Introduction to SÉANCE

The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the Dead in America and Around the World, 2013

Versions of this book review were published circa 2014, including in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the Journal for Scientific Exploration, and a German translation in the Zeitschrift fuer Anomalistik.

2005

Spirituality has had a profound effect and influence upon all of humanity since the beginning of time. Primitive cave dwellers who looked at natural phenomena (like thunder and lightening) as being godly signs from a force much greater than themselves, wondered, ...

dissertation, columbia university , 2017

Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 2014

Experimental Seances for the 21st Century: Some Interesting Results and Critical Deductions., 2013

Abstract: Acting as both a publication of some interesting séance experiments conducted from late 2010 to the middle of 2012 and as a guide for future experimental research in this manner of “field-based” investigation, this article seeks to question whether or not any séance phenomena is genuinely anomalous and if there is an underlying “current” or experiential aspect to claims of séance room PK. Early personal experiments with hypnosis are discussed, as is the potential need for inducing altered states of consciousness in attempting to develop subjects. The results of studying these areas –claimed mediumistic phenomena and experiences- are shared and evaluated in detail, both before and after the establishment of “The Styx” group. Also, in seeking to bridge past research with present, some similarities in the minute details of séance experiences in Spiritualistic and parapsychological literature are revealed in comparison with our own. Lastly, directions for research into séance phenomena, under controlled, experimental and developmental conditions are discussed, along with the question of how parapsychological research might best be conjoined with the rest of mainstream academia.

Journal of the Society For Psychical Research, 2011

Anthropological approaches to the study of spirit mediumship groups, and related practices, have usually tended to focus on social-functional interpretations, arguing that spirit mediumship groups function as a means to enable female practitioners to protest against their traditional roles as "mothers, wives and sexual partners" in oppressive maleoriented societies (Boddy, 1988; Lewis, 1971; Skultans, 1974). Such approaches, however, have failed to address the experiential core of these groups: members believe that they are able to make direct contact with the world of spirits, whether through communicating with spiritual entities channelled via entranced mediums, witnessing ostensibly paranormal phenomena in the context of séances, or through falling into trance themselves and experiencing direct communion with the "numinous" (Otto, 1958). The experiential element cannot be removed from an analysis of mediumship, as it represents the primary motive for séance attendance as the members themselves perceive it. To ignore it would be to detrimentally reduce the complexity of the phenomenon. In addition to providing an overview of a variety of anthropological approaches to the issue of spirit possession and mediumship, this paper will detail the experiences of an anthropologist exploring this experiential component while conducting fieldwork for his undergraduate dissertation (Hunter, 2009a). The fieldwork itself was conducted at the Bristol Spirit Lodge, a centre established specifically with the aim to promote and develop trance and physical mediumship. The fieldwork methodology was one of immersive participant observation informed by the work of Edith Turner (1993, 1998, 2006), who has advocated the necessity of complete immersion in ritual if its functions and effects are to be adequately understood. In an attempt to understand the role of experience for the members of the group, participant observation was carried out in séances and mediumship development sessions as a means to gain an appreciation of the types of experience encountered by both sitters and mediums. This paper will present the research findings and describe the experiences of the researcher while engaged in the field.

Spiritualism as a religious movement self-consciously sought an alliance with science that would eventually lead to its own downfall. Despite Spiritualism's resemblances to many prior instances of mystical experience or ghostly contact, the movement is traditionally dated to 1848, when two young sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, attempted to communicate with a poltergeist in their home in Hydesville, New York. Using a home-spun version of Morse code called "alphabet raps", the girls inaugurated what would become a trans-Atlantic phenomenon of séances and table tippings, making international sensations of some and endorsing domestic attempts for all (Braude 1989, pp. 10-12; Cox 2003, pp. 6-7). Spiritualism posited that the dead continued to exist on an advanced plane-usually a graduated seven tiers of heaven-where they could be contacted for advice and solace. Progress was the hallmark of heaven: not instantly perfected at death, spirits continued to grow in knowledge and morality. Moreover, Spiritualism proposed that everyone went to heaven-all religions, races, and temperaments were destined for the same afterlife. One's deceased kin and the sages of history were all available to help the living. The desire to talk to the dead caught the imagination of the era, and the desire to prove scientifically that this was possible followed immediately in its wake.

Signs and Society, 2021

Nineteenth-century Spiritualism was a watershed moment in which many of the keywords of our communication vocabulary-"medium," "channel," and "communication" itselfwere first given fleshly and ghostly form in the spiritualist séance, which early on was likened to a "spiritual telegraph." Throughout this period, newfangled ghosts and communication infrastructures (including the telegraph, but also the equally novel postal service) developed in tandem. This article explores three such boundary genres of communication between the living and the dead: how the séance converted the "spectral aphasia" of haunted houses into the domestic séance; how ghosts of loved ones dying far away across the "phantasmal empire" turned the ghost from an actor to a message, working in tandem with telegrams and letters in the "psychical ghost story"; and lastly, how the American spiritualist press created "spirit post offices" to publish communications from the dead alongside ordinary postal "correspondence" from the living. s John Durham Peters points out in his wide-ranging history of the idea of communication, Speaking into the Air, nineteenth-century Spiritualism was a key watershed moment in which many of the keywords of

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2018

Recent media studies research on 19th-century Spiritualism has foregrounded the technological metaphors that suffuse Spiritualist models of the seance. However, this article shows that the actual phatic channels proposed by Spiritualism consisted almost entirely of mediating chains of human spirits who stood between the bereaved seance guests and the spirits of the dear departed called “strangers.” While the “strangers” were, like the seance guests, departed white people, the authoritative “control spirits” were frequently exotic others such as “Indians” from the American imaginary of the Frontier. Beginning in 1875, the apparent transparency of the Spiritualist seance became the object of critique of an emerging occultist movement of Theosophy, which sought to undermine the authoritative human spirits of Spiritualism by turning the human spirits of the Spiritualist s_eance wholesale into disruptive non-human mediators called “Diakkas,” “Bhuts,” and “Elementals,” and replacing Spiritualism’s authoritative “Indian” control spirits drawn from the imaginary of the American frontier with Tibetan “Mahatmas” drawn from the orientalist imaginary of the Empire. These elementals initially represented noisy non-human “parasites” of Spiritualist channels, but later these parasites take over the channel and become the channel themselves in the form of what came to be called the “elemental essence.” [Spiritualism, Theosophy, Phaticity, Voice, Animation]

So what is spiritualism and spirit photography?, 2021

According to a definition adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of America, spiritualism "is the science, philosophy and religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, using mediumship, with those who live in the spirit world." [1] So what is spiritualism and spirit photography? The basis of many ancient religions is the idea that disembodied spirits of the dead are able and willing to communicate with the living under certain conditions. Its theme re-occurs in myths, fables, legends and anecdotes from all cultures at all periods in man's history. But it is also fair to say that modern spiritualism, as a social phenomenon, had its origins in a small house in Hydesville, New York, on Friday night 31 March 1848.