The first ghost photographs were accidents. Early cameras required 30 seconds or more to take a photo. If someone wandered briefly into the shot, the resulting picture would contain their ghostly trace superimposed over substantial furniture, buildings or people who had held still for the full exposure.
When shrewd photographers realized that the inconvenience of long exposure time could become an asset, detailed directions for creating these illusions proliferated. Photographers could cut ghost figures from transparent material and place them onto glass negatives or inside camera bodies.
As early as 1856, experts gleefully noted that one could create images of ghosts "for the purpose of amusement." Commercial photographers began producing this spectacular phenomenon for fun and profit.
Photographs became collectible amusements partly thanks to the midcentury invention of the stereoscope - a device that created three-dimensional optical illusions. Stereoscope cards contain two pictures of the same scene, photographed from slightly different angles.
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