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Criminal

Spiritual Developments

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 38.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One Sunday afternoon, a man named William Mumler decided to take a self portrait. He said he was alone in the photography studio, but as the photograph developed he saw something very strange—the image of someone else, sitting beside him. Mumler’s “spirit photograph” was championed by advocates of Spiritualism, who saw it as evidence that the living could communicate with the dead. Mumler began to host portrait sessions in his studio, for a hefty fee. Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, visited Mumler to have her portrait taken with the hope of contacting her late son. Louis Kaplan’s book is The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.

0:31.0

In the early 1860s, a man in Boston named William Mumler started getting interested in photography.

0:39.0

One Sunday afternoon he decided to take a self-portrait. He was alone in the photography studio, so he set up the

0:45.6

camera himself and went to stand in front of it. He waited almost a full minute for his image

0:52.2

to fix itself on the camera's prepared glass plate.

0:57.0

And when it was done, he took the plate to the dark room.

1:00.8

As the photograph developed, he saw something very strange.

1:05.0

It was the image of someone else, a young girl sitting in a chair beside him.

1:11.0

She was on Sunday when there is not a living soul in the room beside me, so to speak.

1:27.0

At first, Mumler gave a very conventional opinion in the sense that he thought that he made a mistake.

1:35.0

Author in Art History Professor Louis Kaplan.

1:39.0

He was an amateur still, you know, he wasn't that adept and what he must have done was used a

1:47.2

plate, a glass plate that had a previously developed

1:55.0

with the image with the image that he took of himself.

1:59.0

So, you know, that's the conventional explanation at first that he thought what was going on.

...

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