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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait of Thomas Edison from Men of Science.
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of William Carey.
"The strong light rendered the apparition invisible to hiseyes.” —Justinus Kerner, "The Ghost-Seer of Prevorst”
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Maj.-Gen. George H. Thomas.
“He’s here, or it’s the ghost of his hat!” —Frank Dumont, The Cuban Spy
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from The Life of Captain John Smith.
"A vague, almost ghostly outline, losing itself, in shadows, among the tombs.” —Mary V. Spencer
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of the Honorable Abbott Lawrence.
In this haunting, Laurence’s ghost appears four times, three of which resemble film negatives. Note also that the scanning machine has graced Laurence’s portrait with a striped aura.
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Praise for The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine: I love the way Conley creates these series of what I want to call visual poems, only by default--only because there is no proper designation for a novel form. [In The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine] we experience juxtaposed images of historical and not-so-historical personages cleanly engraved and then suddenly disappearing in a xeroxial fog of reproduction, a Banquo's feast of mirrors. These visual-textual series allow Conley to create the visual analogues of the serial poem, and into these delicious confections he works some of the best quotes in the English language (and many others, translated) to create an almost Midrashically complex, anachronistic interplay between image and text that often leads the mind to question the impossible interface that occurs daily--i.e., to ask how it is that words and objects could ever even come to a sort of harmony in the first place? It begins to seem beyond us. And beyond us is the metaphysical. So the circle runs, chasing its tail like the cat in that Siouxsie and the Banshees song. — W. B. Keckler, author of Sanskrit of the Body
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Eli Whitney.
"A faint shadow stole over the room; while the countenance of the Medium had become so gloomy that the shadow seemed really only a reflection of it.” —Blackwood’s Magazine
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from The Autobiography of Rev. Thomas Conant.
“A dim, indistinct outline of a ghostly face staring out.” —James Coates, Photographing the Invisible
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Title page from A Biography of François Magendie.
“A dark side without a shadow in the open air.” —The Works of John Ruskin
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from the biography of Hugh McAllister Beaver.
She “could barely make out his face in the gray haze.” —Kathleen O’Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear, The Summoning God
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~ Unsubstantiated Insubstantiality ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger.
“The figure was ghostly pale, with indistinct features.” —Mark Alan Morris, The Ghost Next Door
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from James Speed.
“The contours of the dark things around me are sharpening, faint features beginning to emerge.” —Eric Stone, Grave Imports
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Thomas Handasyd Perkins.
“The play of light and shadows turned his craggy face into an eerie visage.” —Lori Foster
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Life of Thomas Jefferson.
“It was an unmistakable face, and of itself answered many questions.” —Alfred Elton Van Vogt
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from The Life of William Pinkney.
“With such ghostly features, what on Earth can you focus on?” —Martin Mobberley
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from My Autobiography and Reminiscences by William Powell Frith.
“From out of regions dark a spectral form appeared!” —Reuben Vose
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Reverend David Tappan Stoddard.
“But are we still confident there is, in the language of a modern philosopher, a ‘ghost in the machine’?” —George F. Will
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from An Autobiography by Hugh Miller.
“It was very dark, and the stone was only a ghostly blur.” —John Buchan, Witch Wood
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from The Life of John Milton.
“Enter the ghost in the machine.” —Igor Aleksander, Impossible Minds
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from A Memoir of Mrs. Susanna Rowson.
“The wraith of her face faded altogether.” —J. R. Cain
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Page 2 of 9

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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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