by Hans Holzer
I then learned from Mrs. Healy that she had had such an iron gate removed when she bought the house, and moved the entrance to where it is now, away from where the old iron gate once stood. Sybil again could not have known this consciously.
The new home of the Healy family was neat and functional, and Mrs. Healy a charming lady gifted with elaborate speech and a sense of proportion.
“There lived a Mr. Kerrigan there, a lawyer also,” she said. “I think he is dead. We bought it from a Dr. Graham who died quite recently. But nobody has ever lived in that house very long. We left it for purely personal reasons, not because of any ghost, however.”
“What about the cottage?”
“That was built by Dr. Graham for his gardener. That is of no age at all. A Mr. Barron is living in it now.”
“Which staircase did you hear the footsteps on?” I asked.
“There are two, as there are two of everything in the house. My son-in-law and I bought it together, you see, and it was on the little staircase that I heard the footsteps. In the back of the house. The party sounds I heard, that was in the older house, too, in the back.”
Where Sybil and I had heard the voices, I thought! Same spot, actually, and I did not realize it until now.
“Did you find any traces of older buildings on the spot?” I asked Mrs. Healy.
“There is supposed to have been a monastery on these grounds at one time,” she explained; “only the well in the garden is left now. We still used the clear water from it, incidentally.”
Later, Mrs. Healy’s brother came and joined us. He listened quietly as I explained about the land business and the complaint of the ghost.
Both tenants prior to the Doctor had been lawyers, it turned out, and the difficulty about the land ownership underneath the house was quite real. If there had been some mistake, however, nothing could be done about it now. At least not without costly and extended search and litigation. And that, you will admit, even a ghost wouldn’t want. Especially not a lawyer-ghost who is getting no fee out of it! I am sure that my explanation, that time had gone on, must have given the ghostly owner a chance to let go of it all, and since Mr. Lurie, the present owner, foresees that an apartment structure will soon replace the old house, there really is no point in worrying about a bit of land. Caveat emptor!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Psychic Photography—the Visual Proof
COMMUNICATIONS FROM BEYOND THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY:
TRACK RECORD AND TEST CONDITIONS
For the past 100 years, psychic research has painstakingly assembled proof for the continuance of life and has gradually emerged from a metaphysical mantle into the full glare of scientific inquiry. Although various researchers interpret the results of these investigations according to their own attitudes toward survival of human personality, it is no longer possible to bury the evidence itself, as some materialistically inclined scientists in other fields have attempted to do over the years. The challenge is always present: does man have a soul, scientifically speaking, and if so, how can we prove it?
Material on communications with the so-called dead is very large and, to me, often convincing, though not necessarily all of it in the way it is sometimes presented by partisans of the spiritualist religion. But additional proof that man does continue an existence in what Dr. Joseph Rhine, then of Duke University, has called “the world of the mind” was always wanted, especially the kind of proof that could be viewed objectively without the need for subjective observation through psychic experiences, either spontaneous or induced in the laboratory. One of the greatest potential tools was given to us when photography was invented: for if we could photograph the dead under conditions that carefully exclude trickery, we would surely be so much the wiser—and the argument for survival would indeed be stronger.
Photography itself goes back to the 1840s, when the technique evolved gradually from very crude light-and-shadow pictures, through daguerreotypes and tintypes to photography as we now know it.
Major Tom Patterson, a British psychic researcher, in a booklet entitled Spirit Photography, has dealt with the beginnings of photographic mediumship in Britain, where it has produced the largest amount of experimental material in the century since.
But the initial experiment took place in 1862, in Boston, not Britain; 23 years after photography itself came into being. William H. Mumler, an engraver, who was neither interested in nor a believer in spiritualism or any other form of psychic research, had been busy in his off-hours experimenting with a camera. At that time the photographic camera was still a novelty. The engraver liked to take snapshots of his family and friends to learn more about his camera. Imagine Mumler’s surprise and dismay when some of his negatives showed faces that were not supposed to be on them. In addition to the living people he had so carefully posed and photographed, Mumler discovered the portraits of dead relatives alongside the “normal” portraits.
This was the beginning of psychic photography. It happened accidentally—if there is such a thing as an accident in our well-organized universe—and the news of Mumler’s unsought achievements spread across the world. Other photographers, both professionals and amateurs, discovered talents similar to Mumler’s, and the psychic research societies in Britain and America began to take notice of this amazing development.
Since then a great many changes have taken place in the technology and we have greater knowledge of its pitfalls. But the basic principle of photography is still the same: film covered with silver salts is exposed to the radiation called light and reacts to it. This reaction results in certain areas of the emulsion being eaten away, leaving an exact replica of the image seen by the camera lens on the photographic film. Depending on the intensity with which light hits the various portions of the film, the eating away of silver salts will vary, thus rendering the tones and shadings of the resulting negative on light-sensitive photographic paper and hence the positive print, which is a mechanical reproduction of the negative’s light and shadow areas, but in reverse.
