Doppelgängers and Spectres: Hauntings in Early Photography
The album of Doppelgängers and Spectres (Rylands VPH.15) is certainly one of the most unusual items in the University of Manchester Special Collection’s British Victorian photography collection. Its twenty-one images provide valuable insights into both the methods of photo manipulation and the popularity of the supernatural and spiritualism in Britain’s late Victorian age, at the end of the nineteenth-century.
Early Photo Manipulation
Film cameras around 1900 may have looked different from the film cameras used today, but they shared the same key functions. A key was turned to load the film, the lens was exposed to the light (by removing the cap for a short period or through a shutter mechanism) and the photosensitive film inside the camera captured an image. However, by using a previously exposed negative to take a portrait, the Victorians were able to build layers to their images.
These double or multiple exposures can be traced back as early as the 1860s in William H. Mumler’s ‘spirit photography’ in America, which utilised the technique to take convincing portraits of sitters alongside ghostly spectres and apparitions.
In the album of Doppelgängers and Spectres, created in the early 1900s, we can see in the penultimate image of ‘A Haunting’ that double exposure has been used to create a supernatural scene (Fig. 1). It appears as a towering translucent figure that stands at the entrance to a botanical glasshouse, around which a number of the album’s images take place. The spectre’s body is covered in a long sheet that hangs from its head, suggesting a large human figure stands (or floats) beneath it. A small hand protrudes from the coverage of the sheet and extends its finger outwards in the direction of a cowering woman, as if in some ethereal judgement.
The translucent appearance of the spectre would have been achieved by taking a double exposure photograph of the scene, only having the ghostly figure in place for the second shorter exposure. This produces the illusion of the spectre ominously. The woman from the first exposure then appears to be quickly turning away from the supernatural creature with a gloved hand shielding her face; the image captures her slightly blurred by the motion. It is somewhat difficult to tell if she is mourning for the dead or shocked at what she has seen.
Popular Interest in the Supernatural
Whilst the majority of the manipulated images in the album appear to be whimsical or humorous in nature, the two photographs depicting spectres at the end of the album convey a far more serious preoccupation. They resonate with a genuine belief in the supernatural that was prevalent within Victorian society. This belief in the supernatural was part of an increasing national obsession with death and grief, partly influenced by increasing mortality rates that were one consequence of Britain’s industrial revolution. Authors, such as Charles Dickens, and artists, like Mumler in America, responded to this growing obsession, influencing the consensus in public media that spectres appear to the living as they looked when they died.
The iconic sheet ghost that we see in the album likely appeared as a result of the burial shroud that was common at the time. Pauper burials were given to those who could not afford a funeral and had no next of kin; in these cases, the bodies were wrapped in burial shrouds, similar to the ghost’s ‘sheet’ seen in the album, and were placed in unmarked mass graves.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, it was increasingly popular — even including Queen Victoria (1837–1901) herself — to partake in an intellectualised séance culture that had been imported from America as early as 1852. There was an authentic belief in the existence and powers of mediums and their ability to communicate with the dead. It was believed spectres and apparitions could appear, primarily in the presence of someone who had mediumistic abilities, and communication with them was thought to be possible, often owing to their unfinished business with the living.
The final image of ‘A Spectre’ in the album is noteworthy in this context. The spectre in this image is considerably smaller in stature to the one in ‘A Haunting’, with its loose sheet gathering on the floor. Although it makes a similar gesture with its hand, it is clear that this is not the same spectre. In fact, this spectre, which leans slightly forward, appears perhaps to be the woman from the previous picture. We can only speculate about the intentionality of this detail, whether it may be insignificant or whether it intended to impose some sort of narrative on the spectral images of the album.
This is one of three stories, showcasing different collections held by the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, published by undergraduate placement students from the University of Manchester’s art history department. Other stories are available here and here.
Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library. All images used are licenced via CC-BY-NC-SA. For further information about each image, please follow the links.
Thomas Archer, BA Art History
