There is a very strong desire among some segments of the population to make contact with dead people. This desire has been exploited by charlatans, people who claim that (for a fee, of course) they can channel your loved ones. The methods used have varied over time. In the US, the rise in interest in communicating with the dead coincided with the Civil War that saw massive numbers of dead people that left their families devastated and seeking some form of comfort.
In the mid-19th century, in the early days of photography, the husband and wife team of William and Hannah Mumler created a sensation by taking photographs of people that showed the ghosts of their dead loved ones hovering around them, such as this one of the ghost of Abraham Lincoln standing behind his wife Mary Todd Lincoln.
Although prosecuted for fraud in New York City, the Mumlers were acquitted because no one, even other professional photographers, could show how their images could be manipulated to get the effect, especially since observers were allowed to be present during the photography sessions.
It was during this time that William Mumler, an amateur photographer in Boston, claimed he could photograph ghosts. He and his wife Hannah, herself a professional photographer and spiritualist medium, created a stir in Boston by selling these “spirit portraits,” and attracted the attention of skeptics and fellow spiritualists alike. Professional photographers in Boston investigated Mumler’s method again and again but couldn’t figure out how he did his trick.
…After the trial, the Mumlers’ spirit photography business boomed. They photographed prominent Americans, including Mary Todd Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison, and even took mail-in orders from people who couldn’t travel to their studio.
The Mumlers clearly were very skilled at producing such photographs without anyone catching on to how they did it. This video discusses the case and how the fakery may have been done, a method that the photographers of that time did not contemplate..
Not a spirit story but: My father, born in 1908, grew up when men wore hats. All of the photos I have seen of his brothers, when they were in suits, shows them in hats. None of the photos of my father did. After he died my mother (in her 90s) gave me some old things and one was a photo of them, dressed for some function, and he was wearing a dress hat. I asked about it. She said she hated him in it and that was taken before she convinced him to stop wearing it. She did say she liked the picture otherwise.
I volunteered that I could scan it and try to photoshop the hat out of the picture. She said she’d love it if I could. I asked how he wore his hair then. She said “You’ll see that when you get his hat off.”
Point being: photo manipulation has always been mysterious to a good percentage of the population, whether done by clever folks like the con artists in your piece or by folks like me with the help of software.
I am curious if anyone knows of a good theory of enghostment that would be consistent with physics as we currently understand it. What I’m getting at is -- are there any ways we might see a ghost without it having material “there”? Does seeing require something to be “there”? I know hallucinations are a different thing, so let’s posit that the ghost has to be visible to two people.
It seems obvious to me that, for something to show up on a wet plate photograph, there has to be an object in front of the camera that is interacting with UV light. Is that something that only material objects can do, or is there some kind of energy field that it could be? Hey, ghosts are plasma? Then the next question is how the “ghost” can be coupled in a control relationship with a dead person. How does a “soul” manipulate the “ghost” such that we can perceive it? Then there is the question of what “souls” are made of. Do ghosts have mass? Do you have to have mass to exist within our frame of reference? Would a massless ghost fly off the surface of the planet as it moves through space?
I wound up watching some “ghost hunter” videos on youtube and was puzzled by all this: they had infrared cameras, electromagnetic analyzers (e-meters) etc. They seemed to have a broad idea of how enghostment might work but it seemed to me that if they thought it was a hologram (for example) they would not waste their time looking in the infrared spectrum.
For a ghost to make sound does it need mass?
Marcus,
When we ‘see’ something, what that means is that light from some source bounced off that object and then entered our eye. ‘Bouncing’ means that the light interacted with the material particles that make up the object. That would rule out seeing anything that was not material.
The next question is whether the object itself could emit light (or sound as in #3). To emit light and sound, the object would have to emit energy and that would require the object to have some energy to begin with and hence some mass.
Hence the laws of physics rule out seeing or hearing immaterial objects.
Now if you were to abandon the laws of physics …
“the laws of physics rule out seeing or hearing immaterial objects.”
Ball lightning. Mirages. Peppers ghost. There’s loads of ways you can see something that isn’t conventionally “there”.
