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PERSONALLY, I DO NOT AGREE WITH SEANCES, IT IS NOT SOMETHING I WOULD EVER TRY TO DO. THE REASON (OR MINE) IS THAT WHEN YOU 'CALL UP' SPIRITS, OR AS I LIKE TO CALL THEM 'PASSED LOVED ONES' WHICH IS WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE IF YOU ARE A MEDIUM, THEN YOU ARE NOT SPECIFICALLY CALLING UP A LOVED ONE FOR A PERSON AS SUCH, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO IT WILL BE WHO DECIDES TO ENTER THIS REALM. IT IS A VERY 'SPIRITUAL' EXPERIENCE (OR SUPPOSED TO BE) WHEN A MEDIUM READS A PERSON, BUT, A SEANCE, THIS IS DIFFERENT...WELL TO ME...IT SHOUTS OUT 'DISTURB'....WHO ARE WE TO 'DISTURB' THE PEACE OF THE ONES AT REST FOR NO OTHER REASON, THAN TO SAY, 'WE CAN'? SO, TO ME THIS IS 'DISRESPECT' TOTALLY TO THE ONES GONE. JUST MY OPINION, THAT'S ALL....
Thanks to literature, movies, and perhaps even actual experience, most people are familiar with the paranormal activities involved in seances. However, the history behind spirit communication through the body of a mortal medium isn't commonly known, and it's probably not a subject your high school history teacher ever mentioned. If you dig deep enough, you'll find enthralling tales of empowered women, skillful tricksters, and one enraged magician.
What does the history of mediums have to do with empowered females? For starters, the origins of modern seances and spiritualism can be traced to two young girls in Hydesville, New York: Catherine and Margaretta Fox, who in 1848 were aged 11 and 13, respectively. In March of that year, the girls claimed to hear spirit raps emanating from their bedroom, which quickly drew the interest of their parents and, soon after, several neighbors. By May, droves of curious onlookers made pilgrimages to the Hydesville home to witness signs of spirit activity, and within five years close to 30,000 Americans claimed to possess mediumistic powers.
In the wake of the Fox sisters' fame, other notable mediums emerged: Cora L. V. Richmond, who conducted lectures on women's rights while in trances, winning over male skeptics with her virginal beauty. Victoria Claflin Woodhull, who not only demonstrated mediumistic abilities, but also gained fame as the first female to run for president of the United States in 1872. Eusapia Palladino, an Italian-born woman known in the 1890s for her unabashed sexuality and boldness during her seances. Male mediums also appeared in sizable numbers, but, for nineteenth-century women, spiritual powers meant a doorway to fame and adventure…and an escape from the mundanity of domestic lives with few personal rights. Channeling spirits gave women a chance to speak words and ideas not normally permitted to a lady. Because of the thousands of converts to this religion you could see, hear, and touch, people avidly listened to what these females had to say.
But spiritual powers often weren't the actual cause of the phenomena produced at seances. Fraud abounded, and theatrical tricks and sleights of hand successfully convinced sitters they were seeing and hearing spirits in darkened rooms, especially in times of war and hardships when seance guests so desperately wanted to receive proof of an afterlife. A mail-order catalog of the late 1800s even provided customers with seance necessities such as fake hands and rigged spirit slates, going so far as to offer instructions on how to produce tilting tables, sounds from seemingly nowhere, and thought transmission. Mediums often corroborated with one another, circulating secret "Blue Books" that contained information about the local deceased and seance attendees who were the easiest targets. Even the Fox sisters reportedly confessed their fakery forty years after their glorious start in Hydesville, stating that their famous raps that founded a religious movement were produced merely by cracking their toe joints.
To prove they weren't frauds, many mediums underwent test conditions, letting skeptics bind them with ropes and handcuffs and lock them in sealed "spirit cabinets," demonstrating that paranormal activity would still appear despite such restraints. Magicians soon showcased the same feats as entertainment, claiming the mediums' so-called test conditions were simply another example of seance trickery.
In the 1920s, legendary escape artist Harry Houdini embarked upon a zealous crusade to expose crooked mediums. In his younger years, he himself had earned money through fake seances, but he became one of the loudest voices against spiritualism when the death of his mother led him on a fruitless search for a genuine medium. He grew famous for his exposes of spiritual con artists and even traveled to seances in disguise, revealing himself to unsuspecting hoodwinkers when they produced evidence of fraud.
Houdini's most controversial attempt at unveiling a scam came in 1924, when he joined a committee to judge mediums vying for a prize offered by SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN magazine. The first medium who could produce authentic paranormal phenomena would win $2,500, and the most likely candidate was Boston medium Mina Crandon, known in her spirit circles as "Margery." Like her predecessors, Margery too gained female empowerment through her séances. Formerly the bored wife of a prominent surgeon twenty years her senior, she suddenly created glamorous social events via her sittings and spoke through the voice of a witty, often-vulgar "spirit control": her dead brother Walter.
The highly publicized investigations of Margery often kept Houdini from concentrating on other aspects of his career. Plus they directed attention away from other mediums around the world--ones who might have proven to be more legitimate than Margery, who was ultimately denied the prize due to too many indications of fraud. Nevertheless, Margery went to her deathbed refusing to confess she was a sham. After his own death, Houdini failed to return to the world of the living through seances, as he told his wife he would try to do if spiritualism were indeed genuine. To this date, seances are still held every year in an attempt to contact Houdini on the anniversary of his death, which just happens to be Halloween.
The post-Margery and Houdini eras have been quieter in terms of famous mediums and widespread booms in seances. Yet as long as people strive to find proof of an afterlife, this intriguing aspect of modern history will probably never fade. Moreover, seances will undoubtedly live on as long as literature and films continue to dive into haunting stories of ghostly visitors from the other side…even though spiritualism is a case where truth is often stranger than fiction.
A couple months back, I had my first experience with the paranormal. My roommate Jordan and I were bored one night, and decided to have a séance in my room. I thought it would be cool since I had never taken part in such things, but had always been interested. We arranged lit candles in a circle around us, killed the lights, and joined hands. We decided to call upon the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. Now I'm not sure if that's the one who showed up, but someone did.
We both felt a presence in the room and when we asked the spirit to make itself known, we heard a faint rapping. We asked the spirit a few yes or no questions and he or she responded by rapping once for yes and twice for no.
It got more interesting after we finished the séance. First, I heard the sound of glass shattering. Jordan swears she didn't hear it even though she was in the same room only a few feet away from me. Nothing had been broken either. I also heard a disembodied voice call my name, my roommate didn't hear this either. Later on, as I was trying to fall asleep, I felt someone physically breathing into my left ear, despite the fact that there was no one there. The unexplained activity stopped after that night and there has been no sign of the spirit since then.
However, later on that week, I got in a car wreck. I was making a left turn and got t-boned. Over the couple weeks or so, I got to thinking that the spirit was trying to warn me about the wreck. There are a couple of things that have led me to believe this. The first reason is that the sound of glass breaking that I heard sounded exactly like the sound of the collision. The other reason is the breathing in my left ear that I felt. After the accident, I had ringing in my left ear for a few minutes.
Could the spirit we contacted have been trying to give me the heads-up that I was going to get in an accident in a few days? I'd like to hear what you folks would have to say.