Spirit Photography

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Can ghosts and spirits be captured on film? Several early photographers claimed to have accomplished this feat. Although double exposures are the likely culprit, their images still inspired the idea for HAUNTIBLES.
People at the turn of the century weren't as savvy as we are about photographic trickery. Sadly, this attracted a number of charlatans who preyed on the susceptibility of those who'd lost loved ones. These photographers claimed to be able to capture portraits of dearly departed relatives and the results are pretty convincing. Not everyone believed them, however. Experts such as the magician Harry Houdini tried to debunk the images as fakes.

 Houdini loved to expose the trickery of fraudulent mediums and other supernatural charlatans.
An image Houdini created of himself and Lincoln, intended to show how easy it was to create an apparition with the use of double exposure.
Despite evidence to the contrary, many people continued to believe these images were genuine. This included the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who remained so convinced they were real, he even wrote a book to defend practitioners of spirit photography.  


Spirit photography is at the heart of my game HAUNTIBLES. It all boils down to this: what if the government photographers tasked with documenting historic buildings accidentally preserved something besides architecture in their images? What if there are spirits trapped in the celluloid, desperate to communicate with the living world?

The idea might not be as far-fetched as you think. During the course of my research through the HABS collection, I came across a number of images depicting empty rooms that weren't exactly...empty.
The photographers who documented these old buildings were pros, so it's doubtful they'd let someone wander into their exposures...unless they couldn't see the figures until they developed the film.

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