Blurs

Few aspects of the paranormal are as enduring—or as theatrical—as the séance. A darkened room, a circle of people seated around a table, hands joined in silence, and a medium asking the dead to make themselves known. Perhaps there is a knock from inside the wall. A glass moves. The table trembles. A voice seems to emerge from the darkness. For believers, such moments can represent genuine contact with another world. For sceptics, they are examples of deception, suggestion and ingenious stagecraft. For historians, however, séances are fascinating for another reason: they reveal how people have tried to make sense of death, grief and the possibility that consciousness might survive the body. The modern séance emerged from the extraordinary explosion of Spiritualism in the nineteenth century, particularly following a famous series of alleged spirit communications in New York State in 1848. From there, the practice spread across the Atlantic and became a cultural phenomenon in Britain, Eur...