wrote, researched, and illustrated Spectropia. They were an ardent opponent of the 19th-century populist spiritualist movement, which they called a "mental epidemic," and created Spectropia to disprove the notion of disembodied spirits by showing how easy it was to seduce the human mind into creating one.

J. H. Brown never published another book before or after 1864, leaving no paper trail of literary correspondence or other intellectual projects. In spite of their earnest wish for the book to be used as propaganda to dispel the spell of spiritualism, it soon achieved massive popularity as a parlor game to "Spot the Spirits."

Beyond this book, no record remains of Brown's work or presence, and the original publishers, Griffith and Farran, either lost or destroyed their original ledgers, taking any clues of Brown's identity to the grave.