When we left William H. Mumbler in part one, it was 1863 in Boston, Massachusetts. Mumbler had accidentally discovered he could capture ghostly images in his photography and then began offering this service to the public for a charge, of course. He became a prominent fixture in the spiritualist movement. That is, until someone found out that one of his quote unquote, ghosts was a very alive woman still in town. Boston was about to turn out William H. Mumbler. Today we conclude his story.
This is a study of strange welcome to the show. I'm michael may. We're picking back up with guest timothy donahue today. My former co-host on the autobiography tv shows. For those jumping in, i'd suggest starting for part one. Otherwise, enjoy. This is the first real sign that mumbler is going to run into issues when this alive, dead slash real. Spirit alive person alive.
Real person. Yes. And even including Jeff Gardner, who had been a supporter of Mumbler and had been trying to get people to really scrutinize his work and was really hoping he was real. He actually wrote into a newspaper and had a quote. And it is way too long to waste everybody's time reading. So let me just find like the best part of it here.
He says, I deeply regret the necessity that compels me through evidence to state with equal frankness that I am satisfied beyond a doubt that in the instances above referred to Mr. Mumbler, where some person connected with Mrs. Stewart's rooms have been guilty of deception, and palming off as genuine spirit likenesses pictures of a person who is now living in this city, yours for the truth. H f Gardner M.D., Boston, February 20th. 1863. I almost said in 1963. That would have been interesting.
Because around a good while. Yes. So for those history buffs out there in 1863 you'll know it's the middle of the Civil War. It is may have been the the downfall of William Mumbler in Boston because his, his legitimacy or his, his respect I'll call it in the area starts to go downhill right.
Once once the virals thing goes in the wrong direction and everyone's like well these were you know which could be coincidences, could be an accident, could be anything but regardless, I think there's a yeah, there's a ding in the armor there. It definitely seems like something's up. Yes. Which I would completely believe. But yeah. So apparently Mumbler wanted to get away to move. But because it was the war, it took him a while to actually get up and leave.
But in 1869 he and Hannah moved to New York City specifically. I think the studio they were working at, it was at 630 Broadway and the spiritualist movement was still going very strong because of the war. It didn't take long for Mumbler to kind of start up his career as a spirit photographer again in New York and 1869 he starts up his, his career as a spirit photographer again. He starts getting a lot of clients.
The spiritualist movement is still, still strong because it's so soon after the war, but it didn't take long for people to also start to complain. So a a city marshal named Joseph H took her lead. The investigation into Mumbler in this started with
finding Mueller's name in a complaint book. So as as it happens and on March 16th 1869 hey at the studio at 630 Broadway a gentleman that was calling himself William William Bowditch or Bowdich and or depending on what accounts you read also William Wallace is sometimes the name quoted sure but this was actually Tucker himself he was using an alias and pretending to be a gentleman that wanted a spirit photograph and wanted to take a picture with a dead relative.
And he goes into the studio. Mrs. Hannah Stewart is there who is obviously married to my mother at this time. And they take a picture. He watches the process happen. And on his picture, as it's being developed, a ghostly figure emerges. And he doesn't recognize the ghostly figure in the photo. As you know, his dead relative that he said he wanted to see.
And William Mumbler apparently told him, and this is not a quote, this is me sort of surmising what he was saying but he was like, oh, give it time. It's sometimes hard to recognize, you know, your dead relatives just kind of planting the seeds with the power of suggestion to try to convince him that this is in fact, is is dead relative.
However, William Mumbler gets arrested instead, took his men arrest him on April 12th, and the charge was swindling credulous persons by what he called spirit photographs is what Tucker Tucker sort of quoted to the newspaper articles at the time. A gentleman named Elbridge Gerry was the prosecutor in the case. And this got a lot of attention because the spiritualist movement was very big at the time. This is in New York City, you know, the heart of America, the big city of America.
And so was going to travel quick. Word travels really quick and because of, you know, the Twitter of the day, all these different newspapers and journals and publications and a lot of them were spiritualist publications, they all wrote about this case and they all wrote about the trial during the hearings because it didn't go to trial was just hearings to sort of establish a trial over many days.
But the prosecution presented seven to nine processes where they were guessing how William Mumbler could have pulled off this this fraudulent activity. So I won't go through all of them, but some people one of them was that there was a figure of a tiny ghost in the camera. So like almost like a toy or a cut out or something that would be in the lens itself was one of their series. OK. Some people forget.
