pyat

Pyat’s Rule of Paranormal Recording
As recording technology (and viewer sophistication) advances, the records made of alleged spirit events become less obvious, and more open to interpretation. Perhaps not coincidentally, this makes it much harder to disprove the veracity of spirit records.

For example, 75 years ago a sound recording of a séance might capture a clear and coherent ghostly voice. “Martha, look under the mattress for my will,” or something similar. Now, we get fuzzy “EVP” recordings containing snatches of garbled sound that have to be separated from static. They are rarely distinct words, and cannot often be put into meaningful sentences. More than one spirit voice hunter has noted with wonderment that his or her $15 dollar tape dictacorder captures spirit voices (and a lot of background hiss) in rooms where expensive sound devices record only silence…

In the early days of photography, people put their faith in photos that actually depicted the common idea of a ghost. The very first such photos were declared fakes intended to amuse people. As noted by the photography pioneer Sir David Brewster in 1856:

"For the purpose of amusement, the photographer may carry us even into the realms of the supernatural. His art enables him to give a spiritual appearance to one or more of his figures, and to exhibit them as "thin air" amid the solid realities of the stereoscopic picture."

Brewster went on to provide some suitably chilling examples, and by the end of the 1850s fake ghost photos were being sold (as novelties!) in books and as postcards. Of course, people being people, it wasn’t long before the technique was picked up by con men who charged exorbitant prices for spirit photos. Get your portrait done, and see the image of your dead son… or, more likely, some complete stranger or shrouded figure.

Ghostly figure, 1870

This one was taken around 1870. It shows a very clear human figure. It looks fake to modern eyes, but, heck, if you had to imagine a ghost, a transparent person hovering around in the background seems to fit the bill. This was incredibly impressive to people who were just getting used to the magic of photography.

Of course, even in the 19th century it was pretty easy to discredit trickery of this kind. Any reasonably skilled photographer could duplicate that sort of image. By the 1900s, spirit photographers were becoming more skilled in their art. Instead of placing single images, they would use confusing montages of faces, or blur the image, making it look more “otherworldly” and allowing them to distance themselves from the cut-out double exposure techniques of the past.

Unseen ghost horde, 1902

The above photo was taken in 1902. It suggests a teeming mass of indistinct spirits, lurking just out of sight. Once again, to modern eyes, it looks terribly fake. It looked fake to a lot of people in 1902, too. More obfuscation is required for a properly mysterious spirit photo! By 1920, spirit photos were most often depicting the “energy” of spirits, producing human-shaped blobs, sometimes surrounding blurry portraits of the departed.

Brown Lady, 1936

This famous photo of the “Brown Lady” is from 1936. A possibly human figure can be clearly seen, but it’s not obviously a cut-out or double-negative. It would be very hard to precisely duplicate the image with the technology of the day, at least for an amateur.

Greenwich Staircase Ghost, 1966

Though ghost photos became more and more inhuman as time went on, they still generally depicted a clear human figure. The above was taken in 1966 in Greenwich, and it’s an indisputably creepy figure, and it is clearly a human, though the right arm is somewhat elongated.

Dog and Ectoplasm, late 70s, early 80s?

Something happened in the next decade. Paranormal experts and ghost hunters suddenly stopped presenting the world with images of ghostly humans, possibly because they could too easily be proven to be false. There are exceptions, but by and large the era of “blobs and blurs” had begun. Ghosts can be found in almost any photograph, if you look hard enough. Relatively few spirit photographers dare present us with an image of an actual human figure.

We’re left with shadows, blurs, blobs, and imagination.