I have a good friend that is a ghosthunter. They are all idiots. They think that because they are using devices that have sciencey names and are used in science that they are doing science. They can not answer the most basic questions about what they are detecting. Any anomaly is a ghost to them. The most ridiculous thing they use to “interact’ with ghosts is the ghost box. Abject stupidity.
I piss him off all the time because I ask why he is sure it is ghosts and not leprechauns. His only answer “everyone knows leprechauns aren’t real”.
I hope not, otherwise I don’t know how any of the photons coming out of my screen are interacting with my eyeballs.
@sonofrjblake:
Photons have mass, though. The fact that they can ionize atoms demonstrates that. They have energy and momentum, and thus they have mass.
Photons just don’t have rest mass.
It’s a bit of a matter of semantics, true.
#5 son
You named three physical effects.
sonofrojblake @#5,
The question was whether immaterial objects can emit light or sound and the answer is no.
Ball lighting is produced by electrical charges in the atmosphere. Mirages are produced by light scattering off particles in the atmosphere. ‘Peppers ghosts’ and other things such as holograms are produced also by material objects.
Photons do not emit light or sound. Photons are emitted by material objects.
Marcus @2:
According to Lenny Susskind, nothing is “there”, as we usually think of “there”.
The best explanation for ghosts is that they’re things we made up.
That said, I’m still a fan of Hamlet’s
even though a ghost was involved.
Anyway, some nice sounds having to do with ghosts.
jenorafeuer @8: Einstein didn’t care for that use of the term ‘mass’, and neither do most physicists these days; ‘mass’ means ‘rest mass’. You’re referring to what is known as ‘relativistic mass’, which is nothing more than the energy (the zero component of 4-momentum) divided by c². Why have two words for essentially the same thing, especially when one of them could cause confusion?
They moved too quickly. I wish they had spent a bit more time showing and analyzing one or a few of the photographs. For example:
Is the ghost image a positive or negative? (Seems to be positive. E.g. Lincoln’s beard is darker than his face).
Apparently the “ghost” is brighter than the background.
The “ghost” can overlay real objects (Lincoln’s hands on wife’s shoulders) but does not always (Lincoln’s body) which gives an appearance of three-dimensionality.
Then I would want to know: are these properties consistent on all their spirit photographs? This would make progress towards figuring out which methods might have been used, and if indeed multiple methods were used.
As for physics, UV light is probably ruled out. It would be blocked by the camera lens unless special glass was used. And if it was visible light, then you would have to ask how the camera could see it but people present could not.
@11: https://youtu.be/YNYYRl86R4g
The “ghost” can overlay real objects (Lincoln’s hands on wife’s shoulders) but does not always (Lincoln’s body) which gives an appearance of three-dimensionality.
One of the nice things about vintage photography processes is that they are really slow. The print in question is probably a calotype/printing out paper which is a positive process that was contact printed. A “ghost”‘could be done by selective masking assembled in the contact frame. (That is basically the technique by which the special effects in Blade Runner were done…) multiple exposures are also easier -- you’re dealing with exposure times on the order of a minute, and one of the nice things about printing out paper is it forms a ghost image when the exposure has registered. Then you develop it to completion. You can further manipulate the image by painting the developer on selected areas to get the desired density.
I have done those processes, and Photoshop, and Photoshop is harder. 😉 [I am a Photoshop “power user” since 1.0]
Rob Grigjanis@#11:
According to Lenny Susskind, nothing is “there”, as we usually think of “there”.
Am I a ghost?
Marcus Ranum@2
And with that seemingly simple question, you’ve landed yourself slap-bang in quantum electrodynamics, if I understand correctly. And from my (extremely limited) understanding of the subject matter, I’d hazard a guess that the answer is “no”.
Looking at neuroscience (https://nautil.us/whats-so-hard-about-understanding-consciousness-13877/) and e.g. behavioral changes in people with brain injuries or neurodegenerative diseases, I’d say the case is pretty solid that whatever “we” are is tied to the function of our physical bodies.
Where I was heading with my question was trying to see if it was possible that a “supernatural” phenomenon could actually be “supernatural” while it is doing what appear to be perfectly natural manifestations.
There is also a question I have which is whether it’s possible for us to know anything about something supernatural because all of our means by which we encounter “ghosts” are sense experience, i.e: natural
Marcus @16: Yup. And I’m a ghost that needs a hernia operation, a knee replacement, and a shitload more vodka to make afterlife more afterliveable.
