The apparitionists
Subtitle: a tale of phantoms, fraud, photography, and the man who captured Lincoln's ghost
By: Peter Manseau
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 335
ISBN-13: 9780544745971
Subjects: Photographers; Psychics; Spirit photography; Biography; History
Description: In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized Americas imagination. A "spirit photographer," William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-335).
Table of contents: title: Part I: The black art. Procure the remedy at once and be well ; Love and painting are quarrelsome companions ; Ties which death itself could not loose ; A palace for the Sun ; I thought nobody would be damaged much ; A lounging, listless madhouse ; My God! is it possible? ; She really is a wonderful whistler ; No shadow of trickery ; A craving for light; title: Part II: Philosophical instruments. The message department ; A big head full of ideas ; Chair and all ; Did you ever dream of some lost friend? ; War against wrong ; Whose bones lie bleaching; title: Part III: Humbugged. All is gone and nothing saved ; A favorite haunt of apparitions ; The spirits do not like a throng ; The tenderest sympathies of human nature ; Weep, weep, my eyes ; Are you a spiritualist in any degree? ; An old, moth-eaten cloak ; By supernatural means ; Figura vaporosa ; They paid their money, and they had their choice ; Those mortals gifted with the power of seeing; title: Part IV: Image and afterlife. Calm assurance of a happy future ; The Mumler process.