Hans Holzer and Psychic Photographers
Famed ghost hunter Hans Holzer has worked with who he deems “psychic photographers” and has concluded that these people indeed possess a special form of mediumship. Holzer believes that psychic photography is a gift that only some possess. This may account for why some people seem to have the ability to capture fantastic ghost pictures, while others cannot. Hans has used psychic photography on investigations and claims that if a ghost was present they would be able to photograph it. Hans Holzer carefully observed psychic photographers at work, noting that the film and camera was not tampered with. On one such investigation, a white figure that was unseen appeared behind Hans’ ex-wife.

Origins of Psychic and Thought Photographs
The roots of thought and psychic photography actually goes back to the 1850s and the Spiritualist Movement. The Spiritualists believed that the human spirit existed beyond the body and that disembodied spirits can communicate with the living. As the Spiritualist movement grew larger into the twentieth century, spirit photography became a hotly debated topic by major intellectual figures of the day, such as Sherlock Holmes author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. During the movement, photographic experiments progressed with thoughts, feelings, and dreams being captured directly on the photographic plate, or onto film. Some photographed their own thoughts by placing their fingers or foreheads directly onto the photographic plates. Some believed the discovery of X-ray photography in 1896 gave the spirit photographers scientific legitimacy. The experiments in thought photography continued into the 1900s by men such as Japanese Tomokichi Fukurai in the early 1900s, Russian Semyon Kirlian in the 1940s, American Ted Serios in the 1960s, and Israeli psychic Uri Geller in the 1990s.

Nensha Photogaphy
Tomokichi Fukurai, an assistant professor of psychology at Tokyo University, worked to prove his theories regarding nensha (spirit photography). In 1913, Fukurai worked with a woman named Sadako Takahashi, who claimed to have developed both clairvoyance and thought photography through breathing and mental exercises. Eventually they published a book together entitled Clairvoyance and Thoughtography. Fukurai would later work with another thoughtographer who created a thoughtograph of the dark side of the moon. (Example of Tomokichi Fukurai nensha or thought photography.)