Have you ever captured something uncanny on film? Maybe it was incidental, something shadowy or cloudy in the corner of an otherwise normal scene. Or maybe you set out with the explicit intention of gathering evidence of another realm. If the latter is true, then you’ve taken part in a tradition that’s about as old as photography itself.

The advent of the spiritualist movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with the promulgation of photography, and the movement often made use of photography to add credit to their claims of contacting the spirits of the deceased. One such spirit photographer was William Hope, who belonged to a well-known spiritualist group known as the Crewe Circle. In York, England, between 1930 and 1932, Hope claimed to have captured dozens of photographs of spirits. Although Hope’s work was investigated and eventually debunked, the images themselves are valuable primary sources that add to our understanding of the history of photography as it was shaped by and impacted the occult. The University of York provides access to these photographs in their York Spiritualist Centre Psychic Photograph Album, available on JSTOR. Click on any photograph below to explore additional images in the album.

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