The Man Who Photographed Ghosts
· 16 min. read
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Thomas Glendenning Hamilton, or T. G. Hamilton, is not a name most people would recognize. He was a Canadian doctor, school board member, and member of the Manitoba legislature. He was a married man with four children: Margaret, Glen, and twins Arthur Lamont and James Drummond. He was respected among his peers and prided himself on always proving things via scientific methods.
However, in the spring of 1919, the Hamilton household was turned upside down. The Spanish Influenza had arrived in Manitoba only a few months prior and was surging during the spring months, taking a new crop of victims with it. Unfortunately, the Spanish Influenza crept into the Hamilton house and took the life of their three-year-old son, Arthur.
T. G. Hamilton was devastated, and this changed the course of the Hamilton family legacy. About half a year prior, one of Hamilton’s friends had come back from a trip to the United States and made some comments about a woman named Pearl Curran, a spiritualist living in Chicago who said she could contact the dead. Hamilton had ignored this story when he heard it originally, but after Arthurr’s death, he sought some form of closure. Lillian Hamilton, T. G.’s wife, also encouraged this direction of thought, and the two of them began seriously considering the possibility of contacting the dead.
It began with an Ouiji Board. After multiple contacts with the dead, they reached out to Elizabeth Poole, a Scottish nanny who assisted them from 1920 onwards. She moved them from Ouiji Boards to table tipping – a similar concept, but with knocking on the table to answer questions. This then materialized into reports of telekinesis and telepathy.
But T. G. understood these types of activities would be deemed unscientific, so he set up a room to photograph this phenomenon. These photographs ---
“You know those are fake, right?” Jessica said looking over my shoulder as I was reviewing the black and white photographs.
“What? No. It’s real. Look at these photos.” I quickly opened up some additional images from the University of Manitoba’s archives.
“Look, look. Here is written testimony, and it’s talking about bells ringing supernormally and teleplastic cords materializing on their faces.”
“Okay hunny.” Jessica didn’t believe.
But this isn’t the first time somebody has questioned T. G. Hamilton’s photography. We covered this same story as a Patreon-exclusive episode on Unsolved Canadian Mysteries. My cohost Dylan and I went through a dozen different photographs taken by T. G. and Lillian, and Dylan came to the same conclusions as Jessica. These photographs are cheesecloth, paper mache, some kind of glue or flour, and some creative liberties.
Dylan even said that if these photographs weren’t in black-and-white and grainy, he would assume they were Photoshopped. He especially cackled at the ones where faces materialized inside the ectoplasm, saying they looked like they were cut from magazines.
It makes sense why some people would question T. G. Hamilton’s photography. After all, if the gateway between life and death was so thin that ectoplasm could flow from people’s nostrils at will, it would have been studied ad nauseam. Instead, all other ectoplasmic photographers across the United States and Canada have been discovered to be shams – using the methods Dylan described, and hiding the flour-covered cheesecloth in their pockets, their cheeks, their shirts, and sometimes even in their rectums so as not to be discovered. However, all have been debunked, except for those conducted under the supervision of T. G. Hamilton.
What makes T. G. Hamilton’s photography so fascinating are the many witnesses who attended the seances that summoned this ectoplasmic anomaly. Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King attended their seances, as did American medium Mina “Margery” Crando, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, came all the way from Britain to experience it. Many left puzzled and amazed by what they saw. William Lyon Mackenzie King said it was “amazing beyond all words”.
T. G. Hamilton also had several scribes during each of the seances to record what was said and what happened. These multiple, simultaneous accounts, along with photographic evidence, made it so that any supernatural encounter could be studied in depth.
One of the people who witnessed these seances and wrote about them was the Director of the International Metapsychical Institute in Paris, France, Gustave Geley. He wrote in his paper From the Unconscious to the Conscious, “I have often seen complete representations of a face, a hand, or a finger. In the most perfect instances, the materalised organ has all the appearances of the biological properties of a living organ… In many instances, these representations have grown under my own eyes from the beginning to the end of the phenomena.”
Another was Professor Charles Richet, who wrote in Thirty Years of Psychical Research: Being a Treatise on Metaphysics, “The materalisation of a hand… of a face… is a fact as assured as telekinesis; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand, for these forms seem to have the attributes of life.”
Following T. G. Hamilton’s death in 1935, Lillian would continue their work in paranormal research. Upon her death in 1956, the Hamilton family would continue the research and give their findings to the University of Manitoba. The University of Manitoba describes the collection as follows:
“...The records relating to psychic experimentation span the years 1918 to 1945. The highly controlled experiments conducted by the Hamilton Group are important in that they form a solid bridge between late nineteenth and early twentieth-century research and the developments of the last twenty-five years.
The subject matter of the records includes "rappings", clairvoyance, trance states and trance charts, telekinesis, wax molds, bell-ringing, trance scripts and visions, as well as teleplasmic manifestations.
