The belief of this religious movement was that the spirits of the dead not only existed, but wanted to communicate with the living and that these spirits could provide valuable knowledge on ethical, moral, and religious questions. Spiritualism arose throughout the 1840s in upstate New York, near where the Second Great Awakening began in the early 19th century. There were a couple of factors that helped to create the rise of spirit photography throughout the 1860s and 1870s: spiritualism and the Civil War. Seeing a market for it, he claimed himself a medium, and offered to help connect people to loved ones who had passed away, for a small fee. Mumler after he accidentally created a double exposure of an image that he took of himself. Spirit photography was first discovered by photographer, William H. But, is spirit photography real? Why did it become so popular? How was it fueled by the Civil War? There are accounts where people have claimed to see things they could not explain one of the more easily documented ways that ghosts were seen was through spirit photography. I have recently started getting questions about ghosts, and this got me thinking about spirits “seen” by people in the 19th century and what it meant for the ones who saw them. Image courtesy of the Getty Open Content Project.Īs we near Halloween, thoughts of ghosts and spirits often come to the minds of visitors at historic places.
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