Ghost Photography of the 19th Century

Photo manipulation is nearly as old as photography itself, and what early photographers lacked in Photoshop, they made up for in ingenuity. Photographers identified nine different methods that could aid in the photographic imitation of “spirits”, including techniques like multiple exposure and combination printing. As David Brewster, in his 1856 book on the stereoscope, explained: 

For the purpose of amusement, the photographer might carry us even into the regions of the supernatural. His art, as I have elsewhere shewn, enables him to give a spiritual appearance to one or more of his figures, and to exhibit them as ‘thin air’ amid the solid realities of the stereoscopic picture.

William Mumler was the world’s first known “spirit photographer”. He photographed people who were morning the loss of a loved one and would superimpose their image on the photograph to show that they were still with them in spirit.
Mumler got caught with his fraudulent photography because of P.T. Barnum. He had captured an image of Barnum posed next to a ghost of an exceptionally notable variety: that of the recently assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

 During Mumler’s 1869 hearing for fraud, Barnum was called to the witness stand to testify against Mumler. Barnum would serve as an expert on “humbuggery.”
Spirit photography lived on well into the 20th century, fueled in part by the Civil War and, later on, by World War I. In the U.K., in the aftermath of the first Great War, the spirit photographer William Hope would develop a following for his work that included Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes’s creator supported Hope against claims of Mumlerian fraud and wrote a book called The Case for Spirit Photography in 1922. He would also end his friendship with the famous Harry Houdini when the magician publicly claimed that spirit photography was “farcical.”
(Source: The Atlantic)

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Curious History’s (odditiesoflife) Top Ten Posts for June, 2013

The following links will take you to the most popular posts for the month of June. Curious History had an excellent month. Or come and see what is new at Curious History.com!

1. Devil’s Bridge - 61,675  Reblogs & Likes
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1. The Ancient Ones: Oldest Living Organisms - 10,361

The Grisly Story of Burke and Hare and the Mystery of the Miniature Coffins

Eight years after the “Anatomy Murderers” Burke and Hare were apprehended in Edinburgh, Scotland, two boys discovered sixteen tiny dolls, each nested into a miniature coffin hidden away in a rocky niche on the north-eastern slopes of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh in June 1836.

At first, theories on the dolls significance ranged from witchcraft to child’s toys, but eventually it began to seem that the sixteen tiny figures were most likely effigies for the sixteen murder victims of Burke and Hare made by Burke himself.

 From January through October 1828, William Burke and William Hare had lured in and murdered their lodgers in a scheme to provide fresh bodies to the local anatomy school for money. They killed a total of sixteen people: twelve women, three men and one child. Dr. Robert Knox, a brilliant and well known local anatomy lecturer purchased the bodies, and most likely knew what was going on but was not arrested for the murders due to insufficient evidence.

 The crimes were exposed when another lodger discovered the body of a previous tenant, and reported it to the police. Burke and Hare were apprehended along with Burke’s mistress, Helen McDougal, and Hare’s wife, Margaret. Despite finding the body of the last lodger in Knox’s classroom, ready for dissection, the evidence was not truly damning until Hare gave a full confession.

William and Margaret Hare turned King’s witnesses, that is, witnesses for the prosecution, in return for immunity. Burke and McDougal were tried for the murders. McDougal was acquitted while Burke was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on January 28, 1829 by hanging.
His body was handed over for dissection, and his skeleton and a book bound from his skin (pictured above) remain in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.
The miniature dolls and coffins were in the hands of a private collector until 1901, when eight of them were handed over to the National Museums Scotland. Although it is generally agreed that the mysterious little dolls are associated with the crimes of Burke & Hare, no one is certain who among the killers created them. DNA studies conducted in 2005, using DNA extracted from Burke’s skeleton, attempted to prove that he had created them to assuage his guilty conscience, but the tests proved inconclusive.

