The Spirit Photographer

by Jon Michael Varese

  He was raising his brandy glass toward the uncomfortable senator, and using the other hand to gesture with his cigar.

  “My opinion, though,” he continued, “and you know I always give you my opinion, is that you’ve stirred up a real snake’s nest this time. Not that you’ve ever minded doing that, of course. As your oldest friend, I have always been supportive of your endeavors, even when our beliefs have drastically differed. But this business with the voting, Garrett—it will simply never work.”

  “It has already worked,” Garrett said. “The necessary states have ratified the amendment.”

  “Ratified the amendment!” Dovehouse said. “Only because you forced them into it! If you hadn’t made ratification a condition for reentry, there’s no debating where your fifteenth amendment would have gone—down the steps of the Capitol and straight into the gutter! Which is where, might I point out, many respectable Northerners think it should be.”

  He took another puff of his cigar, the smoke forming halos around his head. Like Garrett, Dovehouse had been a great orator and debater at Harvard. His was the kind of voice that filled the room, even when he spoke in whispers.

  “You saw what they did to that Dupree man in Mississippi,” he said.

  “I saw,” Garrett said.

  “Slit his throat and disemboweled him, in the yard in front of his wife. Lawless barbarians. Lincoln should have thrown them all into prison—or better, executed them—when he had the chance. They say they fought for honor, but they have none. It’s abhorrent.”

  “We will not return their independence—if we ever do that—until we’ve subjugated every last one of them. They forfeited their right to independence when they rebelled against the United States.”

  “There is nothing on this earth like your optimism,” Dovehouse said. “For forty years it has truly astonished me.”

  “They will be at the mercy of our laws!” Garrett said.

  He was growing impatient, which was not uncommon these days during conversations about the new order of things.

  “They will follow the law or they will pay the price,” he added. “I am absolutely sworn to make them follow.”

  Dovehouse shook his head in condescending disagreement.

  “Do you think those traitors care a bit for your price? They’ve already lost everything they had … except for their land, of course, which Johnson gave right back to them. Disgraceful. But the land must still be worked, Garrett—that you can’t deny. And the negroes are the ones to work it. If they somehow manage to survive down there—and mind you, I do have grave doubts about that—they will never realize the kind of equality that you and your radical friends envision. The traitors will see to that.”

  “I will see every last traitor lose even the notion of power—lose it by the freedmen’s ballot!”

  Dovehouse again shook his head.

  “I take it you’ve read this,” he said, picking up one of the papers. “Your opponents have been quite eloquent of late. ‘A semi-barbarous race of men who worship fetishes and practice polygamy, intent on subjecting all white women to their hot, unbridled lust.’ It’s powerful stuff, old boy, and, though exaggerated, it’s not without some truth. The negroes are little more than children, no matter how much you might insist on their equality. You can’t expect them to grow up overnight, and you can’t expect them to understand the kind of power you’re trying to give them.”

  “Oh, Benjamin!” Garrett exclaimed, because they had reached this point before. “You speak with every prejudice of the Democrats, and it causes me great sadness.”

  “I speak with every prejudice of an American,” Dovehouse said, “because my forefathers founded this country. Abolition was an economic—even moral—necessity. That I never disputed. But citizenship? Voting? The party’s agenda has gone too far. What’s next for us, old boy—mixing of the races? Mulatto children on every corner? Even the idea of it is unnatural, and threatens the reversal of our evolution. I, for one, do not wish to live to see such a thing, if that is the fate to which your new laws have condemned us.”

  “The people have elected me because they believe in equal rights for the negro,” Garrett said.

  “Might I remind you that the people do not elect their senators at all—the state legislatures do that job for them. So your ‘people,’ the very same who adore and empower you, are a much smaller set of sycophants than you would like to think.”

  Garrett and Dovehouse had been debating such matters for as long as they had known each other—Garrett taking the more radical stance in the years leading up to the war. He knew Dovehouse too well to ever attempt to sway him. In Dovehouse’s Boston, most things were immovable.

