Overview
A spiritualist work dated 1895–96 and titled Grand Astronomical Picture from the Spirit-World has drawn renewed attention after a Reddit post identified it as being associated with J. H. Evans and Richard Boursnell, both of London, England. The item is presented as a historical paranormal or spiritualist depiction, although the available post provides no detailed description of its production, intended meaning, or original publication history.
The attribution places the work within the late Victorian spiritualist movement, when séances, clairvoyance, spirit communication and “spirit photography” attracted considerable public interest. However, the material currently available does not establish whether Evans and Boursnell collaborated directly on the picture, whether they were its creators, or whether their names were connected with its publication or circulation.
A Related Evans Case
Additional historical material offers context about Evans’s involvement in spiritualist documentation. A September 2026 article published by Alien Archivist revisits an episode reported in the October 1897 issue of the London quarterly Borderland, titled “News from Mars.” The article described two photographs allegedly showing extraterrestrial rulers: Heries, King of Algáthanon, and his son, identified as “The Sleepless, Servant of God, King of Algáthanon.”
Algáthanon was said to be one of twelve states on Mars. The images were reportedly produced in connection with séances involving Charles West, a London trance medium, and J. H. Evans, who was identified in Borderland under the name “Mr. Starling.” Evans attended West’s sittings, recorded the communications and later supplied a manuscript and photographs to Borderland editor W. T. Stead.
Claims of Spirit Photography
According to the historical account, West lived on Shirland Road in Paddington and worked as a clerk in a contractor’s office while practicing photography in his spare time. During séances, he was reportedly controlled by an entity calling herself Silver Pearl, who claimed to be a woman living on Mars.
Evans rejected the idea that the Martian king images were ordinary portraits of people posed before a camera. Instead, he reportedly described them as photographs created by spirits “from the Martian spheres,” with assistance from spirits in the Earth sphere. Other images were said to depict Silver Pearl’s child and a young female companion, although those photographs were not reproduced in the publication.
Such statements reflect the period’s spiritualist interpretation of photographic anomalies and séance imagery. They should be understood as historical claims rather than verified evidence of extraterrestrial contact. No independent documentation supplied with the current material demonstrates that the photographs originated outside conventional photographic or artistic processes.
The Boursnell Connection
The mention of Richard Boursnell in connection with Grand Astronomical Picture from the Spirit-World is significant because Boursnell was associated with Victorian spiritualist and psychic-imaging traditions. Nevertheless, the source material provided here does not explain his specific role in the 1895–96 work or clarify how the picture relates to Evans’s later association with the alleged Martian photographs.
The dates also warrant caution. The highlighted work is identified as dating from 1895–96, while the better-documented Borderland feature appeared in October 1897. The two may belong to the same broader spiritualist network, but the available evidence does not establish a direct connection.
Historical Significance
Taken together, the references illustrate how late nineteenth-century spiritualists used manuscripts, séance testimony, photography and elaborate cosmological imagery to present alleged communications from other worlds. Mars, in particular, occupied a prominent place in popular imagination as telescopic observations and speculation about its habitability entered public culture.
For modern readers, the Evans, West and Boursnell material is best treated as an artifact of spiritualist history, not as confirmation of visitors from Mars. Further research into library catalogues, contemporary spiritualist journals, archival photographs and original copies of Grand Astronomical Picture from the Spirit-World would be needed to verify its authorship, provenance and relationship to the 1897 Borderland case.
