Ghostly Cut-Outs
Prince’s Scientific American article wasn’t just an analytical breakdown of how spirit photographers pulled off their swindle, it was a mockery of the techniques used to produce the images. He made fun of how spirits dressed for each photographer, with some draping themselves in long, flowing mantles, others in floral wreaths and crowns.
But Price’s humor comes out in his observation that some of the spirits look like reprints from magazines, “Did spirits, not Keeler, cut out figures from Hoffman’s ‘Christ in the Temple,” trim their bears a bit, and shift them into a different arrangement Did his spirits copy an old picture from the Cosmopolitan Magazine?” Prince astutely observed that the psychic laws were different from photographer to photographer.
