In the last couple of weeks colleagues have sent me two spirit photographs of famous, and perhaps unexpected people. The first is the Tasmanian landscape photographer John Watt Beattie, who must have visited the London spirit photographer Richard Boursnell around 1900. The second is the poet W B Yeats, who visited William Hope, again in London, around 1923. For more information on these spirit photographers see my book Faces of the Living Dead. I’d be interested in more information on either of these sittings, particularly Beattie’s.

John Watt Beattie in what I identify as a Richard Boursnell spirit photograph. As far as I know Boursnell worked in the UK around 1900

W B Yeats in what I identify to be a William Hope photograph. Hope worked at the British College of Psychic Science in the 1920s, Yeats visited there in 1923.