  “Benjamin,” Garrett said, “might I raise a … delicate matter? I’m afraid I am in need of your assistance.”

  Dovehouse peered over his brandy.

  “Oh my, old boy,” he said. “Don’t tell me there’s a girl in trouble.”

  “No—it’s nothing of that sort,” Garrett said. “It’s Elizabeth … and, well … there is a predicament.”

  Dovehouse placed his glass down on the table and took another puff of his cigar.

  “She has been,” Garrett continued, “she has been—suffering some difficulties of late. She has had it in her mind to get a picture of William Jeffrey. She has been investigating the possibilities of a spirit photograph.”

  “Dear God, Garrett, you can’t be serious.”

  “I am. And so I accompanied her to Edward Moody’s, and we sat there for a picture.”

  Dovehouse scowled, moving forward in his chair.

  “Edward Moody? You went to see that blasphemous imposter?”

  “I did, Benjamin.”

  “Oh, Garrett, that man should be thrown in jail—and would have been by now, if I had anything to say about it. He’s worse than the Confederates, you know. At least they stand out in the open for what they believe in. But that man lurks about in the shadows, hoodwinking some of the most prominent members of society. They’re the only ones who can afford his outrageous prices, the scoundrel. And he’s got a negro working for him now too, I hear. The whole thing stinks of foulness.”

  The whole thing did stink. But Garrett would still open the door.

  “And the ‘predicament’?” Dovehouse said.

  “There was an accident, and the photograph was spoiled. But Elizabeth is convinced that it was no accident. She is convinced that ghosts are punishing us for any wrong we may have done in the past.”

  “Wrong?” Dovehouse said. “According to the papers—well, the decent ones, of course—you’ve only done right, as far as I can tell.”

  “She has been unwell since the photograph.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for her. When was it?”

  “Day before last. Elizabeth was quite upset. We left hastily after the sitting—without the negative.”

  “I see. And the picture? What’s on it?”

  “It’s the negative, really—no pictures yet, as far as I know. We watched in the darkroom as he developed the negative.”

  “And?”

  “And there are shadows on it—nothing more. The result of an accident with the chemicals.”

  “And you want to retrieve the negative, because you fear he may print pictures and use them to his advantage? I hear he’s getting ten dollars for a dozen cartes de visite, sometimes more. The Spiritualists collect them, you know.”

  “Yes, that. And …” Garrett wasn’t sure how to continue. “It would just be best if we were able to retrieve the negative. But I cannot risk drawing attention to myself—or Elizabeth. I was hoping you might have a … connection.”

  Dovehouse eyed his friend.

  “There is something else, Garrett. Tell me.”

  Garrett met Dovehouse’s gaze, but held it for only a moment.

  “It is Elizabeth. She has become possessed with the idea of obtaining the negative.”

  “I don’t really see the predicament,” Dovehouse said. “Why
don’t you just go and ask him for it? He’s nothing but a mercenary. At worst, you’ll have to pay him something.”

  “There is something about him I do not trust. My feeling is that he won’t surrender the negative—not willingly.”

  “Something you don’t trust? Well, I should think so!”

  Rarely had Dovehouse beheld his friend the senator so distressed. Usually Garrett reserved such emotions for politics—or worse, the negroes. There was something more to this situation, something more to Elizabeth’s concerns. Could his friend of forty years have finally succumbed to some secret weakness? Was it possible that he believed in ghosts?

  “You know, Garrett,” Dovehouse said after some time, “Bolles has been building a case against him.”

  “Bolles?”

  “Yes, Bolles—the same whose appointment you helped secure not so long ago. They have apparently been after Moody for some time, waiting to seize on some sort of tangible evidence, but so far they have been unable to procure any. I hear, though, that other developments, so to speak, have been in the works.”

  “What’s your meaning?” Garrett said.