Some people thought it was a second, second glass plate which is actually a very way more valid theory, I would think. But again, they didn't know. They were just like he could have done it in one of these ways. There was no evidence to any one particular method, and that is kind of the downfall for the prosecution in this case because they didn't have enough evidence to convict or to actually just send him to trial. So what's that's a funny thing to have to try to prove, isn't it?
I mean, yeah, because unless they sort of go, oh, here he is red handed with you know, all his gear and here's how he did it and it's all laid out. Yeah. It's it's just like, what do you it's all guessing. I mean, yeah, it's such a strange thing because you're like, how do you prove the faked it success? Because it's like if there's no real path to finding that because all the there's no evidence or whatever, but it's like you can't just be like, well, he didn't, I mean, he didn't take a picture
of a ghost, right? So it's probably vague. He had to say that. So it's like that's like, good for anybody. So yeah, I was wondering from the jump, it's just like legally if they don't literally if someone wasn't like, oh, I was looking through the window and I saw him take the plate out and then put it back in or take one from a pile marked, you know, 30 year old females in white dresses or whatever, you know, and like he's got a catalog of ghost images to knock on.
They're like, yeah, how do you what is the what is the prosecution other than just kind of a joke? Because they're just like, well, he could have done this. It's like, well, you could say that about any case where you're like, it could have gone like this. And then it just turns into the end of Clue and you're like, well, unless somebody pulls a gun out this when there's really nothing much to say at the end of all this, I don't know. It's funny. It's a weird it's a weird setup all around.
Yes, indeed. And the best part about this that I haven't even mentioned to you yet, it's in my intro, but the prosecution, their their big witness, the person they thought would seal the deal and definitely send this to trial. And Mumbler would be telling me. It was a ghost. Dad. Sorry. Go ahead. Ellen. I wish now that you say that. No, it was P.T. Barnum. The the well renowned circus, you know, producer, creator, owner, famous for very, very crazy stories.
Himself that are, you know, that are amazing. But it's interesting. Is P.T. Barnum very famous at the time? I mean, that's like, man, what would you equate him to now? Like. I don't know, just sort of like an animal lover. Like like. It'd be like a studio head that. George Lucas or something I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It would be something like that. Know. It's like the create it the Duffer Brothers. It's like. The. New. The new P.T. Barnum, the Duffer. Brothers. But P.T.
Barnum, as much as he he had freak shows and circuses and mistreated many, many, many employees and animals and everything else. He actually, much like you were talking about Houdini earlier and how people in the entertainment world did not like mediums because mediums are lying about what they're doing. We're entertainers. Like, no, no, we're doing the same stuff. We're just we're entertaining you. We're not lying about where it's coming from or what it's doing.
And he had a similar thought process. He actually had some of members work hung up and sort of like the I forget what he called it, but it was like the Hall of Frauds or something like that. And it's like pictures of like crazy people that are fronting, defrauding people and so he did not like William Mumbler or what Liam Mumbler stood for.
And so he took the stand and claimed, you know, he knew Mumia's work and he has a an expert on on hum buggery is what he called it, which is the greatest word, humbug. Great buggery. Which is the greatest word of all time. And just so appropriate for that era as well. So he's an expert in humbug. They should listen to him. And yeah, Mumbler Mueller's a fake and he's he's using people and using grief and guys should be. Yeah, I don't think he said this, but the guy should be locked up.
Lock him up. Everybody have P.T. Barnum. You know that he probably he probably dropped, you know. The presumption that. I'm P.T. Barnum. His eye dropped as his loudspeaker. Yeah, there was a big cone that he was yelling through in the middle of a small courtroom. Let's remember, man, I'm B.J. Barnum. Nice to me, is is is that how he's a humbug? Because I figure or in a hamburger. Hamburger, like. Here's a hamburger that I don't listen to. So, yeah, so that was the big deal.
The prosecution thought they had it one. But the defense also had people speak that believed in Mumbler that talked about how his photographs helped them. He also quoted the defense lawyer quoted this. I'm going to read this. It's it's very interesting. But he used the Bible and the defense because he said, I offer these two sticks chapter of Genesis as showing appearances in the form of spirits.