Marcus @18: “supernatural” is a nonsense term. If it interacts with nature, it’s not supernatural. If it doesn’t interact with nature, we can’t know about it. Basically, it defines itself out of existence, as we define ‘existence’.
Rob:
Excluded middle. See, when you use ‘interact’, it implies two-way action effection, but it need not be that way.
For example, it could be that the supernatural is that which acts on nature, though nature does not act on it. I mean, I can watch a movie and it will affect me, but me watching the movie won’t affect it.
And were you to claim ‘but every experiment and all theory shows that interactions are two-way’ — i.e. that what influences is perforce influenced — I’d say “yes, in nature that is the case”.
—
On topic, I think it bracing to realise that such simple tricks as double exposure and cut-outs could fool rather clever people back in the day; as I see it, the reason was the belief that the camera can’t lie.
John @21:
There is no excluded middle. If A acts on B, that is an interaction, whether or not B can act on A
No, Rob. That is an action. An interaction is mutual action.
(Hey, you might want to correct Wikipedia: “The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect.”)
John @23: Far be it from me to correct Wikipedia, especially when the first words are “This article needs additional citations for verification”.
I’d say I expect better from you, but I don’t.
Can’t do better than to be correct, both philosophically and linguistically.
So your expectation is, um, not realistic.
(But fine, you don’t think there’s any difference between an action and an interaction. Words to be used interchangeably — as opposed to changeably 😉 )
Rob Grigjanis@#20:
“supernatural” is a nonsense term.
Thank you, that’s what I was trying to get to.
Ghosts appear to be natural phenomena and, as such, we can expect “ghost chasers” to work within a model of enghostment that does not require a new physics.
Next in the hopper is souls 😉 since believers in souls seem to think they have them, I want to know upon what sensory input their theory of ensoulment rests.
Marcus:
You’re wrong too. It makes perfect sense — it may not actually reflect reality, but it has a perfectly sensible meaning. Nonsense is that which does not make sense, not that which may not be true.
(Consider also the fallacy of composition — by definition the supernatural is outside the natural, so to expect its rules to necessarily apply outside its domain is flawed reasoning)
Marcus @26:
That doesn’t actually follow. There are, almost certainly, phenomena which will require new physics. Ghosts, souls and deities are a sideshow. Science doesn’t exclude them, because that’s not the role of science. If someone says “this is what I mean by ghost, soul or deity”, with actual details, science can address that. Otherwise, it’s just trying to answer unjustified fantasy with reason. That’s a mug’s game.
#16 Marcus, #19 Rob
How can I be sure you aren’t all figments of Mano’s keyboard??
#23 John
Huh, that’s weird. John, don’t you normally scoff at people citing wikipedia?
Nope. That’s for other people to do.
Doesn’t matter, of course. Any other source will show the same thing.
No, I don’t think this is correct. Sight is a sensation registered in the visual cortex. Whilst that is normally triggered by a cascade of elctrochemical reactions in the ocular nerves, initiated by photons which have bounced off some object and entered the eye striking photosensitive cells in the retina, it’s not necessarily always so. There are other processes which can trigger the sensation of sight without the invovlement of any photons or external objects. For example, people see stuff that isn’t there with their eyes closed every night…
Fun with definitions, Morales style.
Gravity: the force that attracts a body toward the center of the earth, or toward any other physical body having mass. (google)
Gravity (from Latin gravitas ‘weight'[1]), or gravitation, is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy—including planets, stars, galaxies, and even light[2]—are attracted to (or gravitate toward) one another. (Wikipedia)
So when I say “gravity”, it implies attraction. But I can imagine a body having negative gravitational mass, which is repelled by bodies having positive gravitational mass. But this repulsion cannot be gravity, because the definitions say gravity is attractive.
Yes John, when you make things up, you can defy conventional definitions.
Holms @29: It’s keyboards all the way down.
How would they explain what clothing a ghost appears in? The clothing they died in? The clothing they were buried in? Their favorite clothing before they died? If I believed in ghosts I would not expect them to be wearing clothes at all as that would not be part of their ethereal existence.
