In a Victorian technological twist upon much older ghost beliefs, the dead appeared to return through the machinery of modernity itself, haunting photographs of the living. These spectral “extras” seemed to exemplify ‘the ghost in the machine’: uncanny presences surfacing within the camera’s supposedly objective eye. The craze for so-called spirit photography reached its height in Britain after the 1914–18 Great War, offering mourners the tantalising possibility that technology could mediate contact with the dead. By 1930, the phenomenon had been thoroughly exposed as fraud. Or had it…?

In this talk Dr Helen Frisby, author of Traditions of Death and Burial, trains a lens upon the intriguing history of spirit photography. On one level, this is a story of deception, profiteering, and exploitation; but it also reveals an enduring human desire to locate consciousness beyond the material body - to find an essence capable of surviving death itself. Spirit photography thus illuminates not only the vulnerabilities of grief, but also the remarkable creativity with which people ritualise loss and seek connection with those who have passed from this world.

Please note that this presentation includes examples of spirit and postmortem photographs.

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