In Photos: Ghostly fakery, long before Photoshop
Just in time for Halloween comes a collection of spooky photos from beyond the grave. Well, not exactly. They're blatant fakes. But folks didn't know that when they first came out in the 19th century. And, even now, the collection of creepy pics from photographer/huckster William Hope is well worth a look.
Back in the early days of photography, Hope discovered how to double-expose photos to make it seem like spirits were hovering next to people. He would superimpose a face on top of the original photo, and the result was quite startling. Gizmodo explains that even very smart people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell for the trick.
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Being an entrepreneur as well as a morally ambiguous chap, he and his followers, the "Crewe Circle," used this knowledge to create ghostly images. They then sold them to people who had lost their loved ones. ("See, there's old Aunt Gertrude right there! She looks so happy!")
You can check out a slideshow of some of his work below. The results (pre-Photoshop, of course) are remarkably creepy. We can only imagine how many people fell for the scheme.
Click image to see the old 'ghosts' slideshow
Today, not much has changed. People are still eager to see photos of spirits. Web searches on "ghost pictures" are always popular, as are related lookups on "real ghosts" and "ghosts on camera." And with Halloween just around the corner, we expect those searches to really surge over the next several days.
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Clearly, Mr. Hope started something that stood the test of time, if not the test of truth and accuracy.
-- Mike Krumboltz is a Yahoo! writer.
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