  “I think a visit to the young inspector might prove to be of some benefit.”

  New York Daily Tribune

  New York, New York

  Sunday, July 17, 1870

  IN RESPONSE TO your letter of last week from the esteemed Mr. Hinckley of the American Institute, Photographic Section, denouncing the scientific impossibility of spirit photography based on the assumption that what the eye cannot see cannot be photographed, we would like to draw attention to the following:

  A few months since an article was printed in Scientific American quoting Prof. C. F. Varley, of London, the celebrated electrician, who recounted how he had made experiments by passing a current of electricity through a vacuum tube, the results of which were indicated by strong or faint touches of light about the poles: “In one instance, although the experiment was carried out in a very dark room, the light was so feeble that it could not be seen, and the operators doubted if the current were passing. But at the same time photography was at work, and in thirty minutes a very good picture was produced of what had taken place. This is a remarkable fact—indeed, it borders on the wonderful, that a phenomenon INVISIBLE to the human eye should have been, so to speak, seen by the photographic lens, and a record thereof kept by chemical agency.”

  What is electricity? We know it is a force; it passes silently and invisibly over the wire and performs its work; therefore we know it exists. But can this same electricity be made visible? Mr. Varley says yes, by employing a MEDIUM, in the shape of a vacuum tube, when by connecting it with the battery, a stream of invisible electricity is made visible to the human eye. Mediums stand in the same relation to spirits as vacuum tubes do to electricity: they supply the necessary elements by which spirits are enabled to be seen; whether those elements be aura, magnetism, or anything else, they are, in our belief, essential to all spiritual manifestations.

  Luther Colby

  Editor, Banner of Light

  Boston, Massachusetts

  IX

  THE “SPIRITUALIST BOSH,” as Marshall Hinckley called it, was influencing the minds of unsuspecting people to tragic ends, and posing dangerous challenges to the reputation of legitimate science itself. In a meeting with other members of the American Institute for the Encouragement of Science and Invention, Hinckley denounced the comparison between spirits and electricity as “utter nonsense.” A fuzzy image here, a somewhat representative image there—all of it, he said, relied on luck and technical cunning. Of course, the Spiritualists would say that the living could not control spiritual energy in the same way as electricity, since spirits had once been of free mind on earth, and would be of equally free mind in the other world. But this was just another part of the Spiritualists’ game, and for respectability’s sake—not to mention for the sake of science’s reputation in general—that game needed to be stopped.

  It was not the Spiritualists’ use of technical instruments like cameras that disturbed the members of the Institute; nor was it that the Spiritualists had concocted chemical formulas and methods to help them play their tricks. But the fact that the Spiritualists had dared to begin claiming science as their own—had begun to insist, even, that spirit photography was no less scientific than the study of electrical currents—this had enraged Marshall Hinckley and the other members of the American Institute immeasurably. One Spiritualist had gone so far as to write that spirit photographs would soon become as common and popular as the electric telegraph, or the sewing machine. “At no distant day,” this blasphemer wrote, “the world at large—and the investigating minds of the world, in particular—will be perusing a scientific work upon the whole subject, which will dispel the darkness that yet broods over this grandest revelation of God’s mysterious providence.” These criminals were duping the public in order to realize their own mischievous ends—whatever those were. Using the good name of science to do so was the height of arrogance and wickedness.

  Worse still, word had recently reached the Institute of other spirit photographers beginning to practice these artful tricks—one in Poughkeepsie, another in Philadelphia, and there was rumor that spirit pictures were even popping up in London. The members of the Institute feared an epidemic, which furthered the urgency to eliminate the impending plague. And since no one had been a greater carrier for the Spiritualist cause than Edward Moody, it was his fraudulence that the Institute sought most to expose. The papers of Boston and other cities were aflame with reports of this imposter’s “talents.” In Moody, Hinckley and his colleagues saw an opportunity to quash the Spiritualists once and for all: take the founding card down, and the whole house would crumble.

