The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud and Photography

The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost - Peter Manseau [epub]

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—nobody ever solved 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.

Peter Manseau is the author of the nonfiction books Vows, Rag and Bone, and One Nation, Under Gods; and the novel Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is the first curator of religion at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (October 10, 2017)