Dunc @ 31.
While this is technically correct ….
Can I assume that you mean dreams?
From my own experience, dreams appear to be formed as a combination of memory and imagination. Because I have a large reservoir of remembered visual stimulation, my dreams are highly visual, but include the other sensory memories of smell, touch, and sound. But the key point is that they are all built from my sensory experience.
So, while I am seeing “stuff” without light stimulus, my dream visions are entirely dependent on my memory of that light stimulus.
Does a person who was born blind dream of being on the beach (maybe), watching the waves gently breaking on the shore then gazing up at the Southern Cross, and seeing the Milky Way splashed across the sky? Do they then see those three iridescent dragons descend silently through the darkness only to dive at them like hungry seagulls? (I was in my mushroom period!)
Or does a person who was born blind dream more of their other senses? And what constitutes the “visons” created spontaneously by their brains?
tuatara, @35: Sure, your dreams are based on your memories, of course. But my point was simply that the sensation of sight in dreams, as you experience it at that moment, is not directly triggered by light entering the eye. It’s a trivial example. I could have gone various other examples, such as the visual hallucinations sometimes experienced under the influence of LSD, which seem to arise directly from noise in the visual system itself. My point is simply that thinking of sight purely as an optical phenomenon involving photons and objects and so on completely misses out a very important part of the process that happens behind your eyes.
In the original context, Marcus was asking “are there any ways we might see a ghost without it having material ‘there’?”, to which Mano replied with a purely optical description in which the obsever is assumed to be equivalent to a simple optical detector. But my point is that people can and do see things that aren’t there, because of stuff happening inside their skulls.
Mano@4, “When we ‘see’ something, what that means is that light from some source bounced off that object and then entered our eye. ‘Bouncing’ means that the light interacted with the material particles that make up the object.”
Most perhaps, but not exclusively. There is also direct transmission from a source (generator), e.g., the Sun or your VDU, into the eye, no “bouncing” per se. Yes, you “see” what is on paper or your desk because light from the lamp or whatever “bounces” off it, but if you were to look at that lamp, you’d see its light even in vacuum (nothing to “bounce” off).
This distinction between “bounced” and “direct” lighting is why, e.g., RGB images (designed for direct lighting) don’t look too good when printed on paper (bounced lighting), or conversely, why images designed to be looked-at with bounced light (e.g., printed), don’t look too good when viewed on your VDU (direct lighting).
Dunc @36
Yes, I was agreeing with you about vision occurring within the visual cortex, most specifically that dreams and visions are independent of the optical machinery. This is not disputed.
My point is that dreams and visions are only independent of the optical machinery to a point. People experiencing dreams, vision or hallucinations are not seeing “things that aren’t there”. Those things that they see are indeed “there” in the sense that they are, as you say, [in]there, inside their skull. They are no less real to the mind experiencing them than normal sight.
However, when Marcus asks, “are there any ways we might see a ghost without it having material ‘there’?” the answer is not to my mind an hallucination or vision within the visual cortex, because that would be seeing an imagined or dreamed ghost from [in]there – so only seen by that one person -- not a real* ghost from [out]there – which could be seen by more than one person.
*I do not believe there is such a thing as a real ghost.
tuatara, @36 -- I don’t think we’re in disagreement then. There was no stipulation in the original question that the ghost had to be visible to more than one person, although if I wave my hands enough I can perhaps imagine some mechanism by which a “real” ghost* could induce simultaneous “hallucinations” in multiple people… After all, if we’re imagining a world that is sufficiently different from what those of us of a materialist bent believe to be the world as we currently understand it to allow ghosts to exist in the first place, then who knows what they might be capable of? Of course, if we were to propose that, then such ghosts would be visible to people, but not cameras, which is the opposite of what the believers in spirit photography seem to believe…
I suppose a better question on this topic might have been “is there any mechanism by which a ghost could be photographed without it being visible to the people present at the time?”, to which the answer would be “yes, but only if they are somehow only visible in the range of wavelengths which register on photographic emulsions or CCD sensors, but are not visible to the human eye”, which seems (a) pretty unlikely, (b) easily tested, and (c) unlikely to be satisfying to believers either, who mostly seem to think that photography is basically magic.
*Me neither.