Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures Budgets.
1919? Semimonthly, irregular
London, England.
Corporate author: Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures
1/1, 1919(?) Approximately 12 pp.

These were the "budgets" (unorganized collections of correspondence and reports of experiments) of the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, typewritten and mimeographed and distributed irregularly among the members. The SSSP was created by spiritualists in 1918 to controvert the assertions then being raised by the Society for Psychical Research about the spirit photographs of William Hope of Crewe. The society's most prominent members were Fred Barlow (himself a spirit photographer), who was secretary, and Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, who was vice-president. The SSSP purported to be "scientific" in its efforts and the Budgets were filled with the minutiae and details of the technology of photography and test mediumship during the period and with critical comments on the experiments being performed by the members and messages from the spirits on subjects like the differences between wireless rays and psychic forces. The members explored not only photographs of spirits but also "auralphotographs" and "thought photographs" of A.S. Pearse and others. In May 1920 the society released its conclusion that some "supernormal" photographs were genuine, though unexplained. The group's efforts proved vain because the SPR in 1922 published a fairly conclusive expose of Hope by Harry Price (to which Doyle responded with The Case for Spirit Photography (1922). The SSSP continued until at least 1922. University of Texas, Austin.

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