The Spirit is Willing (An Ophelia Wylde Paranormal Mystery)

by Max McCoy

  The gavel came down so hard it made my ears ring.

  17

  Abraham Bogardus had a broad white beard that touched his chest, but his eyes were young and sharp. He had been appointed to explain to the jury—twelve men who smoked and chewed and sat sleepily with their thumbs hooked in the armholes of their vests—the technical aspects of photography, as a primer to the experiment that would soon commence.

  In a clear voice, honed from years of lecture, he gave his biography. He had learned the art and science of the daguerreotype in 1846, just seven years after Professor Louis Daguerre had given his invention to the world. Bogardus had opened a gallery in New Jersey and soon found such success that he relocated to Broadway in New York, and since that time has been regarded as one of the giants of photography, or at least that’s what he told the jury. American photography, he added, was superior in every way to the old European kind, because of the Yankee passion for experimentation. He currently resided in Philadelphia, where he had a celebrated studio and gallery.

  Decker asked if he ever had been asked to investigate claims of the supernatural.

  In 1869, Bogardus said, he had been a witness at the trial of spirit photographer William H. Mumler, whose most famous image was that of Mary Todd Lincoln, with the assassinated president hovering behind her chair, reaching out with ghostly hands to comfort his widow.

  “What did you conclude about this portrait?” Decker, the prosecutor, asked.

  “I concluded that it was the product of trickery,” Bogardus said.

  “What means did you use to reach this conclusion?”

  “Upon examination, it was apparent to me that the image was made through use of a common double exposure, either by accident or by design. Because of the care taken in the composition of the photo of Mrs. Lincoln, I would guess the latter.”

  “A double exposure,” Decker said. “Could you explain?”

  “Yes, either by re-exposing the wet plate, while it is still in the camera, with a different scene, or by using a plate that already has an existing image on it, but which has not yet been fixed. This latter has happened to me quite often in my career. Photographers often reuse plates, because a simple mistake in preparation or development can ruin an image; the plates must be prepared and processed in an orange tent, for example, to allow the photographer to see his work, because the plates are sensitive to blue light only. Sometimes, a plate is reused simply because the image is not pleasing. If the plate is not buffed and cleaned thoroughly before its reuse, then a ghostly image will remain.”

  “And this is known to many photographers?”

  “All, I would dare to say,” Bogardus said, his beard wagging. “It was known from very nearly the beginning of the science that effects could be achieved through photography that appeared to represent otherworldly things, but it is a trick of reducing several moments in time to a single image. The earliest instance I can recall is the treatise on stereoscopy by Sir David Brewster in 1856. As an afterthought, Sir David describes the ghostly forms that result when someone walks unintentionally in front of the camera during an exposure. While all other nonmoving objects in the frame are distinct, the moving person appears wraith-like. It is uncanny, but perfectly in the realm of the rational.”

  “Tell us how large these plates are,” Decker prompted.

  “A full daguerreotype plate is six and one half by eight and one half inches, and all plate sizes—whether copper, glass, or tin—are based on this original size, from half plates right on down to sixteenth plates, which are too small in my opinion to be of much value, but which have become ubiquitous.”

  “And Mumler used a full plate?”

  “It varied. Most were cartes-de-visites, about the size of a playing card.”

  “What about our defendant, Eureka Smith?”

  “That is the only point on which Mister Smith and I would agree,” Bogardus said. “He uses a full wet plate, a glass plate. A collodion. The full plate glass negative is a superior process and has the virtue of being able to produce an unlimited number of exact photographic prints on albumen paper.”

  “As to the Mumler photo,” Decker said, “you concluded it was fakery from inspection alone?”

  “Oh, no,” Bogardus said. “I produced a very fine spirit photo myself, to prove the ease with which it could be done. My subject was Phineas T. Barnum, and I made a double-exposure image that showed Abraham Lincoln hovering over his right shoulder.”

  “P. T. Barnum?” Decker asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Bogardus said. “He was keen to expose spirit photography as humbuggery and pressed the case against Mumler. Although Barnum is a master of humbug himself, he says he never exploited grieving family members for money, just natural human curiosity, and that he always gave full value.”

  “Thank you,” Decker said, then smiled at the jury. “Your witness, sir.”

  Smith stood and walked slowly toward Bogardus, but kept his eyes down.

  “Not everyone believed Mumler was a faker.”

  “You’ll have to speak up,” the judge said.

  “Not everyone believed that William Mumler was perpetrating a hoax, did they?”

  “No,” Bogardus said. “He fooled a lot of people.”

  “And one of those people was a journalist, Moses Dow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dow commissioned a sitting, and monitored the process, and reported the result as a spirit photograph of himself with a recently departed acquaintance, a young woman, standing behind him.”

  “There is no question there, sir,” the judge said.

  “Wasn’t that his testimony?”

  “Dow was a spiritualist and had no training in the science of photography.”

  “What was the result of the trial?”

  “I object,” Decker said, jumping to his feet.

