Eyes closed and hands clasped, a group of women sit together in a circle, apparently deep in trance as they try to communicate with the dead.

The face of a bearded man is shown in a white substance purported to be ectoplasm, similar in appearance to medical gauze, in the mouth of a woman.

These moments and others are captured in black and white photos that document Winnipeg physician Thomas (Glen) Hamilton’s war-time attempts to contact the spirit world.

Whether they convey stunning proof of paranormal activity or clever camera trickery is up to you to decide. For the first time, the complete archive of nearly 750 photos is online.

“(Hamilton) thoroughly believed that he was able to contact individuals in the afterlife,” said Brett Lougheed of the University of Manitoba’s archives and special collection department.

“His son’s death (in 1918) is sort of what drove him. He was having a lot of difficulty grieving and his wife encouraged him to look into life after death.”

Using multiple cameras that automatically snapped images, Hamilton claimed his images captured, among other things, mediums during psychic events and a table levitating.

“At the time people were believers. If you read press clippings about Hamilton at the time there was never any doubt to the legitimacy of his experiments,” Lougheed said. “There are certain individuals who still believe the practice. Whether you believe it or not it’s still an interesting record of a social phenomenon that occurred at the time.”

Victoria, B.C., resident Walter Meyer zu Erpon drew his own conclusion about the integrity of the photos after interviewing dozens of people connected to Hamilton and his subjects.

“I found no evidence of trickery or fake photography, and certainly no evidence of it being collusion,” said Meyer zu Erpon, president of the Survival Research Institute of Canada.

Hamilton’s experiments began at the tail end of his five-year stint as a Liberal MLA for Elmwood.

On the web: http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/hamilton.shtml

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on winnipegsun.com