The records are in various formats--scrapbooks, seance attendance records and registers, affidavits, automatic writings, correspondence, speeches and lectures, newspaper clippings, journal articles, books, photographic records, glass plate negatives and positives, prints, slides, tapes, manuscripts and promotional materials related to major publications. The records have been arranged chronologically in order to show the progressive development of the group, the mediums, and Dr. Hamilton's relationships with persons of similar interests.
These personal contacts are worthy of special note. People from all walks of life and all levels of intellectual attainment are represented. The mementos and correspondence include the signatures of such international figures as Alexander Fleming, Sir Oliver Lodge, Lady Arthur Conan Doyle, The Rt. Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Theodore Besterman, Nandor Fodor, Dr. Bruce Chown and Dr. R.G. Crandon.”
But of all the items in the collection, the one that stood out to me the most is that of Miss Lucy Clelland. T. G. Hamilton was engaged to Lucy between 1900 and 1901, about a decade before marrying Lillian. T. G. was able to contact Lucy, and had Lucy not only manifest several times but also speak and predict the future, both of her own appearances and that of the late T. G. Hamilton.
The first materialization of Lucy occurred on March 12, 1930. During this seance, Lucy appeared as an apparition beside one of the mediums, Dawn, sitting in an empty chair. Lucy’s body was white and lumpy, but her face was very clear. Multiple photographs of her were taken from different angles, showing a somewhat two-dimensional appearance.
T. G. Hamilton noted of this apparition “Indications of central development of the face (similar to that seen in the miniature faces) followed by disruption of teleplastic capsule, are here very strong, the turned back portions lying plainly in sight.”
“The so-called body is, strangely enough, but a simulacrum composed of over-layers of wool-like teleplasm very similar in appearance to that seen in hand-simulacrum. Simulacra has been previously observed by European investigators, notable Geley and de Fontenay.”
The second materialization of Lucy occurred on November 29, 1931. During this seance, all of the psychics passed out and collapsed. Hovering behind the heads of Dawn and Mercedes is that of a woman in a veil. Notes of this apparition discuss the cloud-like teleplasm of the veil and note the crisscross of the folds. T. G. Hamilton writes that it appears to be three-dimensional, something most manifestations aren’t.
The third materialization of Lucy occurred on April 17, 1935. During this seance, a square apparition appeared above the psychics, with two faces on it. One is the face of Lucy, and the other is that of T. G. Hamilton – who passed away only ten days prior on April 7.
During that seance, Dawn was taken over by an entity that talked about T. G. Hamilton in the afterlife. The spirit, identified as “Control”, says that its identity will mean nothing to them and that it has been dead so long, that it doesn’t even remember its identity anyway. But that it has met T. G. Hamilton, and that he is among friends. “... there are many friends that know him, and many whom you do not know, know him. He is not lacking in friends. He is making good use of his time; and no doubt will be a frequent visitor, even when you are not here. He was in this room before you came. He has brought others to see his work. Some understand it; others do not, like myself. But I will make myself familiar with it.”
Control went on to say that T. G. Hamilton is an excellent pupil and is learning much, and has a “beautiful library”. It ends by saying “A great many of us were surprised he came over so soon. But here he is, and we will make good use of him, and he will make good use of his time.”
I wasn't able to find any record of T. G. Hamilton appearing again before the Hamilton Group, but there are boxes and boxes of records, so I can only hope he was able to fulfill his wishes and reach out again. One can imagine he’s working on a way to communicate with the living, much like he tried to communicate with the dead, but as time passed and the Hamilton Group reached out less and less, perhaps he never had the opportunity to do so. However, wherever he is, he was with Lucy again – and Lillian, too.
Although many people like T. G. Hamilton have been discovered to be frauds, his work has never been proven to be faked or manipulated.
Did T. G. Hamilton and the Hamilton Group really make contact with the other side? If so, were their apparitions and manifestations real? If not, why continue them after all these years? The family didn’t need the money, and to my understanding, never made contact with their lost son. A relative of T. G. Hamilton put out the book The Art of Ectoplasm - Encounters with Winnipeg's Ghost Photographs in 2023 which showed the photographs that T. G. took. Is this just people making money off a lie that has transcended time? Or could one look at this as T. G. speaking through his work and his family, carrying over a message to those who are willing to listen?
I try to pick a side during cases like this, but I honestly don’t know the answer this time. Was it real? Was it faked? There is compelling evidence on one side, and common sense on the other. It seems impossible, but it’s been documented, photographed, recorded, and repeated hundreds of times, with thousands of witnesses. I’m not sure what to believe – or what I want to believe. This time, I’ll let you decide.
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Categories: Canada, Dark Tourism, History, Manitoba, Paranormal
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