ON THE LAST day of the Moody trial, Eldridge Appleton stood before the jury. “Now, the Law does not deal with the supernatural,” he said in closing, “nor does it recognize the supernatural as an element when dealing with facts. And so in numerous reported cases, as where a man laboring under a hallucination hears voices ordering him to commit a murder—any defense based on the claim that those voices were real would be held untenable by the Law.” The Law did not recognize the existence of any superior or spiritual influences to justify what it considered a felony. “If today Mr. Moody were to commit a murder,” Appleton said, “and were to assert, as his defense, that spirits had urged him to commit it … that, my good gentlemen, would constitute no kind of defense at all. The Law does not excuse a murderous hand, whether guided by spirits or not.”
For nearly two hours, Appleton rehearsed the “evidence,” pacing back and forth before the jury, with all audience eyes upon him. Edward Moody’s photographs had not simply been a crime against the Law—they had been a crime against his fellow men here on earth. “It is enough for the poor mother whose eyes are blinded with tears,” Appleton said, “that she sees a print of drapery like an infant’s dress, and a rounded something, like a foggy dumpling … and that all of it will stand for the face of her child, which she now accepts as a revelation from the world of the shadows.” Those who went to see Moody were prepared to believe, and were prepared to believe anything on very slight proof. “The Defense has demonstrated nothing more than that,” Appleton said. “The existence of a belief in Mr. Moody’s photographs is not the same thing as the truth of those photographs.”
But that, according to J. T. Townsend, was not the point of this trial. It was true that many of the exhibits entered into evidence depicted “indistinct and shadowy forms.” But what of the forms whose faces were so distinct that all those who knew those souls in life swore to their legitimacy? And what sort of man must Edward Moody have been if the Prosecution’s accusations were correct? “Such a man would require a gallery of immense proportions,” Townsend said. “He would be compelled to have on hand the negatives of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great-grandmothers of all the persons who called to get photographs. He would need to possess a dexterity surpassing that of the greatest magicians of the day. And he would need to be smarter than every photographer who had gone to inspect his method.” For over five years, Moody had been engaged in the business of spirit photography, and had submitted his process to the investigation of scientific men. Not one of them had ever pronounced him a deceiver, because there was no proof whatsoever that he had ever deceived anybody.
“Because Marshall Hinckley and his men of science have encountered things that they cannot explain,” Townsend said, “the Prosecution has hunted down this prisoner, and fixed upon him the brand of cheat and humbug. Suppose that when Mr. Morse was struggling to convince us that persons hundreds of miles apart might communicate with electricity, some skeptic should have requested a message sent from New York to Boston … that Mr. Morse, confident in the truth of his discovery, should attempt to send the message, but that, owing to some cause not clearly known to him, the attempt to transmit the message should fail. Would such a failure be counted a fraud by any court or jury in Christendom? And yet these so-called men of science who have testified for the Prosecution charge Mr. Moody with fraud because they believe him guilty of producing ‘foggy dumplings.’”
Townsend paused and stared squarely at the jury.
“Men like these would have hung Galileo, had they lived in his day.”
Far from the charlatan the Prosecution made him out to be, Moody was a revolutionary—a man ahead of his time.
But would the jury believe that, and how would they vote?
At last both counsels rested, and one final matter remained.
“Mr. Moody,” Judge Downing said, “The People have pleaded their case against you, and your counsel has concluded with its defense. Before I send the jury away to deliberate upon your fate, is there anything you wish to say, relative to the charges that have been presented against you?”
Moody had been listening to the closing arguments with some attention, but none of what he had heard had changed his determination.
Moody stood.
“I would indeed like to make a statement,” he said.
The courtroom was silent. Moody turned toward the jury, but also faced the gallery that was crowded with Spiritualists. Many of them, he knew, had had a hand in composing the statement. This was to be a great moment for Spiritualism.
Moody unfolded the paper.
“In 1865, in the city of Boston …” he began.
He read the first sentences about photographing Mrs. Lovejoy.
“… but it was in the process of developing the plate that I first discovered the appearance of a second form …”
A second form. Was that what it had all been about then? The paper trembled in his hand. He owed the Spiritualists nothing. The Spiritualists had misguided him, and he would not sacrifice himself for them. And yet if he did not read it—
Moody let his arm fall, and released the sheet of paper.
“We are all,” Moody said, “witnesses to those second forms, whether we have had spirit photographs taken or not.”
Mr. Townsend leaned down toward the floor to retrieve the statement, but Moody stepped on the paper with the front of his boot.
“We are witnesses,” Moody continued, “and it is all before our very eyes. We are in a great age of—”
His voice quivered somewhat.
“—spiritual truth.”
In the audience, those who were aware of his departure from the statement moved uneasily in their chairs.
“Yes …” Moody said. “We are in a great age of spiritual truth, and the signs are about us everywhere. I came to Spiritualism not as a believer, but as a skeptic. I was a broken man who believed in nothing but what his eye could see. And what my eye saw was horror—horror at what men could do to one another, and horror at our own denial of it.”
Moody paused, and turned toward the audience.
“But it was nothing compared to the horror revealed to me in the great miracle of the spirit photograph.”
All eyes were upon him now. Not a soul breathed or stirred.
“You there—all of you!” he exclaimed. “You have turned your eyes from the truth, as I did. And I do not speak merely of the spiritual truth … but the earthly truth as well, of which it is one and the same.”
One and the same? More audience members shifted. What trick was Edward Moody up to now?
“I knew a woman once, who was wise enough to understand that photographs possessed a power like no other. She believed that photographs possessed the power to make permanent those things that we all lose. They are the record keepers of the things that we want to see once we’ve lost them … and they are also the keepers of those secrets we do not want to see.”
He was wavering. What was wrong with him? Somebody needed to stop him.
“I did not want to see,” Moody said. “I did not want to see what the photograph showed me. I did not want to see how much I had misguided others. But I was forced to see—forced to see what a criminal I had been. And now I cannot un-see it.”
Moody could feel the room beginning to move, but any Spiritualist who might approach him now was of little consequence at this point. There had barely been anything left of her when he had taken that last glance at the negative. In the darkness of Yellow Henry’s, one might have even said she was no longer there. He knew she was disappearing—that she would eventually disappear—and yet he had carried her back to Boston, as if she were as clear as the day she had come to him.
All emotion then fell from Moody’s face, as if he had finally been granted resolution.
“I cannot un-see it,” Moody repeated, “and like all of you—all of you—”
He paused. Would they ever forgive him?
“I am guilty.”
The room erupted, and there was no way to distinguish the laughter of the men of science from the anguished cries of the believers. Judge Downing banged his gavel as the courtroom degenerated into chaos. The starvation was severe, and they fought with one another, because the truth was that they were all desperate to protect their own pieces of bread.
And in this madness, in the pandemonium of the courtroom, Moody saw her, standing with Joseph, tucked into the front of the crowd. Her palm was up, and her lips were behind it. She looked at Moody, puckered, and blew.
No one went blind this time—or at least it did not seem so—and Moody watched as both Vivi and Joseph disappeared. He would perhaps never see them again, for he would be going somewhere else now. And he knew that they too would be departing for another place.
Judge Downing was finally able to restore order in the courtroom, and Moody’s attorneys, having given up on the matter, made no attempt to plead further. The extended deliberation that the Spiritualists had been hoping for was now a dead idea. The jury would return, and the decision would be read, and that would be an end to the question of Edward Moody.
And so the jury did return, and so the decision was read, but when the foreman announced the verdict, the room did not explode. There was a quiet—almost respectful—acceptance of the verdict that surprised even the staunchest of the nonbelievers.