To make a print, the operator merely inserts the finished negative into a printer, places the light-sensitive paper underneath the negative and exposes it through the negative with an electric light. Nothing new can be added in this manner, nor can anything already on the negative be taken away, but the skill of the craftsman operating the printer will determine how well balanced the resulting positive print will be, depending on the duration and intensity of the printing lamp.
Most people who are photographers know these simple facts, but there are many who are not, and for whom this information might be useful.
The obtaining of any sort of images on photographic paper, especially recognizable pictures such as faces or figures, without having first made a negative in the usual manner is, of course, a scientific impossibility—except in psychic photography.
Until the arrival on the scene of Polaroid cameras and Polaroid film, this was certainly 100% true. The Polaroid method, with its instant result and development of film within a matter of a few seconds after exposure, adds the valuable element of close supervision to an experiment. It also allows an even more direct contact between psychic radiation and sensitive surface. The disadvantage of Polaroid photography is its ephemeral character. Even the improved film does not promise to stay unspoiled forever, and it is wise to protect unusual Polaroid photographs by obtaining slide copies. Actually, Polaroid photography uses a combination of both film and sensitive paper simultaneously, one being peeled off the other after the instant development process inside the camera.
Fakery with the ordinary type of photography would depend on double exposure or double printing by unscrupulous operators, in which case no authentic negative could be produced that would stand up to experienced scrutiny. Fakery with Polaroid equipment is impossible if camera, film, and operator are closely watched. Because of the great light sensitivity of Polaroid film, double exposure, if intended, is not a simple matter, as one exposure would severely cancel out the other a
nd certainly leave traces of double exposure. And the film, of course, would have to be switched in the presence of the observer, something not even a trained conjurer is likely to do to an experienced psychic investigator. A psychic researcher must also be familiar with magic and sleight-of-hand tricks, in order to qualify for that title.
The important thing to remember about psychic photography is that the bulk of it occurred unexpectedly and often embarrassingly to amateur photographers not the least bit interested in parapsychology or any form of occultism. The extras on the negatives were not placed there by these people to confuse themselves. They were the portraits of dead relatives or friends that could be recognized. The literature on this phase of psychic photography, notably in Britain, is impressive; and I particularly recommended the scholarly work by F. W. Warrick, the celebrated British parapsychologist, called Experiments in Psychics, in which hundreds of experimental photographs are reproduced. Warrick’s work published in 1939 by E. P. Dutton, deals primarily with the photographic mediumship of Emma Deane, although other examples are included. Warrick points out that he and his colleagues, having spent some 30 years working with and closely supervising their subjects, knew their personal habits and quirks. Any kind of trickery was therefore out of the question, unless one wanted to call a researcher who propounded unusual ideas self-deluded or incompetent, as some latter-day critics have done to Harry Price and Sir William Crookes, respected British psychic researchers now dead.
Any person who is not present when the original experiments or investigations take place and who does not possess firsthand knowledge of the conditions and processes of that investigation is no more qualified to judge its results than an armchair strategist trying to rewrite history. Although Patterson’s booklet frankly uses the scientific evidence at hand to support the spiritualistic view, it also serves as a useful source of factual information. Mumler’s record as the “first” spirit photographer is upheld by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge John Edmond, who investigated Mumler personally and obtained photographs under test conditions of people known only to him who were dead. Originally, Judge Edmond had gone into the investigation thinking it was all a deception. In a letter published by the New York Herald on August 6, 1853, however, the judge spoke not only of Mumler’s experiments but also of his subsequent sittings with well-known mediums of his day. These investigations convinced him that spiritualism had a valid base, and he became a confirmed believer from then on, displaying some psychic abilities of his own as time went by.
In England, the craft of psychic photography developed slowly from the 1870s onward. The first person in Britain to show successful results in this field was Frederick Hudson, who in 1872 produced a number of authentic likenesses of the dead under conditions excluding fraud. Several experiments were undertaken under the careful scrutiny of Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, a famed naturalist in his day. Wallace attested to the genuineness of the observed phenomena. Since then several dozen talented psychic photographers have appeared on the scene, producing for a few pennies genuine likenesses of persons known to have died previously, in the presence of “sitters” (or portrait subjects) they had never before met in their lives.
As the craft became better known and men of science wondered about it, researchers devised more and more rigid test conditions for this type of experimental psychic photography. Film, paper, cameras, developing fluid—in short, all implements necessary to produce photographs of any kind—were furnished, controlled, and held by uncommitted researchers. The medium was not allowed to touch anything and was kept at a distance from the camera and film. In many cases he was not even present in the room itself. Nevertheless psychic “extras” kept appearing on the properly exposed film and were duly recognized as the portraits of dead persons, often of obscure identity, but traceable as relatives or friends of someone present. Occasionally, as with John Myers, America’s leading psychic photographer, in his early days the portraits thus obtained by the photographic medium were strangers to all concerned until the pictures were first published in Psychic News, a leading spiritualist newspaper of the day. Only then did the “owners” of the psychic “extras” write in to the editor to claim their dead relatives!
