The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography

[Illustration: This spirit-face is the realisation of a high ideal of beauty, sweetness, and spirituality. The beauty of it we cannot now fully comprehend; but, as we gaze on it, we may say in the words of Michael Angelo:—

“Souls burn for souls—spirits to spirits cry, I seek the splendour in thy fair face storèd; Yet living man that beauty scarce can learn, And he who fain would find it first must die.”

[See page 92, tenth line.]

THE VEIL LIFTED.

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS OF SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY.

With Twelve Illustrations.

A PAPER BY J. TRAILL TAYLOR DESCRIBING EXPERIMENTS IN PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHY.

LETTER BY THE REV. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A.

ADDRESSES BY JAMES ROBERTSON, GLASGOW.

AND MISCELLANEA BY THE EDITOR, ANDREW GLENDINNING.

LONDON: WHITTAKER & CO., WHITE HART STREET, E.C. 1894.

“Kant expressed himself favourable to the view that a world of supersensuous beings environs this planet, and that the establishment of communication with such beings is only a matter of time.”—E. D. FAWCETT.

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“Before many months are over, I think it will be admitted by every candid mind that the persistence of the individual after death, and the possibility of communicating with that individual, has been as well established on a scientific basis as any other fact in nature. That, you may think, is a bold assertion. It is not an assertion; it is a prophecy, based upon facts which are within my own knowledge, and of which I speak with as much confidence as I do of anything which has ever come within my own personal observation.”—W. T. STEAD, in The Review of Reviews, Jan. 1893.

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“Personally, we consider Spiritualism a valuable bulwark against the inroads of Materialistic Atheism.”—SALADIN, in The Agnostic Journal.

PREFACE.

The publication in the British Journal of Photography of Mr. Taylor’s Paper, with the proceedings of the meeting at which it was read, has aroused a wide-spread and deep interest in the subject. The principal portions of it, and, in some instances the whole of the Paper, together with editorial comments, have subsequently appeared in newspapers and journals in Canada, Australia, India, America, and other countries. As his experiments will be a matter of historical interest, many scientific men will be pleased to have his Paper in this book form, with the reproductions of two of the psychic pictures which he obtained on his photographic plates.

The term “spirit photographs” is generally used to describe photographs of psychic entities who cannot be seen by ordinary persons, but can be photographed by a medium, or with the help of a medium, and with the co-operation of these unseen entities. Such portraits are obtained both indoors and in the open air, with and without a background, by natural light and by artificial light; and, in the case of “materialised” forms at séances, which are visible to every person present, the portraits have sometimes been taken by light produced by the spirits, the exact nature of which is unknown.

The following may serve as a rough classification of what are called spirit photographs:—

1. Portraits of psychical entities not seen by normal vision.

2. Pictures of objects not seen nor thought of by the sitter or by the medium or operator; such as flowers, words, crosses, crowns, lights, and various emblematic objects.

3. Pictures which have the appearance of being copied from statues, paintings, or drawings. Sometimes these are busts or heads only. The flatness in some photographs of this class is supposed, by persons who have not investigated the subject, to be proof that the photographs are produced in a fraudulent manner.