Also in the 19th chapter of Genesis, first verse, the 21st chapter of Genesis verses 17 through 19 the 22nd chapter of Genesis ten through 19, the 22nd chapter of numbers 21 through 35, the fifth chapter of Joshua, 13 through 15, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He just goes on and on and on about where there are spirits mentioned in the Bible and where people. So the Bible was a witness. The Bible was essentially a. Sort of a record, a record of this being truth.
Like, essentially, like if you, if you, if you believe what's in here, you got to believe what he's doing. Because that same thing yeah. That's amazing. Yep. That is, that is a quality, quality defense attorney right there. Indeed. Indeed. And so again, remember, this takes place over many days, this hearing and the newspapers are writing about it every day. So this really is a lot of people thought the trial of the century at the time, even though it wasn't even a trial, was just a hearing.
It's amazing. But at the end of the day, at the end of it, the judge believed that there was fraud. He believed that William Mumbler was faking all these things. But when when witnesses spoke of what it meant to them and also the fact that no one had caught Mumbler in the act, the judge had to dismiss. And so the prosecution thought they had won and they lost. They actually still, you know, spun spun it as but now people know that Mumbler is a fake.
We may not have gone to trial, but we still won because he's off the streets and he's not now going to swindle anybody no more. I turned into a 1930s gangster instead of an 1860s trial attorney in New York. They're on their way there. All right. So, yeah, it's, it's funny. It sounds a little like you're like, Oh, he got it. He got off because people liked what he was doing. So like, oh, it's not illegal because people are enjoying it. Which is definitely not something that happens a lot.
So that's just, that's strange. But yeah, I mean, at the end, really, there's just. No, there wasn't, there wasn't evidence that he was doing the thing, you know. Yes. And what. Yeah, what, what are you really standing on there? Because you can't, you can't disprove it, but. Right. And he's not going to be like, well, actually, how I do it is because then he's, you know, giving himself up. So it's a weird it's just it's such a strange, strange thing to try to prove.
And it is and it's it's honestly, I think it's even interesting that they went to a hearing because I would have yeah. It just it's really interesting. So Mumbler gets exposed to a certain extent. And what's interesting and in my research and the two books I read and a bunch of things online, some people say that he never recovered financially. Others say that he did and his business sort of took off because of all the attention he got. So I don't know what to believe, but we do know he.
Was the Tiger King of his day. That's right. That's kind of that's literally the I will never find financially recover from this. That is that he became the Tiger King. Yeah. But 100 years earlier. Right. So but what we do know is in 1860 excuse me in 1872, a woman that called herself Mrs. Lindell came to his studio and she wanted to take a picture. She had had lost a husband. She posed for a picture and that is the famous photo of Mary Todd Lincoln with Abraham Lincoln behind her.
And so the, the folklore around that picture is that she claimed to be somebody else, Mrs. Lindow and they took the photo on the Abraham Lincoln ghost, you know, appeared magically when Mumbler didn't know who she was because she had called herself Mrs. Lindell. I don't know if I believe that story. That is that is the common story told. And I cannot find evidence against that.
But I do have to suspect, especially because I again, I do have the bias I the the belief that Mumbler was a fake for many reasons. But I do not believe that he did not know that she was Mary Todd Lincoln. So that is just his most famous photos. That's where they of of of discussion and putting it out there for people. Hey, if you guys research that, if people find, you know, another version of that story, I would love to hear it. Please, please email me and let me know.
And we can confirm that that was in fact Mary Todd Lincoln like that's that we know that that was her in the photograph. We can confirm as much as like that is what everybody believes it is it is undoubtedly her. But I don't know how else to confirm that with the exception of just everybody saying it's Mary Dunn Lincoln. And also she was a devout believer or in supernatural things, and she had seances in the White House and she was a big believer in spiritualism.
So it fits it fits that she would know who Mumbler was because of the attention of the trial and and all of that. So it just everything kind of connects to to make sense that that was her. So, yeah. What does this story of Mumbler mean? How do we feel about spirit photography in general? I mean, do you have any thoughts about what it may have meant to people? Not whether it was fake or not, but just like the act of it or act of having it. Are people curious about it?
