A closer look
William Mumler accidentally discovered 'spirit photography' in 1861 when he took a self-portrait and noticed a faint, ghostly apparition of a woman in the background due to a reused glass plate. Instead of acknowledging his own sloppy darkroom technique, he immediately monetized the mistake, charging grieving families exorbitant fees to take portraits with their deceased loved ones. He gained national fame after capturing a supposedly supernatural image of Mary Todd Lincoln being gently embraced by the translucent ghost of her assassinated husband, Abraham Lincoln. His lucrative scam eventually fell apart when critics noticed that some of the 'spirits' in his photos were actually living people from Boston who had simply wandered into his studio a few weeks prior. He was put on trial for fraud, and even though P.T. Barnum himself testified against him as a fellow expert in deception, he was somehow acquitted. Apparently, the 19th-century legal system was perfectly fine with you exploiting the grief of widows as long as you used a fancy enough camera!
