If a plate is wrapped in paper and submitted to “spirit influences”--whatever these may be--never being exposed…
- Date of account
- Published 1923
- Source
- The Case Against Spirit Photographs
- Reference
- The Case Against Spirit Photographs · selected passage 53
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
If a plate is wrapped in paper and submitted to “spirit influences”--whatever these may be--never being exposed in a camera at all, and on development shows faces or writing, I personally can only find one explanation--trickery
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyIf a plate is wrapped in paper and submitted to “spirit influences”--whatever these may be--never being exposed in a camera at all, and on development shows faces or writing, I personally can only find one explanation--trickery. But if a plate is duly exposed with camera and lens, and unseen faces appear on development, the matter is not quite so simple. For it is well recognised that the camera may record what is invisible to the eye; invisible stars are detected by the photographic plate, and anyone who has examined a nebula or comet through a telescope, after seeing a photograph of the same object, realises this fact to his disappointment. Similarly a can of hot water may be photographed, by a long exposure, in a perfectly dark room; and another well-known instance of a similar phenomenon is Sir Robert Ball’s story of photographing some writing on the side of the “Great Eastern,” years after it had been painted out and rendered invisible.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.
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