Yeah, I totally get people being curious about it because like with anything new, you know, when it comes to technology, it's going to be fascinating. I mean, there's that sort of famous quote that I'm still going to probably get wrong, but, you know, any sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from magic. And so what I think he had stumbled onto was the bleeding edge of photography at that moment. And a new kind of aspect of it to exploit.
And again, I don't necessarily mean that as exploit. It sounds like you're doing something wrong, but you're sort of figure it out, take it apart and use it in new ways. And again, yeah, I think it just kind of spiraled out of control. But I think that, yeah, it probably meant something to a lot of people to have even if, you know, somewhere in the back of their mind, they're like, this is probably not real, but it's, you know, provides some some comfort.
And, and if there's enough of a of a kernel there that says maybe it's real, then that could mean something to somebody. Now, whether that's good or bad or not, I'm not going to, you know, pass judgment on them for feeling one way or the other. But what I think at the end of the day, it really comes down to when people are at the forefront of a of a technology and nobody else is up to speed on how it works.
That is a very, very easy place for large amounts of people to believe something or something is happening. Or something is not happening or whatever, or something works or doesn't work because they just don't understand how the technology works.
So when you're in that, you know, group of, you know, most people, especially at that time, I'm guessing the number of people who had experienced photography firsthand was like, you know, in the dozens at most in terms of even subjects or people doing it. I mean, it was probably just a handful of people, the general public looking at a photograph, which is probably just unbelievable to their eyes. Anyway.
And then you're seeing this, you know, apparition and that it's just like it's all so overwhelming. You hear stories about the first moving pictures of like the train coming into the station and people running, screaming from the theater because they just couldn't even process what was going on. It was like a train was about to run them over. So when you look at something new like that and you just don't you can't look at it and go, oh, because they use a plate and they could just expose twice.
And that's, oh, it's kind of fun. You know, you don't you don't have the knowledge base to look at something and sort of decode it a little bit. You're just kind of like bowled over by this magic, which is great. And I think that's such a wonderful feeling to experience because it's so rare now. It's like we're saying earlier, so sort of cynical about anything visual or, you know, anything that can be touched and manipulated, which is basically everything you see in here.
Now, it's I think it's incredible. And I'm so envious of people who got that experience of seeing a moving image for the first time in their adult hood, because that's got to just be like it's just like a portal opened up. I mean, we've seen augmented reality. I've done a lot of virtual reality stuff, and that's all like really fun. But because you get what's going on, you're like, Well, my head's basically wrapped in a monitor. This is what's going on. I know I'm not actually somewhere else.
You don't really just you don't believe it wholeheartedly. And I think there's just a difference in mentality and just technological knowledge back then that allows for these things to to sneak through. Now, things like that are still happening today very clearly. But they're just, you know, people have to find different mediums for them.
Yeah. Yeah, it is that it's so important to understand this story because if you if you look at these photos and you're like, these are so stupid, why did anybody believe that these were. Actually in context? But in context, it was and I said it when we first started the the first part of this episode or this story, but with Morse code and photography in the middle of the century, it was supernatural. It was supernatural to people.
And there were some people that didn't want to get photos because they were scared of it. They didn't know what it meant to get a picture made. And and then you do see, obviously, this is this story takes place before the telephone, but the telephone comes around in the next few decades. And and that astounds people. And that's a supernatural thing. You mentioned early movies and people would have run out of the theater after a train, you know, flew by it.
I mean, I don't know what would equate to us today, but it may be like the Tom Cruise deep fake Tick-Tock video. I was thinking about that. It's like it's like wait. If you look. At that, you're like, well, that's got to be real. It's like, well, it's not. But yeah, he didn't just do a backflip in a hallway and hang out with whoever it was. Yeah.
But yeah, although he might have he does a lot of amazing stuff. But yeah, it's I can't think of something now because I think we're so primed to just not believe whatever we see that that I think there's something called retinal projection, which when it comes to VR and things like that, is if that actually becomes a thing because it's essentially shooting a laser into your retina, like onto your retina. So instead of seeing what you see, you'll, it'll literally just be taken over by the image.
It's not like you're putting on VR goggles and you're kind of you can see around the edges and you can kind of see the pixels and all that kind of stuff. It'll just be like, oh, you just flipped on a different reality. I think that's going to be crazy that an augmented reality where things look can be superimposed into your real life. Like you could just be in your house and all of a sudden, you know, the horror movie is in your house. Like somebody is at the window.