  “He must be made an example of,” Marshall Hinckley told Inspector Bolles. “It is the only way they are going to stop practicing these outrages against unsuspecting people.”

  “It will be difficult to prove that he is breaking the law,” Bolles said.

  “There are higher laws at stake here, Inspector,” Hinckley replied. “The laws of science are sacred. We can help you find a way.”

  For some months Inspector Montgomery Bolles had been looking into the matter—he himself being of the mind that Moody’s spirits were likely a sham. He had turned his attention toward the newspapers, where one could hardly flip a page without reading something of spirit photography. How did Edward Moody photograph “ghosts” with such fidelity? And in the cases where he didn’t “get” the spirits perfectly, how was it that people still left his gallery comforted by what they saw? According to the most recent accounts, face after distinct face had lately been emerging on Moody’s negatives—a phenomenon that had transformed the city of Boston into a cacophony of ecstatic widows and widowers.

  “Many of my earlier tests were not entirely successful,” Moody told one reporter, “but the beauty and truthfulness of these images demonstrate what no man has the right to deny.”

  He knew how to promote himself—that much was plain. It was an interesting turn for a man who had started out as a humble engraver. He had first experimented with photography during his early days at Mrs. Lovejoy’s. “But so many were experimenting with photography then,” Moody said. “It was many years before the war, and I had not yet seen the dead in the fields. I was young and my eyes were still closed.”

  The war. So, Moody had indeed gone off to the war. But a few years before that, he had left Boston for New York.

  “I went to New York to apprentice with Matthew Brady. And then the war came. I was not looking for the opportunity.”

  Brady had sent Edward Moody into the field, and the young photographer took pictures of the worst of the carnage at Antietam. “It was, for me, transformative,” Moody told another reporter, “because Mr. Brady’s project was, for the first time in our history, laying bodies at our very doorsteps. But when it was finished I gave up. I had to give up. Because the ghastliness of capturing those images made pho
tography disgusting to me. I did not want to be a part of something that could depict reality so mercilessly.”

  So he found his way back to Boston, determined to abandon photography and return to his original trade. It was only at the entreating of his employer, Mrs. Lovejoy, that Moody agreed to mix his chemicals once again.

  “Mrs. Lovejoy’s picture was indeed a very strange-looking one,” Moody later told the Banner, “and, considering that it was taken when no one else but Mrs. Lovejoy was in the room, the indistinct and shadowy outline of the young girl who appeared in the picture was, to me, unaccountable. I immediately submitted the negative to Mrs. Lovejoy—an accomplished photographer herself—for inspection, and her opinion was that the glass had been used previously for a similar photograph. An insufficient cleaning, she said, likely resulted in residue remaining on the glass, and when a second negative was imposed upon it, the latent form, so to speak, was re-developed.”

  Moody confessed that Mrs. Lovejoy’s theory was quite acceptable to him at the time—that is, he did not suspect the presence of a spirit on the negative. “The picture was, to say the least, a novelty. I had one printed for my own amusement, and propped it up in my work area.”

  The matter might have ended there, were it not for Dr. Asaph Child, a well-known Spiritualist and author of many books about Spiritualism. When Dr. Child, by chance, visited Mrs. Lovejoy’s store and spied the photograph, he stopped and stared in amazement, forcing the engraver to look up from his work.

  “Do you know what you have there, sir?” the doctor said.

  Moody replied that he did know what he had—a picture of Mrs. Lovejoy, taken by himself, when no other visible person was in the room.

  “Admittedly,” Moody said, “I was toying with the doctor. For I was young and stupid, and I did not yet understand.”

  Doctor Child left the store and returned the next day with an investigatory committee of four gentlemen, all of whom wanted to learn more about the “extraordinary picture.” They conducted a thorough examination of the photograph, and after little consultation, declared the work a “miracle.” Then each one of them requested spirit photographs on the spot, offering to pay the engraver ten dollars a picture.