The Ghost Photographer

Told with uncensored Southern wit and guidance, this inspirational memoir “is a good primer on getting into the psychic realm” (Booklist) and recounts the story of a Hollywood film executive who journeys through the cosmic wilderness and, against all odds, discovers psychic superpowers that radically transformed her life. As a senior executive at one of the world’s largest movie studios, Julie Rieger spent her days marketing the imaginary stories of ghosts, faeries, superheroes, aliens, and more fantastical creatures. But after the devastating loss of her mother, the world of make-believe became reality when Julie captured her first ghost in a photograph and blew open a door to the Other Side. The Ghost Photographer chronicles Julie’s wild ride down the spiritual rabbit hole. After a series of unexpected, mind-blowing, and sometimes frightening encounters with the spirit realm, Julie was forced to face this strange awakening, flying in the face of scientific dogma and her own die-hard skepticism. Ultimately, she discovered that what she thought she had lost with the death of her mother—unconditional love—was in fact the greatest superpower one can wield. “A hugely entertaining must-read for anyone who’s ever struggled with loss or wondered what might be beyond the veil of our five senses” (Anita Moorjani, author of Dying To Be Me), The Ghost Photographer offers insights into our relationship with the spirit world, prayers and rituals for cleansing and protecting our homes from unwanted ghosts, and guidance on how to develop our intuition and sixth sense.

A charlatan is haunted by sinister secrets and spirits from his past in this Gothic novel of the Reconstruction Era. Boston, 1870. Photographer Edward Moody has gained fame and fortune capturing the images of spirits in his photo portraits. He lures grieving widows and mourning mothers into his studio with promises of catching the ghosts of their deceased loved ones with his camera. But his elaborate hoax is about to yield shocking results . . . While attempting to capture the spirit of an abolitionist senator’s young son, a different spectral figure develops before Moody’s eyes. The camera has seemingly captured the spirit of a beautiful young woman from Moody’s past—the daughter of an escaped slave he knew long ago. He immediately sets out for the Louisiana bayou to resolve their unfinished business?and perhaps save his soul . . .

"Can the camera show us those who have passed on? Yes!" Arthur Conan Doyle said upon publishing The Case For Spirit Photography in 1923. The book offers a thorough account of his own experiences with spirit photography and those of others. The first spirit photographer, William Mumler, began working in Boston in 1861. Faint figures believed to be lost loved ones appeared in photos behind those sitting in front of the camera. Over the years, Mumler took thousands of spirit photographs, including one of Mary Todd Lincoln showing the assassinated president behind her. P.T. Barnum, always one to enjoy a good humbug, was intrigued as well and displayed several Mumler photographs in his American Museum. But with growing success came more skeptics. And eventually, some of them noticed that several spirits were actually people still living. By 1869, the police were on the case and claimed Mumler was swindling people out of their money. The spirit photographer went to court, supported by the Spiritualist community who maintained their belief that he was innocent and genuine. Mumler was exonerated when no one could prove he'd faked his photos. His legal troubles ultimately hurt his business, but spirit photography lived on through other mediums wielding otherworldly cameras. Doyle believed many of them to be genuine and often came to the defense of photographers accused of fraud. He had been one of Spiritualism's loudest and best-known evangelists in the early twentieth century. He, and its millions of followers, believed that we never die-we merely move on to another plane that could amazingly be captured on film. The author's good friend, Harry Houdini, spent many years exposing fraudulent mediums that capitalized on Spiritualism and people's willingness to believe that the dead could talk. One example was spirit photographer Alexander Martin of Denver, Colorado. Doyle told Houdini that he was "a very wonderful man in his particular line." So the magician paid him a visit, and once inside the studio he attempted to explore the dark room. After a few secretive photographic shenanigans, Martin shared some ghosts. Houdini concluded the photos were simply double exposures. "From a logical, rational point of view, Spirit photography is a most barefaced imposition and stands as evidence of the credulity of those who are in sympathy with the superstitions of occultism," he wrote in 1924's A Magician Among the Spirits. "It is also evidence of how unscrupulous mediums become and how calloused their consciences." Doyle clearly disagreed. Genuine or not, the stories presented within these pages are fascinating and a hundred years later the photos remain extraordinary. And they are faithfully reproduced as published in 1923.

In the 1860s, William Mumler photographed ghostsa or so he claimed. Faint images of the dearly departed lurked in the background with the living, like his well-known photo of the recently assassinated Abraham Lincoln comforting Mary Todd. The practice came to be known as spirit photography, and some believed Mumler was channeling the dead. Skeptics, however, called it a fraudulent trick on the gullible, taking advantage of the grieving at a time of suffering and loss. Mumlera s insistence that his work brought back the dead led to a sensational trial in 1869 that was the talk of the nation.

A story of faith and fraud in post–Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead. In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America’s 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, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of séances in the White House. 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. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense, suggesting no one would ever solve the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief. An NPR Best Book of 2017 “A rare work of historical nonfiction that is both studious and just plain entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of 2017 “An exceptional story.”—Errol Morris, New York Times Book Review “Manseau has become the foremost chronicler of the deep American desire to believe in the weird, the strange, and the oddly wonderful.”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times–bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays—meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems—and not a single image. Hervé Guibert’s brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, but its deeply personal contents go far beyond that canonical text. Some essays talk of Guibert’s parents and friends, some describe old family photographs and films, and spinning through them all are reflections on remembrance, narcissism, seduction, deception, death, and the phantom images that have been missed. Both a memoir and an exploration of the artistic process, Ghost Image not only reveals Guibert’s particular experience as a gay artist captivated by the transience and physicality of his media and his life, but also his thoughts on the more technical aspects of his vocation. In one essay, Guibert searches through a cardboard box of family portraits for clues—answers, or even questions—about the lives of his parents and more distant relatives. Rifling through vacation snapshots and the autographed images of long-forgotten film stars, Guibert muses, “I don’t even recognize the faces, except occasionally that of an aunt or great-aunt, or the thin, fair face of my mother as a young girl.” In other essays, he explains how he composes his photographs, and how—in writing—he seeks to escape and correct the inherent limits of his technique, to preserve those images lost to his technical failings as a photographer. With strains of Jean Genet and recurring themes that speak to the work of contemporary artists across a range of media, Guibert’s Ghost Image is a beautifully written, melancholic ode to existence and art forms both fleeting and powerful—a unique memoir at the nexus of family, memory, desire, and photography.

Photography and spirit examines images of phantoms, psychical emanations, and religious apparitions.

In collaboration with A24 Films, Bret Curry presents a journey into the production of A Ghost Story. Curry's behind-the-scenes imagery captures the film's exploration of legacy, loss, and the essential human longing for meaning and connection. From filmmakers in their environment, to the quiet moments amongst the cast and crew, these singular moments prove surreal and enduring all the same. Features a foreword by director David Lowery and cover artwork by actor Casey Affleck.