The Spiritualist Movement: Ghost Manifestations,

Séances and Scientific Proofs of Immortality

Published by Jo Hedesan on http://www.esotericoffeehouse.com/ on 13 March 2009

Before New Age, there was Spiritualism. Just like New Age, Spiritualism started as an
American counterculture movement. Just like New Age, it was a spontaneous,
‘democratic’, unorganized form of belief that did not have religious hierarchy or
sacred books, at least until very late. The vestiges of Spiritualism are still with us
today: ghost sightings, poltergeists, haunted houses, possessed people, mediums etc.
Movies like Ghost and the Sixth Sense are but the latest manifestations of a movement
that sprang in the middle of the 19th century. Even though Spiritualism waned
sometime between the two World Wars, beliefs in ghost manifestations have survived.
After all, a 2006 Gallup Organization poll revealed that 32% of Americans believe in
ghosts (1).

At the core of Spiritualist belief was the alleged phenomenon of ghost apparitions.
The dead appeared to the living in organized sessions called séances, being channeled
by human beings with special paranormal gifts called mediums. The pattern was laid
out through the first séance that launched the Spiritualist craze, which took place in
Hydesville, New York in 1848. The Fox sisters allegedly communicated with the
spirit of a dead person which heralded a new era when “the spirits clothed in the flesh
are to be more closely and more palpably connected with those who have put on
immortality” (2). From there on, the Spiritualist movement spread like wildfire across
the United States. Mediums appeared everywhere, organizing spectacular séances
where noises (rappings), table turning, automatic writing, levitation, partial or total
ghost materialization and others occurred. The democratic nature of séances attracted
a great number of those disgruntled with organized religion as well as women seeking
liberation from Victorian conventions (3).

While many refer to Spiritualism as a “religion”, it was not in the truest sense of the
word. There was no organization, no coherent belief system, no hierarchy, no formal
priesthood (except for the mediums). At the same time, it developed a ritualistic
gathering, the séance, not unlike church meetings. Its belief system was simple: as
Mary Fenn Davis put it, that man has a Spirit, that this Spirit lives after death, and
that it can hold intercourse with people still in the flesh (4). Another unspoken belief
was that these spirits of the departed were uniformly benevolent (5). Apart from that,
there was hardly any consensus about what the spirits were, where they came from
and where they were going. The most important theoreticians of the movement were
Andrew Jackson Davis in America and Allan Kardec in France. Jackson Davis, a
clairvoyant influenced by the philosophy of Swedenborg and Mesmer, claimed to
write numerous Spiritualist volumes dictated by disembodied spirits (6). As a side
note, Jackson Davis greatly influenced another famous clairvoyant, Edgar Cayce.

At the height of the movement (in the 1870s), more than 11 million Americans were
practicants or believers in Spiritualism in a population of 44 million, and the actual
‘undeclared’ Spiritualist population might have been higher (7). From America, the
movement spread to Europe, notably Great Britain and France. A great number of
famous figures supported Spiritualism, including scientists like Edgar Wallace,
Claude Flammarion, William Crookes, psychologists like William James, socialists
like Robert Owen, writers like James Fenimore Cooper, Arthur Conan Doyle and
others. The mother of Abraham Lincoln organized séances to speak to her son after
his death and czar Alexander I abolished serfdom in Russia because of post-mortem
instructions received from his dead father emperor Nicholas I (8, 9). In a case that
caused sensation in its time, a medium claimed that Charles Dickens dictated him the
rest of his unfinished novel Edwin Drood (10).

Most Spiritualists firmly believed that the phenomenon were natural and could be
measured scientifically. For instance, astronomer Flammarion claimed that “spiritism
(French for Spiritualism) was not a religion but a science” (11). Numerous scientists,
including Pierre and Marie Curie, tried to ascertain the scientific nature of the
Spiritualist phenomenon (12). As science still held an enormous prestige in the era,
Spiritualists looked forward to it certifying the belief in immortality (13). Indeed, an
esteemed scientist such as evolutionary biologist Edgar Wallace lent his support to the
séances.

Despite the Spiritualists’ lofty ideals and expectations, the movement was fraught,
almost from the start, with the problem of the mediums. Mediums were the
intermediaries of psychic phenomena, playing a role similar to priests and religious
authorities in other organized religions. Yet mediums were often lowly and shady
characters whose motives were sometimes questionable. Several so-called mediums
were exposed as frauds or impostors looking for money and fame (14). The reliance
on these ambiguous mediums, combined with oppositions of many of the scientific
and religious community, eventually stifled the movement. The scientific nature of
séances was never settled, and Spiritualist beliefs never quite went away. As
mentioned at the beginning, they got absorbed into the wider New Age movement.

The legacy of Spiritualism is worth mentioning for a moment. Spiritualism had an

important impact on the formation of the esoteric movement of Theosophy, and
indirectly influenced New Age beliefs. It empowered the feminist and abolitionist
movement (for instance, Lincoln frequently consulted Spiritualist Jackson Davis)
triggered the creation of the modern circus and magician numbers (15, 16), also had
an impact on the arts and letters, with writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and
William Butler Yeats being influenced by its beliefs.

(1) Wikipedia. (2009). Ghost. Online. Available at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost/. Accessed 12 March 2009.
(2), (3), (4), (5), (7), (14) Gomes, M. (1987). The Dawning of the Theosophical
Movement. Quest Books.
(6) Delp, R.W. (1967). Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet of American Spiritualism. The
Journal of American History, 54(1), pp. 43-56.
(8), (12) Wikipedia. (2009). Spiritualism. Online. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism. Accessed 11 March 2009.
(9), (10) Blavatsky, H.P. (2003). The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky. Quest Books.
(11) Wikipedia (2009). Allan Kardec. Online. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Kardec. Accessed 11 March 2009.
(13) Moore, L. (1972). Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of
the Spirit Rappings. American Quarterly, 24(4), pp. 474-500.
(15) Prothero, S. (1993). From Spiritualism to Theosophy: "Uplifting" a Democratic
Tradition. Religion and American Culture, 3(2), pp. 197-216.
(16) Goldsmith, B. (1998). Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the
Scandalous Victoria Woodhull. New York: Alfred A Knopf.