SPIRITS & SPECTERS
Knocks, Slates and Trumpets: Séance Rooms Where Eminent Men Vouched for the Dead
A Weird Darkness survey recounts eight decades of mediums, from Hydesville in 1848 to Boston in the 1920s, and the scientists who sat in the circle.
HYDESVILLE, N.Y. — A new article from Weird Darkness traces the history of the séance, beginning on the night of March 31st, 1848, in a house at Hydesville, Wayne County, New York. There, according to the account, Kate Fox snapped her fingers and called on "old Splitfoot," and the knocking in the house answered her.
The family's questions drew raps in reply, the article says, and the unseen presence claimed to be a murdered peddler. The girls' mother stated that she was "not a believer in haunted houses or supernatural appearances." Neighbors gave statements, men dug in the cellar until they struck water, and a pamphlet followed that April.
The article's central point is the company the mediums kept. It reports that William Crookes, discoverer of thallium, sat with mediums for years and published what he saw. Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Richet, Sir Oliver Lodge and Arthur Conan Doyle are likewise named as sitters. Wallace is quoted on the slate-writer Henry Slade: he could see "nothing whatever indicative of imposture."
The catalogue of marvels is long. It lists the Davenport brothers' rope-tied cabinet, the spirit Katie King of Philadelphia, a table lifted at Columbia professors' sitting with Eusapia Palladino, and live birds said to have appeared around Charles Bailey inside a mosquito-net bag. It also lists the grayish ectoplasm of Boston's Margery, whom Eric Dingwall described as producing a "greyish-white clammy substance".
Spirit photography receives its due. William Mumler, the piece says, reported that a veiled widow who gave a false name turned out to be Mrs. Lincoln, with the late president's likeness on her plate. Daniel Dunglas Home is described as handling red-hot coals before Crookes in 1871.
The excerpt, which breaks off in the middle of a tale of Home and a third-floor window, reports these episodes as the witnesses recorded them. The article's framing leaves readers to weigh the sitters' reputations against the sittings.