Spirit photography first interested him when he was working at a bleach and dye-works near Pendleton. Being an amateur photographer, he and a comrade agreed to photograph each other one Saturday afternoon. Mr. Hope exposed a plate on his friend and developed it, when they saw a woman standing beside him. The brick wall showed through the figure, there being no background. The sitter, a Roman Catholic, was frightened, and asked how the woman had got on the plate, and did Mr. Hope know her. When Mr. Hope replied that he did not know the lady nor how she got there, the man said it was his sister who had been dead for many years.
Neither knew anything of spiritualism, so they took it to the works on Monday and showed it to their foreman, who happened also to be an amateur photographer, and was “lost in wonder” over it. But there was a fellow worker, a spiritualist, who said it was a spirit photo. The foreman arranged that the experiment should be repeated with the same camera the following Saturday, when not only the identical woman appeared again but with her, her little dead baby.
“I thought this very strange,” said Mr. Hope; “it made me more interested in spirit photography, and I have been dabbling at it ever since. I felt sorry for my mate, he was so scared. When he saw the second result, I thought he would have pegged out” (died of fright).
The Circle used to destroy all negatives. The members did not want anyone to know about their spirit photography, as many people did not want to do business with them, saying it was all the devil’s work. Till the advent of Archdeacon Colley on the scene not a single negative was kept. After a print was taken the negative was destroyed.
Mr. and Mrs. Buxton met Mr. Hope some seventeen years ago at the Spiritualist Hall at Crewe, where Mr. Buxton was organist. After the service Mr. Hope asked Mr. Buxton if he could find one or two friends to form a circle to sit for spirit photography. This was done, and it was arranged to use the next Wednesday evening from eight to nine.
One of the circle of six was a non-spiritualist, but was converted when a picture of his father and mother was obtained. A strange thing is that when all were anxiously desiring a picture, a message appeared on the first plate exposed. This message promised a picture next time, and stated that it would be for the master of the house. The promise was kept several sittings later, when the picture of Mr. Buxton’s mother and of Mrs. Buxton’s sister came on the plate. Mr. Buxton was of the opinion that this was given to do away with the idea of thought photography. They were all thinking of a picture and never dreamed that such a thing as a written message would be given. They have been very persevering, having sat regularly ever since, each Wednesday from eight to nine, securing a picture on an average of one a month at the outset.
There have been many storms before which have broken over the Crewe Circle, but the cause of them has usually been the limited knowledge of the strange possibilities of psychic photography on the part of the sitters and of the public. One of the most notorious of these so-called “exposures” (which really were exposures of the critics’ ignorance) was in 1908, and arose out of Archdeacon Colley’s first sitting. He had heard that the Crewe Circle were simple-looking folk, and this attracted him, so he broke his journey at Crewe and called upon Mr. and Mrs. Hope, who had just lost their eldest daughter. The Archdeacon apologised for having come at such a time, but Mr. Hope sent him on to Mr. and Mrs. Buxton, where he was shown the photos and asked to see the negatives. He was shocked when he heard that they had all been destroyed, and from that time kept all negatives he was able to get hold of. The Archdeacon brought his own camera, loaded at Stockton with his own diamond-marked plates. He kept the plates in his own possession and focussed the camera, which he put up outside the house, although it was raining. Mr. Hope merely pressed the bulb and Archdeacon Colley developed the plates with his own developer. When he held the picture to the light he exclaimed: “My father and my sainted mother!”
Mr. Hope was the first to notice the likeness between “Mrs. Colley” and a picture he had copied about two years ago, and cycled with it to Mr. Spencer, of Nantwich. Mrs. Spencer declared it to be her grandmother, and cried out, “Oh, if this had only come with us how pleased we should have been!”
Mr. Hope then wrote to Archdeacon Colley telling him it could not be his mother, as it had been recognised at Nantwich. The Archdeacon said it was madness to think a man did not know his own mother, and advertised in the Leamington paper, asking all who remembered his mother to meet him at the Rectory, when eighteen persons selected the photograph from several others and testified in writing that the picture was a portrait of the late Mrs. Colley, who had never been photographed.