When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Women Their Voice

Ghosts spoke. Women listened. Everything changed.



In the 1840s, the Fox Sisters-and the legions of mediums they inspired-ignited the Spiritualist movement that swept through Victorian parlors and presidential campaigns alike. Contacting the dead wasn't merely a parlor trick: It was a political statement, a declaration of self that still echoes. Séances attracted suffragists and scientists, skeptics and charlatans, giving women a voice in a society that often refused to hear them. But as Spir...