This one is actually thanks to Dinosaur Comics.
Since I don’t really do a “person of the day” thing, I figure – what the hell, today is a day.
William H Mumler was a Spirit Photographer. Spirit photography is actually rather easy – while people like Mumler used to do the old “double exposure” trick – his work in particular helped by the fact that he would use real live Bostonians as ghosts – there’s never any need to use crude techniques like photoshopping!
Why? Well, people want to believe. We think of photographs as being highly reliable evidence – here’s what one website has to say
The reason that is most given for the lack of widespread acceptance of the credibility of spirit photographs is that the photographs of the past were so riddled with fraud. Strangely though, it is spirit photography that seems to provide the most scientific evidence of ghosts. It is one of the only methods of capturing ghostly phenomena that approaches the standards of science.
So – since those in the past were frauds, these new photos seem to provide some evidence in a way that approaches the standards of science.
So how do you get in on this bandwagon?
Well there’s ORBS, which are just balls of light. Since you don’t see them with the naked eye and you do see them with the camera – hey, it’s gotta be something spooky, right?
You can claim any of the following: invisible spirits, auras, angels, ghosts, energy fields, psychoenergetic artifacts, energy balls, demons, aliens, fairies – whatever you can imagine, really. But in the end, it’s all a boring ole photographic artifact.
