Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
From Halloween expert Morton, a level-headed and entertaining history of our desire and attempts to hold conversations with the dead.
 
Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism—when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born. Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by “spirit rappings”; Daniel Dunglas Home, the “greatest medium of all time”; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics, and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond), and photographs. Hugely entertaining, it begs the question: is anybody there . . . ?
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
From Halloween expert Morton, a level-headed and entertaining history of our desire and attempts to hold conversations with the dead.
 
Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism—when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born. Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by “spirit rappings”; Daniel Dunglas Home, the “greatest medium of all time”; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics, and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond), and photographs. Hugely entertaining, it begs the question: is anybody there . . . ?
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances

Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances

by Lisa Morton
Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances

Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances

by Lisa Morton

Paperback

$17.50 
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Overview

From Halloween expert Morton, a level-headed and entertaining history of our desire and attempts to hold conversations with the dead.
 
Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism—when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born. Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by “spirit rappings”; Daniel Dunglas Home, the “greatest medium of all time”; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics, and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond), and photographs. Hugely entertaining, it begs the question: is anybody there . . . ?

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781789146493
Publisher: Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date: 12/08/2022
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Lisa Morton is an award-winning author and widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on the supernatural. Her work includes The Halloween Encyclopedia and A Hallowe’en Anthology: Literary and Historical Writings Over the Centuries.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

1 Summoning the Old Spirits 19

2 Early Necromancy 49

3 Darkness across the Enlightenment and the Romantic Gothic 77

4 The Victorians and Spiritualism; or, the Seance is Born 106

5 Wars and Ouija: Spiritualism in the Twentieth Century 211

6 How Universal is the Seance? 261

7 The Modern Seance 269

8 (Why) Do We Need the Seance? 298

References 306

Select Bibliography 332

Acknowledgements 335

Photo Acknowledgements 336

Index 338

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