Despite the overwhelming evidence that these photographs were genuine—in almost all cases even the motive for fraud was totally absent—some researchers kept rejecting then—and indeed they do now—the possibility that the results were nothing but fraudulently manufactured double exposures. Even so brilliant a person as Eileen Garrett, president of Parapsychology Foundation, insisted for many years that all psychic photographs had to be fraudulent, having been so informed by a pair of self-styled experts. It was only when I myself produced the photographs of ghosts, and acquainted Mrs. Garrett with the camera, film, and other details of how the pictures were obtained, that she reluctantly agreed that we had indeed “made a breakthrough” in the field of psychic photography. Prejudice against anything involving a major shift in one’s thinking, philosophy of life, and general training is much stronger than we dare admit to ourselves sometimes.
Often psychic photography also occurs at so-called home circles where neither money nor notoriety is involved and where certainly no need exists for self-delusion by those taking the pictures. They are, presumably, already convinced of survival of personality after death, otherwise they would not be members of the circle.
Photographs of ghosts or haunted areas are much rarer because of the great element of chance in obtaining any results at all. Whereas psychic photography in the experimental sense is subject to schedules and human plans, the taking of ghost pictures is not. Even I had neither advance knowledge nor control over the ones I managed to obtain, and I could not do it again that way if I tried.
We still don’t know all of the conditions that make these extraordinary photographs possible and, until we do, obtaining them will be a hit-and-miss affair at best. But the fact that genuine photographs of what are commonly called ghosts have been taken by a number of people, under conditions excluding fraud or faulty equipment, of course, is food for serious thought.
An example in recent years is the photograph of a Danish sailor fighting for his life at Ballyheigue Castle, Ireland, taken by a vacationing army officer named Captain P. D. O’Donnell, on June 4, 1962. Unbeknownst to O’Don-nell, that was the anniversary of the sailor’s death during the so-called silver raid, in which the silver stored at the castle was stolen by local bandits and fighting ensued. O’Donnell took this snapshot without thought or knowledge of ghosts, while inspecting the ruins of the once-proud castle. The picture was later lost in transit and could not be located by the post office.
Many newspapers the world over, including The People of July 3, 1966, reported and published a ghost photograph taken by 18-year-old Gordon Carroll in St. Mary the Virgin Church, Woodford, Northhamptonshire, England. The picture clearly shows a monk kneeling before the altar, but at the time he took it Carroll was the only person inside the church. Fortunately, he found an understanding ear in the person of Canon John Pearce-Higgins, Provost of Southwark Cathedral and a member of the Church’s Fellowship of Psychical and Physical Research. Pearce-Higgins, after inspecting camera and film and questioning the young man, was satisfied that the phenomenon was authentic. Carroll used a tripod and a brand-new Ilford Sportsman Rangefinder camera. He loaded it with Agfa C.T. 18 film, which he often used to photograph stained-glass windows in churches, a hobby of his. The Agfa Company, on examining the film, confirmed that trick photography had not been used and that neither film nor developing showed any faults. As for the ghost, no one seems to have bothered to find out who he was. The church itself is a very ancient place, mentioned in the Domesday Book, a list of important properties compiled under William the Conqueror. A church stood on that spot even before the Norman conquest of Britain, so it is quite possible that at one time or other a monk died there, tragically becoming the ghost that Carroll’s camera accidentally saw and recorded.
Joe Hyams, wri
ter-husband of actress Elke Sommer, shared a haunted house with her for some time in Hollywood, only to give up to the ghost in the end. During the last stages of their occupancy, photographer Allan Grant, strictly a nonbeliever, took some pictures in the aftermath of a fire of mysterious origin. The pictures, published in The Saturday Evening Post of June 3, 1967, clearly show manifestations not compatible with ordinary photographic results.
The very latest development in the area of psychic photography, although not concerned with images of ghosts, is still germane to the entire question. Thought forms registering on photographic film or other light-sensitive surfaces are the result of years of hard work by Colorado University Professor Jule Eisenbud, a well-known psychiatrist interested in parapsychology as well, with Chicago photographic medium Ted Serios. These amazing pictures were published in 1989 by Eisenbud in an impressive volume called The World of Ted Serios. In addition, more material has become available as the experiments continued, thanks to the efforts of a number of universities and study groups who have belatedly recognized the importance of this type of experiment.
Serios has the ability of projecting images of objects and scenes often at great distances in space, or even time onto film or a TV tube. This includes places he has never visited or seen before. Eisenbud does not suggest that there are spirit forces at work here. He merely points out, quite rightly, that we do not as yet realize some of the areas in which the human mind can operate. Without having been present at the many sessions in which Eisenbud and a host of other scientists subjected Serios to every conceivable test, I cannot judge the results. But it appears to me from what I have read in the book, and from other Serios photographs shown to me privately, that Serios is capable of astral projection. In these out-of-body states he does visit distant places in a flash, then almost instantly returns to his physical body and records the impressions received by his etheric eyes onto Polaroid film. Above all, I feel that Serios is one of an impressive line of photography mediums.