Someone's, you know, if aliens are crawling in through the ceiling, like it can just be blended with your your reality. I think that that kind of stuff will be amazing and probably hard for people to deal with. But I don't know.
It's all it's all I think when you look at it through the lens of somebody like me who's experienced a lot of technology and and been involved in photography and some, you know, color correction and seeing visual effects and all that kind of stuff, you get inherently sort of skeptical about things like this. But I definitely have a hope. Excuse me, I definitely have a hope that I will experience something that is so overwhelming and amazing that I just cannot figure it out.
And I love, like close up magic and things like that because I know there's a trick to it, but it's still so fun because it's done so well. So when you can experience things like that, I think it's really fantastic. But I always have in the back of my mind, like, I know there's a trick. I know he didn't, you know, it didn't bend the key with his mind or what, you know, any of that kind of stuff.
It's like there's always a there's a way that, you know, the Statue of Liberty disappears, but it's so fun to experience. But so I feel I feel a little bit bad that people would go into things like that, hoping for a real connection to someone that they loved and missed. Yeah. And it's such a terrible thing to exploit that.
But at the same time, if they went their whole life and believed it and thought they had that one last interaction and it doesn't really hurt anybody else, then I can't completely say what's the harm? But I don't know. It's a it's a it's a funny gray area. It is a funny gray area. And it makes me think about a few things outside of the technology discussion, which is, which is very pertinent. I'm glad we just had that.
But also when it comes with dealing with the passing of loved ones and how we use things like photos or images or videos to remember them, back then, you didn't have a family photo album. Photography was still new, still relatively expensive. So the way to remember your dead family was to do something like this or take they in. In the 19th century. They were excuse me, the. Yeah, the 19th century.
Sorry, in the 19th century, there was this kind of fad where people would take pictures like posed pictures of dead loved ones, like either dead babies, dead uncles, dead grandparents, whatever it was, they would even pose with them. They would dress them up. And we look at that today and we think it's kind of morbid, but that was there. They didn't have photos. That was their only photo of that loved one. So they wanted to do that, to remember them.
And then if you think about what we do today, that might be considered kind of morbid or weird in the future is there's Facebook accounts. There's what millions of people on Facebook that are actually deceased and people will comment on their dead relatives or dead friends Facebook page and be like, I miss you, wish you were still here. Like that is that is a thing that we do nowadays.
And then on another side to that, we're outside of the sort of remembering a loved one, but also photography as much as again, it was created to capture the truth or capture realism. Ever since it was started, we've been modifying what is real in pictures and stuff.
Not not somebody like spirit photography in this example, but even there is a famous Civil War photographer and a lot of the amazing photographs we have of the Civil War, he would pose he would go on to the battlefield and move dead bodies to get him in a different position or put them near a fallen cap or or a musket that wasn't there originally. He would pose these photos to in his words, they were to make the public better understand what happened.
And there's even oh, man, when I was at from what is one of the early was it Lumia, there was one of the early famous filmmakers who would do like documentary shorts and there's a famous, like, end of work at a factory where everybody piles out of the factory in a line. And that's the movie. And apparently he made everybody go home and change to do it again. And here it was supposed to be capturing the end of a workday, but he had to do a second take. That's kind of the story behind that.
So it's I don't know. I don't have a point to that, except it just makes that's where my brain goes when we talk about this stuff and how media is never exactly real. And we definitely. Oh, yeah. It's a version. Yeah, it's a yeah. It's a version of reality.
I mean, when you really get down into the nuts and bolts of it, like everything we experience as a as a you know, interpretation or our vision as an image, that's an interpretation that our brain touches is all electrical signals and things that all just exists in our brain. So we're already one step removed. So if you add one more or two more, then, yeah, sort of, you know, if you know what you're doing, you can sell it pretty easily. But yeah.
So let's get into some theories real quick before we wrap up, because I would love I would love to to share some of these ideas and also get some of your points or theories as well. So William Hope, I mentioned him at the beginning of this story. He was another famous spirit spirit photographer decades later after Mumbler, but he was cut multiple times.
People would catch him swapping plates in his hand because he was still using a similar plate process and he would be caught with something he had prepared in the second plate it's. Also in multiple times. So yeah. William Hope was kept at all. Times and kept at it. Which is indicative of like how slow information travels back down a little bit because it isn't like, oh, it's on Twitter now. It's like, no, he can move to another town and like keep doing this.