  “You have opened the door by your extensive questioning of Professor Bogardus on the subject of the Mumler case,” the judge said. “I must allow it.”

  “What was the verdict?” Smith asked.

  “Mumler was acquitted,” Bogardus said.

  Smith walked back to his seat, and the judge excused the professor from the witness stand.

  “Now comes something a bit out of the ordinary,” the judge said, addressing the jury. “Miss Ophelia Wylde, who you heard from earlier as to her unique credentials as a witness in this case, has agreed to submit to an experiment to help us determine the truth. She will be placed in the jury room behind us with five photographs to examine, and asked to determine if any of them represent a true spirit image. She has seen none of the photographs before, and has had no contact with either the living subjects in the photos or the persons—including Mister Eureka Smith—who made them. After she is seated with the photographs, the room will be sealed, and no communication will be permitted until the time she has reached a decision, or has failed to do so, and will indicate this by rapping three times upon the door. The jury will then hear her conclusions.”

  18

  The bailiff escorted me into the jury room with the same stern face I imagined he reserved for murderers, then closed the door behind me. The sound of his key in the lock as the room was secured sent a chill down my back, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was on trial.

  I was hungry and tired and suffering from lack of sleep, but there was nothing to do but proceed. If I had declined to accept the challenge, the pack of reporters outside would have pilloried me.

  The room was long and narrow, with a walnut table down the center, and on the table were five photographs. There were no chairs. The room had windows along one side, but each had been sealed with black cloth and tape. The only light in the room came from a tri-burner gas lamp planted in the center of the table, fed by a narrow copper tube that came from the ceiling. The flames burned brightly in their globes, spilling three circles of light over the five photographs.

  Each photograph was printed from a full plate, on albumen paper, and in tone and quality
they seemed alike. Each purported to show a living sitter with a ghost hovering nearby; three of the sitters were men and two were women; and the only identification on the photos were the labels A through E.

  I walked down the length of the table, pausing at each photo.

  A was of a young man with flowing dark hair and a handlebar moustache clutching a wooden cross to his chest, which gave the impression that he was a preacher or had some other religious affiliation. He was angled to his right in the chair and looking earnestly down at the cross, giving the impression he was lost in thought or prayer. Behind him was an old man in white, staring straight into the camera, with a look that suggested reproach. The old man’s features were so similar to that of the sitter that one naturally began forming a story, that the young man had somehow lost the path and that the dead father watched in disapproval from beyond.

  I reached down and touched my forefinger to the photo.

  “Fake,” I said.

  Not only was it just too perfectly composed, with all of the elements needed to suggest a story to the viewer, but I felt nothing when I touched the paper.

  I moved on to the next.

  B also had a man as the sitter, an older gentleman with pork-chop whiskers and a pudgy face. He also was looking to his right. Behind him there was an indistinct pale figure that looked as if it might be a child—or an orangutan. A cartoonish arm was draped around the left shoulder of the man, holding an equally cartoonish flower beneath his nose. A dead daughter, perhaps? A beloved ape? Whatever the intent, the result was laughable.

  I placed my finger on the photo, and felt nothing.

  “Next,” I said.

  Photograph C was of a young woman, seated, but staring emotionless at the camera. She was dressed in widow’s weeds. Behind her was a pale (the ghosts in this collection were universally pale) figure, clearly wearing an officer’s uniform, that of a Union captain. He seemed to float crazily over the woman’s right shoulder. The story was clear enough, and I wanted to avoid thinking about it, so I moved on.

  Photograph D was of the third man. The sitter was perhaps forty years old, facing his right, as with the others. His most remarkable feature was his head of black hair, as straight and as coarse as a paintbrush, which he parted on the side. He had no facial hair. His left hand was holding a book to his chest in a casual way that did not suggest it was a Bible. His right hand held a cigar with an expensive-looking band. He was dressed in rich and contemporary clothes, and he gazed into the distance with a sly smile.

  Behind him appeared a sorrowful ghost.

  I leaned down to get a closer look.

  This figure was lighter than the other apparitions—being a shade of smoke gray instead of cloud white—but had detail the others lacked. For one, he was bound in chains. For another, his face was frozen in some kind of agony. The chains crossed his chest and went up to each of his upraised hands, which appeared bound to the wall behind him. So contorted were his features that it was impossible to determine his age, but there was the indication of a short beard. The other remarkable feature was that there seemed to be a pickaxe leaning against the wall next to him.

  What was the story?

  I couldn’t guess.

  The technique was so good, and the appearance of the sorrowful ghost so powerful, that I would have guessed that this was a product of the learned fakery of Professor Bogardus. But if that were the case, wouldn’t he have made something that invited the viewer to weave a story? It just didn’t make sense, pairing a well-dressed man of our time with something that looked like it belonged in a tale from the Brothers Grimm.

  I did not touch the photograph, not yet.

