Robert to apologize in a desperate attempt to lift the curse.
David had me stand beside the doll and read one of these letters to the group, all while creepy children's music played and a spirit box barked disembodied words echoing throughout the room, giving Robert the chance to communicate.
A spirit box is like a device that cycles through, like, FM or AM radio stations really fast and, like, picks up whatever words come out.
Kind of like Bumblebee in the Transformers movie.
Yeah, exactly.
Here's a clip.
Well, it has been about six to seven months since our visit, and since then my life has been one nightmare after the
other.
Within a couple of weeks of returning home, it started with my kitten suddenly dying,
my bank account being fraudulently used twice, losing a substantial amount of money,
having my bird die, my son falling and fracturing his skull,
the hotel we stayed at on vacation set on fire, I lost my job, and now on the verge of being laid off from
my new job, being forced out of my home,
and my husband and I have separated.
I had been debating on writing this letter for weeks, but I am now at the point of where I am desperate.
I truly believe in you and the powers that you possess, and kindly ask you to remove anything negative surrounding
me and my family and give us your blessings.
I have also removed the pictures that I have taken of you from Facebook.
Oh my God.
Okay.
This is terrifying to me.
I would never ever in a thousand years do this, Brad, because I am, I'm in between a true believer and, and a skeptic, but leaning more towards true believer.
And I would be so afraid.
My biggest fear in going into one of these things is leaving with something attached to me.
Because you hear about this all the time from, you know, mediums and, you know, true believers, is that a spirit or entity can become, like, attracted to, you know, somebody of the living persuasion and follow them home.
And then if weird things start happening to me, even if it's not the ghost, because I went in and, you know, read the letter or the spirit boxes barking and yelling at me, anything bad that happened to me from now on, there would always be a new voice in my head, you know, amongst the many others saying, like, Like, is this the ghost?
Like, did the podcast get cancelled because the ghost was willing it from the other side of the fourth plane?
So you are a braver person than I am.
I just like to tempt fate.
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
No, not me.
Uh-uh.
No thanks.
I don't need any additional help from the other side.
As the night drew to a close, David opened up to us about his own confounding experiences, which chilled me much more than anything he'd told us that night.
You see, he'd been obsessed with the story of Robert for decades, so naturally, he wanted to share his knowledge with the world in the form of a book.
But the more he wrote, the more his hard drives and computers would crash and fail him, forcing him to start from scratch.
This was understandably maddening.
But something else was adding to his unmooring.
He began to hear a voice in his head.
He said it was if there were two souls or spirits inhabiting his body, and the interloper was starting to wrest control from him.
He was barely eating and couldn't sleep, no matter how many sedatives he took.
He wasn't a religious man, but was desperate, so he tried sleeping in the courtyard of a nearby church.
Things took a darker turn one night at home.
He and his wife had just laid their heads down to attempt to sleep.
The next moment, David awoke to his wife screaming.
He was slumped in the corner of his bedroom, head in splitting pain.
His wife said his body had been hovering five feet above the bed, almost at the ceiling, before being flung against the wall.
At wit's end, he turned to that place most of us at a certain age go to in a crisis.
He posted on Facebook.
His plea for a shaman to excise the entity was quickly answered.
Someone knew someone whose cousin was a Santeria priest.
Santeria is an African diasporic religion born primarily out of Cuba.
Anyone who's lived in South Florida has likely heard of or experienced it, usually in the form of an animal sacrifice in the streets or passing by a botanica shop.
After some negotiations, a family of four Santeria priests showed up to his home.
Their initial assessment was grim.
This was a mega haunting by way of spirit possession that was inside both David and his home.
David assumed it was whatever entity also inhabited Robert.
After an eight-hour cleansing ceremony, both David and the house were free, and he had his first good night's rest in months.
The book was eventually released, and Dave still gives tours today.
I couldn't help but think that this man we had just met was detailing his psychotic break, which frankly was far scarier to me than any of the Robert the Doll stories he told.
But in keeping with the spirit of the Spectral Voyager, I won't be too quick to judge the source of his possession.
The following day was my last in the Keys, and I made an unsettling realization.
There was a house directly across the street from the studio I was staying at.
For the month I was there, every day I left my front door, I noted how beautiful it was.
It turns out this was Robert Eugene's old home, and the window Robert the Doll used to peer out of had directly been facing my own.
In that moment, on the periphery of my vision, I thought I saw something quickly move in the window.
Then, I swore I heard something, if only as a whisper.
"Robert did it."
Thanks for listening to the first episode of The Spectral Voyager,
a special mini-series where we explore true tales from the edge of reality.
You can subscribe at patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous for just five bucks a month to listen to the remaining nine episodes.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
Brad and I are going to be exploring poltergeists, demonic cults, alien abductions, clairvoyance, time travel, and all the other paranormal phenomenon that we desperately want to be pilled on.
So, uh, if you're already a subscriber, thank you so much.
It allows us to keep making new weird shows like this one.
And until next time, farewell from beyond the veil.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there.
