What if you took a photograph and, when it was developed, someone appeared behind you who had been dead for years?

In the 1860s, that question became more than a ghost story.

As Spiritualism swept through the Victorian era, photographer William H. Mumler claimed his camera could capture something the human eye couldn't see: the dead.

Soon, grieving families were lining up at his studio, hoping for one last photograph with someone they had lost. His eerie images showed translucent figures standing behind the living, including one of the most famous spirit photographs ever taken, an image of Mary Todd Lincoln with what appeared to be the ghost of Abraham Lincoln standing behind her.

But were Mumler's photographs evidence of the afterlife, or carefully constructed illusions?

In this episode of The Haunted Line, we explore the strange history of Victorian spirit photography, Mumler's sensational fraud trial, the photographic techniques that could create a convincing ghost, and why unexplained figures continue to appear in photographs more than 160 years later.

Because cameras have changed.

Our fascination with photographing the dead hasn't.

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🎙️ The Haunted Line
Where History, Hauntings, and Folklore Meet.