  The fifth photograph, E, was of a dour old woman in a dark cap and dress squarely facing the camera. Behind her was the obligatory pale figure, a man with a kindly expression that seemed to be reaching out a crudely drawn but benevolent hand to place on her shoulder. A widow and her dead husband, obviously. The figure looked a little like Abraham Lincoln, but it was difficult to tell.

  I touched the corner of E and felt nothing.

  Then I stepped back to regard C and D.

  I wished the windows had not been covered, because I would have liked to have consulted Horrible Hank. But there were no reflective surfaces in the room anywhere, no framed pictures under glass, and the globes of the gaslight were too brilliantly lit to be of any use. There wasn’t even a pitcher of water, which would have been considerate as well as helpful.

  “Hank,” I called softly. “Are you anywhere nearby?”

  No answer.

  “Never around when I need you,” I said.

  So it was down to the war bride or the good-looking young man and the sorrowful ghost.

  I reached out for the corner of C, feeling nothing.

  “So much for proof of life after war,” I said.

  Then I touched D.

  As soon as the pad of my forefinger met the paper, it was as if a bolt of lightning struck. The room exploded in a brilliant blue light, but there was no sound of thunder, only a vast silence that sucked me into it. My knees buckled and I could feel the floor rushing up to meet me, but I could do nothing to stop it. I felt myself hit with a thud and then everything went dark.

  I don’t know how long I was out. But when I came around, I had a name for the sorrowful ghost.

  Angus Wright.

  I went to the door and knocked three times.

  19

  After reminding me that I was still under oath, the judge asked if I had come to any conclusions.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are any of the photographs you examined fakes?”

  “Four of them,” I said.

  Decker, the prosecutor, exchanged an uneasy glance with Professor Bogardus, who was sitting in the crowd behind. The pack of reporters leaned forward, their pencils poised. Only Eureka Smith appeared not to be anxious to hear the outcome of my investigation; instead, he seemed a bit distracted, as if somebody were telling him a joke he’d already heard.

  “That would leave one that is, in your estimation, an authentic spirit photograph,” the judge said. “Please tell us which exhibit has passed your scrutiny?”

  “Photograph D,” I said.

  The judge tapped a sheet of paper before him.

  “According to the list I have here,” he said, “that is a photograph of Andrew Jackson Miles taken by Eureka Smith. It is, in fact, the only Smith example in the lot. Exhibit A was made by Professor Bogardus, and the others were made by Mumler or his associates.”

  Decker was shuffling papers.

  The reporters were scribbling furiously.

  “Does that tally with your list, Mister Decker?” the judge asked.

  “Yes, your honor,” the prosecutor said meekly. “I should point out, however, that Miss Wylde had a twenty percent chance of choosing the Smith photo just by sheer chance. I would suggest that another test be arranged—”

  “I think not,” said the judge. “These were the conditions you agreed to beforehand, and I’m going to make you live with them, as hard as they might be to swallow now.”

  “Yes, your honor. May I question the witness?”

  “Let’s allow Mister Smith his turn, shall we?”

  Eureka Smith nodded and stood up, smoothing his clothes. He thought for a full minute or more. He seemed about to ask a question, then thought better of it.

  “I have nothing to ask, your honor.”

  “Very well. Proceed, Mister Decker.”

  Decker shot up out of his chair and approached the witness box.

  “Please tell us exactly how you determined which photograph was Mister Smith’s.”

  “That’s not what I was asked to do,” I said. “Instead, I was asked to identify, if I could, any legitimate spirit photographs.”

  “Of course,” he said. “But the question remains: How did you do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, I don’t
know how to describe it,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I could do it in the first place, having never been asked to do anything like it before.”

  I explained how I started just by looking at them, and then touching them, and about how I fainted and heard voices.

  “You heard voices,” he said, dismissively.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you hear voices often?”

  “Yes, I hear yours now.”

  “You know what I meant, Miss Wylde.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “We have places for people who hear voices,” he said.

  “Churches?” I asked.

  “Madhouses,” he said.

  The judge rapped his gavel.

  “Enough of that, Mister Decker,” he said. “You are to ask questions, not to debate or belittle the witness.”

  “Tell us about the voices you heard in the jury room.”

  “It’s a little hard to describe,” I said. “It’s like being asleep, but not asleep. I first heard them back in Dodge City last year, when some cowboys who were angry with me tried to bury me alive in Boot Hill. I discovered I could talk to the dead, or at least hear them. It was the same there.”

  “You were buried alive?”

  “My partner dug me out. Saved my life.”

  “Is this your usual form of detection?” Decker asked. “To lose consciousness and confer with the voices?”

  “No, sir, it’s not. Frankly, it’s unusual. But I haven’t fainted before on a case. You see, I haven’t slept or eaten since leaving Dodge early Wednesday morning. I think that had something do with it.”

  Decker shook his head.

  “This is all a bit much for us to believe,” Decker said, playing to the jury. “The odds are not inconsiderable that you would have chosen the photograph by mere chance alone. For us to believe this display would require something more than chance—some concrete fact, something that would conclusively prove that the photograph in question was made by means unknown to man.”