It's how slow information moved, but also the power of belief. People wanted to believe, so they would come up with excuses about why, Oh, that can't be true. Someone's just making it up because they don't want it to be true or whatever. Mumbler interestingly, destroyed all his negatives that he had left before he died. So that is an interesting piece of evidence.
There so the main, main theories about what he did is that he used sleight of hand because he would have the plate and he would he would do something to either slip a second plate behind the plate he was using when it went into the camera or something like that. And that is you talked about close up magic. That is that's close up magic right there. It's like there's a lot of people that know how to do that and have always known how to do that.
So that is a very plausible thing, double exposure, which is involved with like all these theories. But just in general that he maybe had a plate inside the camera that had another exposure on it. Or something along those lines. There was that in the in the hearing, someone thought that there was like a fake ghost in the camera that his cameras. To see evidence of that. His cameras were inspected, his cameras were inspected and nothing like that was ever found. So that is and.
There wasn't like a secret compartment for a second plate or. Right, right. So yeah, his cameras were always very highly scrutinized by the other photographers. I would watch him from Fox Vox Media. There is a I'll share a link to this, but Vox Media created a video that's on YouTube with someone showing how they think William Semmler did this. And it's a combination of all the above. They would use sleight of hand they would, you know, some.
Little man in the camera. No little man, no little man. He only helped a little bit, but not as much as you think. But what they did on Vox media is they would trace they would have like another photograph taken. And I'm I'm probably misremembering this. Exactly. So everybody should watch it. It's really fun. But they would trace an outline of their subject onto a glass plate and they would use that to line up the the like ghostly image they would do.
And then they had an actor wear like all white to look like a ghost and they would take that photo and then they would have that a behind the other glass plate during the, the second picture because that way that the ghost wouldn't get as as developed as exposed
and. There any chance somebody would just pop in while they were taking the photo like so just like we were just raising like they just raise a curtain and there's just a guy there for like 10 seconds and then disappears and then there he is. Maybe it was a single exposure. So I think that's. Somebody with Cracked. But someone would have correct. Someone would have said something, someone would have noticed it as well.
So my, my problem with the Vox Media video with their theory is they used an actor and they like traced images on the glass. And the way Mumbler was scrutinized, he could not have done any of that. They would have taken too much time. You have too many things that can happen to be caught in that process. I think he used a version of that, though. I think he had prepared images of whatever the ghost was and he would pose whoever was taking a picture.
He would pose them in a way that he knows that the ghost image would would sort of play within the frame he had. You know, there on the, you know, basically frame, left frame, right that's from there. You know, if you if you keep organized a little bit, then you're you're in OK shape. Indeed. And there is a popular there is a term for an ad don't have it written down. I'm going to get better about my notes, everybody. I promise.
But there were these popular like baseball card size photographs in the 1860s with famous figures on them so including the president President Lincoln and I actually think he used those to create a lot of his ghostly images to use those in the exposure process. And the reason I thought of that is because it would come up in in research of how it's the same sort of size of the kind of photographs you would take, but also the Abraham Lincoln photo. He never took a picture of Abraham Lincoln.
He wouldn't have that somewhere in the copies of things or on a glass plate, somewhere in a negative. I think he would have used the Abraham Lincoln photo in the famous Mary Todd Lincoln picture he would have had from one of those kind of famous sort of popular kind of collectible pictures that that everybody had back then. And so that's how I think he did it. Do you have any anything you want to add, any theorizing.
I think we nail that with the little, little, little man living in the camera rapidly painting an image on the home, the glass in the moments he had in between the now. Yeah, I think there are probably details that we won't know just sort of like a, you know, Houdini trick or something like that. But it's yeah, likely prepped plates. They're ready to go or I mean, as you're saying it as like, oh, maybe it's in the development process, not the not the exposure.
So if you took the plate into the darkroom and I don't know if people went into the darkroom with them, but you could have a, you know, on, on the or however he was doing it, if it's anything like now where I mean now you really you print it onto a piece of paper and develop that. But there's something in the development process where you could add an additional image onto it or project onto it briefly onto the chemicals before they're, you know, washed and processed and all that.
