Why Do We Believe Photographs Capture Souls?

Capturing wily souls on film is as old as photography itself. In the middle of the 19th-century a Boston jeweler named William Mumler eyed a feminine ghost in his self-portrait. Initially he suspected it to be a double exposure; his friends convinced him otherwise. Mumler, excited by the potential windfall, closed down his jewelry shop to become the first ‘spirit photographer’.

Mumler raked it in until eagle-eyed customers noticed that the spirits looked remarkably like people who had previously sat for him. He avoided prosecution for fraud in court, though his reputation did not. Nevertheless a cottage industry was born; today’s incarnation is known as Kirlian photography.

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