T+L Reports: Haunted Art House

With Halloween on the horizon, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shifts its focus to the ghoulish with "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult" (Sept. 27–Dec. 31; www.metmuseum.org). The exhibition presents more than 120 images used by members of the 19th-century Spiritualist movement to prove that the deceased communicate with the living. Some photographs depict ghosts; others represent séances, levitation, and "vital forces" that emanate from mediums. Included in the show is a portrait of Fanny Conant, a Boston medium, who is shown with the apparition of her control spirit. The curators take no stand on the works' veracity, but thanks to the Met, we can all see dead people. —JUDITH DOBRZYNSKI