Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America

In the decades after the American Civil War ended in 1865, the United States was a nation still grappling with its own grief.

As many as 750,000 people had died in the conflict as they fought their own countrymen. It was a scale of loss unprecedented since the inception of the United States as an independent nation. Families were torn apart, as many husbands, sons and fathers had died on American battlefields.

Of course, with the widespread loss, many people were struggling to come to terms with their grief, which in turn created a vulnerability. And, for some less scrupulous individuals, that uncertainty and collective sadness presented a new opportunity for fame and wealth.

Enter William Mumler, a so-called spirit photographer. Born in 1832, Mumler later became a fraudster who claimed to be able to reunite people with their dead loved ones via his photography. Mumler was only a small part of a quasi-religious movement, which, in the wake of the war, became a subject of fascination.

“It was in the middle of the 19th century that ghost-hunting became a cultural obsession,” explains Alice Vernon, author and academic at Aberystwyth University, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It swept across America as this new pseudo-scientific religion called spiritualism.”

The rise of spiritualism was inseparable, says Vernon, from this wave of collective mourning.

Science and spiritualism in the 19th century

The idea of spiritualism offered many people a kind of conceptual comfort, and new technologies, including photography, were giving it a seemingly evidential backbone.

“I think the reason why spirit photography became so popular at that moment,” Vernon says, “was because photography was a fairly new innovation, and it was something that people didn’t really understand.”

Early photographs were incredibly precious. So when spiritualists claimed that cameras could record the unseen world – as well as the images of the dead – many saw it as a logical extension of what the technology was already offering.

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The result was a wave of ‘spirit photographers’, who offered people a chance to be photographed beside the ghost of a dead loved one. Of course, it was all trickery, relying on the public’s lack of understanding of how photography worked. But some early photographers were able to master the chemistry of exposure, and worked on overlaying negatives, adjusting lighting and controlling depth of field – all to create convincing ‘ghosts’.

Some of the resulting “ghost images” look crude today: translucent faces, faint white smears, or “a paper ghost behind them”, as Vernon describes. But in an age before image manipulation was common knowledge, such details were persuasive.

William Mumler and the business of grief

The greatest example of the impact of spirit photography came from the hands of William Mumler. He was a Boston engraver who stumbled upon the technique of double exposure by accident. When he noticed that faint second images appeared on his negatives, he realised their ghostly potential.

Soon, bereaved families were queuing at his studio. They posed for portraits and received photographs appearing to show the faint image of a deceased relative standing beside or behind them.

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Mumler’s fame reached its height when he photographed Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of the assassinated president, with the spectral figure of Abraham Lincoln at her shoulder.

“It’s literally just Mary Todd Lincoln with what looks like a glove on her shoulder,” Vernon says. “And then a double exposure of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln behind her. It looks terrible.”

Yet for many, the image was incredible proof of what they already wanted to believe: that all those who had died during the American Civil War might not really be so far away.

William Mumler’s trial and controversy

But not everyone was convinced.

In 1869, Mumler was arrested and charged with fraud in New York, accused of exploiting the grief of the bereaved. Crowds packed the courtroom as expert witnesses demonstrated how the “spirits” could be produced through trick photography. And yet, Mumler was acquitted.

“He was acquitted because so many people involved in the case – and people on the jury – were spiritualists,” Vernon explains. “It was such a widespread religion that people subscribed to. There were so many people biased towards spiritualism involved in prosecuting him.”

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His release spoke volumes about the power of spiritualism. The belief had spread far beyond fringe circles, and counted scientists, writers and politicians among its adherents.

Spiritualism across the Atlantic

After Mumler’s trial, spirit photography crossed the Atlantic, finding eager audiences in Victorian Britain (which was grappling with the changes caused by industrialisation, and increasing religious doubts) where spiritualism was also flourishing. The movement was bolstered by interest from the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir William Crookes, who believed the dead could be studied as scientifically as any natural phenomenon.

Though Mumler’s name eventually faded, his pioneering techniques persisted. Spirit photography survived well into the 20th century, adapting to new technologies while also latching onto new explosions of grief brought about by the First World War.

In all, Vernon concludes that there’s a very simple, and human, explanation for the rise of spiritualism, and the success of figures including Mumler.

“Spiritualism came at a point in history where people were grieving on a mass scale and wanted to contact the dead.”

Alice Vernon was speaking to Jon Bauckham on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.

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