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  • The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer
  • Emily Godbey
The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer. By Louis Kaplan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2008.

In the mid-nineteenth century, William Mumler purported to be able to produce "spirit pictures" without trickery. These spooky images depict living sitters with their ghostly friends. Mumler charged sitters a hefty fee, and he was put on trial for defrauding the public. Kaplan's book situates this odd practice of spirit photography at the nexus of cultural and photographic studies, and Mumler's story is a test case of secularism/spiritualism, science/belief during the period of the U.S. Civil War. In fact, Mumler's most famous image is of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghostly apparitions of her deceased husband and son (Plate 1).

Kaplan's two essays sandwich an array of fascinating primary source material. The introductory chapter, "Ghostly Developments," is a wide-ranging exploration of the cultural issues surrounding Mumler: spiritualism, science, the press, visual entertainments, and mourning and death. Mumler's case and Kaplan's text bring in a number of important questions: Where did Americans stand in terms of science and religion? Could photography help reveal the invisible?

The intervening chapters are reprints of press clippings, primary texts, and a generous number of plates/figures without direct commentary from Kaplan (although these materials are treated in the two essays). The second chapter consists of news clippings, [End Page 166] most from the U.S. and UK Spiritualist press. The sole outlier comes from the British Journal of Photography; I wondered whether there were excluded articles either in mainstream publications (which figure prominently in the later "Trial" documents) or in the photographic press. Scholars will be delighted that someone else has rendered what I would imagine to be an unruly and unpleasant pile of microfilm into fascinating reading material about Mumler's activities in 1862-3.

Further chapters deliver P. T. Barnum's opinion on Mumler's practice; it is quite astonishing to read how the master of humbuggery denounces the "delusions daily practiced upon the ignorant and superstitious" (68) in the spiritual photographer's studio (but, presumably, not in Barnum's establishment).

In the fourth chapter, Mumler himself speaks in the reprint of the 1875 autobiographical Personal Experiences. Since WorldCat records only three extant copies of Mumler's Personal Experiences, Kaplan has certainly done researchers a favor. As Kaplan rightly points out in the concluding chapter, Mumler's reflections on his photographic practice are—rather shockingly—without a sense of personal agency; Kaplan writes that spirit photography "converted William Mumler into an apparatus or an instrument manipulated and acted on by invisible powers." (241)

The next chapters on the 1869 trial showcase the legal argument of Elbridge Gerry, who represented the people against Mumler, as well as coverage in the popular, spiritualist, and (one American) photographic news.

Kaplan's concluding chapter is theoretically-oriented. It connects Mumler's odd story to "spooked theories," (215) which include Derrida's concept of hauntology, Freud's uncanny, and discourses on paranoia and mourning.

With the inclusion of rare primary materials, plentiful illustrations, and essays, the book is a useful and handy companion for those interested in the strange case of spirit photography.

Emily Godbey
Iowa State University
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