Adele Griffin: Picture the Dead

In the early 1860s, a Boston photographer named William Mumler began to produce visual evidence of ghostly presences. A typical “spirit photograph” consisted of a sharply detailed portrait of a living person with a spectral figure “floating” in the background. Occasionally, one could make out a transparent white arm or a piece of gauzy clothing draped over the shoulder of the sitter. Some spirits looked like photographs; others seemed to be oil paintings. To modern eyes, these photographs appear to be nothing more than double exposures. But nineteenth century viewers were so frightened and convinced of the supernatural images that truth-seekers forced Mumler to trial, where he had to explain in a court of law the science behind his process.

Our illustrated “photographs” are based on old daguerreotypes and albumen prints, most of them of anonymous sitters. We found them in the Online Prints and Photographs Reading Room of the Library of Congress, copied them, altered them, and made them our own. The background patterns are based on actual Victorian designs. Other pieces of Jennie’s scrapbook had their origins in the New York Public Library’s online Digital Gallery and in the online image archives of the Brookline, Massachusetts Historical Society. We are deeply indebted to an excellent video that clearly demonstrates the nineteenth century photographic processes, part of the online video gallery of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The illustrations were done with Adobe Illustrator CS3 and a little old-fashioned pen and ink.

We would like to thank our agent, Charlotte Sheedy for her preternatural foresight in throwing us together, and her stalwart colleague, Meredith Kaffel, for all her additional assistance along the way. Thank you to our editor, Kelly Barrales-Saylor, for loving this book as much as we do, and to our families for putting up with our abiding obsession with the ghostly past.

ADELE GRIFFIN has written a number of novels for middle grade and young adult readers, including the Witch Twins and Vampire Island series, as well as the novels Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be , both National Book Award Finalists. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn, New York.

LISA BROWN is the illustrator and/or author of nine books, including How to Be , The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming , and Baby, Mix Me a Drink . She draws the Three Panel Book Review cartoon for the book section of the San Francisco Chronicle . She lives in San Francisco with her son and her husband, who is rumored to be Lemony Snicket.