Smile for the Dead: An Examination of Spirit Photography | movie | 2025 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

1869: William H Mumler stood trial for fraud in New York for claiming to photograph spirits of customers' deceased loved | dG1fRkJVVjNOZ1U3cGs

Transcript

00:00In 1862, an amateur photographer, William H. Mumler, took a self-portrait in the studios

00:07of Helen F. Stewart.

00:09But what made this self-portrait so remarkable for the time is that it showed something else

00:14besides the photographer himself.

00:18It showed a spirit.

00:20An extra.

00:23When news spread that Mumler could take photographs of ghosts, people would line up outside of

00:29Stewart's studio.

00:33He was eventually arrested for trickery.

00:36His trial dominated the headlines.

00:39They couldn't prove it, just how Mumler was making these images.

00:44He would have the leading photographers of the day, they would watch him do every single

00:47step and they couldn't figure it out.

00:50Making a ghost image is very easy, but it's not what Mumler did.

00:53In a room full of skeptics, how could he have made these images with people watching?

00:59They're just too good to be true.

01:01I want to find experts in their fields, from photography to paranormal research.

01:05What do they have to say about these images?

01:07Was it even Mumler who was the genius behind them?

01:11The role that his wife played, she seems to have been the keystone of this whole operation.

01:17There are reports of her having had mesmeric abilities.

01:20They were her studios that he was working at.

01:23And then she just disappears.

01:27Are we not looking at things the right way?

01:33I've seen some really weird stuff.

01:37What if these images were photographs of people's deceased relatives?

01:41We caught five different anomalies on his camera.

01:45What if some of these images were actual spirit photographs?

01:48And our other cameras never caught those.

01:50Was he able to capture a real ghost?