Curious History: The Life of Millie and Christine McKay

Millie and Christine McKoy were born, joined at the base of the spine, on July 11, 1851, the eighth and ninth child of Monimia and Jacob McKay, slaves owned by a blacksmith in the small town of Welches Creek, North Carolina. At only ten months old, they were sold along with their mother to a showman, who in turn sold them on to two more men in the same trade, looking to make a quick buck. It seems to have been around this time that their last name was changed to McKoy.
While still very young, the McKoy twins were kidnapped at an exhibition in New Orleans by yet another showman, who exhibited them another year, including at Barnum’s American Museum. Sold yet again in 1855, this time to a professor, they ended up in Canada, and then Europe, where former owner Joseph Smith reunited them with their mother and brought them back to the United States.
Joseph Smith and his wife educated the McKoy twins, focusing on music and languages. The girls had a gift for singing and could soon also speak in four or five different tongues. Yet, while to some extent it is true that the sisters enjoyed a successful career in museums and the circus, it should not be forgotten that they were also exploited since they were young girls – and, as female slaves, more so even than the other conjoined twins listed here. Indeed, they are held to have been overworked, beaten, raped and sexually abused – including, it’s suggested, during the numerous medical ‘examinations’ they had to endure.
Free at last following the Emancipation Proclamation, in the 1880s the McKoy sisters retired from show business and went back to their hometown in North Carolina, where they bought a small farm. However, after a fire that weakened their health, the twins’ lives were claimed by tuberculosis, contracted by Millie, and died on October 8, 1912. They lived until the ripe old age of 61, the oldest female conjoined twins to date.

Curious History: The Origins and History of All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween)

Halloween’s origins date back more than 2,000 years. On what we consider November 1, Europe’s Celtic peoples celebrated their New Year’s Day, called Samhain (SAH-win). According to Irish mythology, Samhain was a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for fairies and the dead to communicate with us; Samhain was essentially a festival for the dead.
On Samhain eve—what we know as Halloween—spirits were thought to walk the Earth as they traveled to the afterlife. Fairies, demons, and other creatures were also said to be abroad. It is still the custom in some areas to set a place at the Samhain feast for the souls of dead kinfolk and to tell tales of one’s forebears. However, the souls of thankful kin could return to bestow blessings just as easily as that of a murdered person could return to wreak revenge. Fairies were also thought to steal humans on Samhain and fairy mounds were to be avoided.
People stayed near to home or, if forced to walk in the darkness, turned their clothing inside-out or carried iron or salt to keep the fairies at bay. The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks was a bid to befuddle the harmful spirits or ward them off. In Scotland, young men would dress in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces. They were known as ‘guisers’ and the practice was common in the 16th century in the Scottish countryside. Candle lanterns, carved from turnips, were part of the traditional festival. Large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and set on windowsills to ward off evil spirits.
Samhain was later transformed as Christian leaders co-opted pagan holidays. In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV decreed November 1 All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day. The night before Samhain continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades, though under a new name: All Hallows’ Eve—later “Halloween.”
Children going door to door ‘guising’ or ‘galoshin’ in costumes and masks, carrying turnip lanterns, offering entertainment of in return for food or coins, was traditional in the 19th century and continued well into the 20th century. At the time of mass transatlantic Irish and Scottish immigration, the custom of Halloween in North America began.

Curious History: "The Tattooist" by Norman Rockwell

Rockwell used a neighbor, Clarence Decker, as the sailor in the "Tattooist", 1944. Decker was ‘Master of the Grange’ in Arlington, and shows up in quite a few of Rockwell’s illustrations. 
The Tattoo Archive received an email from Ross Mosher, who is the great, great nephew of Clarence Decker, the sailor model for The Tattooist, which read:

“Clarence didn’t have a single tattoo in real life. Also the last name on his arm is Betty – that’s because my great, great aunt Belle told Norman that if he put her name in the painting, she wouldn’t speak to him ever again. So Norman crossed the L’s and added a Y.”

Curious History: Creepy Vintage Halloween Costumes, 1890-1900

These really are creepy. If you were too chose wearing one of these instead of current costumes, I think it would definitely up the creep factor.

Curious History: Monowheel Motorcycle, 1930s

While not necessarily a masterful design, Italian M. Goventosa’s 1930s single-wheeled motorcycle is certainly a testament to human imagination.

Vintage Photo of Vampira, 1950's

Vampira, queen of low-budget horror movies in the 1950's, reads a book on self-taught embalming.

Vintage Photo of a Dressed Cat

The odd fact about this picture is not that the poor kitty had to wear a dress and bonnet.  The cat can't mind because he is...well, has already been through the process of taxidermy.  Did they just use the head?  Very disturbing.