Saturday 14 November 2009

William Hope spirit photographer

"At the very beginning of the 20th century, and after capturing the supposed image of a ghost while he was photographing a friend, carpenter William Hope became interested in spirit photography and founded the Crewe Circle. When archbishop Thomas Colley joined the group, the spirit photographers started to publicise their work.

As the grieving relatives of those lost to the Great War sought ways of contacting their loved ones, the Crew Circle became quite succesful and by 1922, Hope moved to London and started a professional medium business.

The Society for Psychical Research sent Harry Price to investigate the work of the Crew Circle, and he collected evidence that William Hope produced his spirit photographs with a little help from some glass plates and the spooky images on it. Price exposed Hope as a fraudster, but many of his supporters defended him fiercely. Among the most famous was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the spiritual father of Sherlock Holmes and an ardent spiritualist."


William Hope

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