MATERIALIZING SPIRITS

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"After a few verses of singing by the audience, a form, that of a man, was seen to emerge from between the curtains. Several gentlemen among the audience were called upon to approach the platform and to shake hands with the spirit-form, which was recognized by them all as that of Allen J. Putnam, a veteran Spiritualist, well-known in Boston, who had passed on to the higher life on the previous Friday. Before his transition he had promised some friends that he would, if possible, materialize at their public séance, and he was able to keep his word. He repeatedly appeared and joined with the audience in clapping hands." —Séance in Boston at the First Spiritual Temple,” Light (London), November 19, 1887

Over the two decades from the mid 1850s, these “demonstrations” of spirit presence and power became progressively more elaborate and “tricky,” including, for example, telepathic displays and psychometric readings of messages inside sealed envelopes. The trend was set by a pair of young brothers, Ira and William Davenport from Buffalo, who toured under the management of their father, a retired police officer, and demonstrated “manifestations,” such as the mysterious untying of rope bindings—or the escape from secure bindings—which, if presented in another context, would have been received as stage magic. The Davenports’ performances also reinforced a trend toward demonstrating “materializations” (as opposed to mere “manifestations”). In the Davenports’ “dark séances,” phosphorescent hands appeared from behind curtains or from within their specially constructed “spirit cabinet” (in which one of them, entranced, had been locked). The hands sometimes floated free among the sitters at the séance table, caressing their necks or undoing young ladies’ hair combs.

Spiritualism took from religion the imperative to “try the spirits” as part of what might be called the ritual of the séance, and took from science the imperative to subject its phenomena to “experimental investigation,” which invited attempts to falsify the hypothesis of spirit agency. This eventually pushed many public séances into “proof tests” where the medium was challenged to demonstrate the reality of the phenomena and the members of the audience were implicitly challenged to expose any trick they might detect. *[Excerpt from "Try the Spirits" Essay from SpiritHistory.com]

In an effort to encourage you to further explore spiritualism and mediums, I have selected a few books that I think you'll be interested in. I would enjoy a sharing a lively discussion about this topic via my community message board: DiscussionForum

Recommended Reading - Viewing:

• Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism by Robert C. Cox

• Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth by Anne Braude

• Spiritualism in Antebellum America by Bret Carroll [The desire to establish contact with a spirit world is as old as humanity. Read the first page]

• What the Bleep Do We Know!? [DVD] by Betsy Chesse

• Anatomy of a Seance: A History of Spirit Communication in Central Canada by Stan McMullin

• From Séance to Science : A History of the Profession of Psychology in America by Ludy T. Benjamin
  

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