But very likely, yeah, it's just it's just a double exposure. I think that's yes, that's the simplest version. That's probably it all comes down to this, some type of double exposure. And it just really comes down to where and when did he do it? Did he do it with a second glass plate?
So when that that glass is being exposed to light to create that negative, there would be a second one that he sort of used sleight of hand to get behind it or was it in the development process somewhere in there is. Yeah I mean maybe he figure it out there chemicals that after he takes a picture and he, you know, scrubs it if you you know, do X, Y or Z or apply different they are still there or there's yeah.
They're remnants. Yeah. But they it looks clean but but it actually isn't you know what I mean? There's still so enough remains as if you process it again. You are like you have to give it an acid bath or something to like really clean the glass. But if you don't then you just kind of wipe it off. There's still like, you know, enough of something behind.
And maybe he discovered what that is and how to, you know, it's like, oh, if I only use this chemical, it doesn't quite clean it, but it looks clean, you know, that kind of thing. I think there's some version of that likely that's that's the story.
And for people that, that believe that or believe that he, he was some sort of medium and was able to do this, I think it's interesting to to note again the glass plate process he used because the fact that they were reusable plates, I think, is how he initially discovered that first ghostly image. I think it was not a clean plate. It's also worth noting he didn't ever use a different type of photography so if he was a medium, it shouldn't matter what type of photography he's using.
Right. And it's a tintype or whatever. And it's just sort of like. But the fact that it's. Sanitized, if any of that stuff. Yeah. So in a glass plate, which is a negative, so he can make copies, he can do all those kind of things, that's what what allowed this to be done. And it is also people had he he was not the one that took to discover creating this ghostly image a few years before he kind of discovered it.
There was actually a book published sort of like ghostly images, these like spirit photographs for the people that discovered that process and made the book thought it was funny. So they didn't lie about what it was. They would pose these. And actually, when you when you do Google Spirit photography from back then, you do come across some of these images.
But it's like, you know, someone looking really scared and there's like this ghostly figure next to him or someone in a field being chased by a ghost. And they did it for fun. It was supposed to be sort of a humorous book. They were not lying and saying that these are real ghost sure. So the process had already been discovered, but Mumbler was the one that tied it in with spiritualism, and that started the whole process of ghost pictures. Yeah. And then ectoplasm showed up that it did.
It did later on. Yeah. The sciences as spiritualism grew and morph because it has to it has to evolve. There were the the ectoplasm where mediums would swallow cheesecloth or chews, chewed up newspaper and regurgitate it during seances and say it was ectoplasm. So really fun, really fun times, really, really super fun. I would, I would love to go to a seance back then. I wish I could time travel and do that. I think it would be fascinating
yes. So. All right. Well, thank you, Tim Donahue, for for being my guest. And it's an early episode so, you know, I'm still. Likely won't go to. Air. It will likely have to be redone and. A template for future improvements. I'm glad. Well. That's the whole thing. That's why I want to jump into this, because the only way to get better at it is just to do it. Oh, for sure. So is great. So, yeah, I hope. I had a good time.
I learn, I learn something and threw out some real bad accents, so I can't wait to hear from all of New England out there. I'm not welcome anymore. So I'm popping in and out next week and then that'll be the end of it. But after studying the career of William H. Mumbler, we can only theorize that his pictures were fabricated.
I cannot comment on the belief that one may have about the ability of spirits to communicate through our technology, whether that be old photographic methods or modern audio and video recording devices. Mumbler passed away in 1884 after destroying all remaining negative prints in his collection, which is why we can't study his techniques. At the time of his death, my mother was more well known for inventing a process that allowed photographs to be printed in newspapers.
The strange story of spirit photos may overshadow the fact that Mumbler may have been a genius as a showman. A photographer and an artist and on that note, that's the show. Thank you so much for listening to a study of strange. Thank you, Tim Donahue, for coming along. If you enjoyed this type of content, please subscribe to our podcast Rate and Review. You know the game that is the most helpful way to keep podcasts getting made.
For information about today's topic, visit a study of strange dot com. And you're always welcome to reach out with information, ideas, reactions, anything to a study of strange at gmail.com. That's all one word study of strange at gmail.com. Tune in next week. We have a very special episode with an expert from the Biggie Smalls murder. The Mystery of the murder of Biggie Smalls, The Notorious B.I.G. Tune in then. It's going to be awesome. Good night.