ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the case studies of Arthur Conan Doyle and Francis Galton to demonstrate how the discourse on photography revelled in the shared energies of science and the supernatural at the end of the century. Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin, was the founder of eugenics, invented the fingerprinting system in 1888, and made advances in various fields such as meteorology, psychology, and anthropology. In Doyle's case, he is haunted by his impossible desire to capture spirits within the sensitive plate of the camera, attempting to rigorously control and constrain the inchoate elements of the spirit world. Doyle's works are themselves marked by a similar confusion between the rationality and order of the Sherlock Holmes adventures and the provisionality of the spiritualist writings. This is an opposition which proves to be superficial, however: not only does Holmes himself have supernatural qualities, but Doyle's spiritualist writings demonstrate a desire to incorporate both evidential proof and scientific tests sympathetic to spiritualist belief.
