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How 19th-Century Spiritualists ‘Canceled’ the Idea of Hell to Address Social and Political Concerns
Spiritualists believed that after shedding the body in death, the spirit would continue on a celestial journey and help those on Earth create a more just world.
by
Lindsay DiCuirci
via
The Conversation
on
May 8, 2024
Immortalizing Words
Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.
by
Ashley C. Barnes
via
The Hedgehog Review
on
April 30, 2024
The Ghost-Busting 'Girl Detective' Who Awed Houdini
As an undercover investigator, Rose Mackenberg unmasked hundreds of America’s fake psychics.
by
Nina Strochlic
via
Atlas Obscura
on
March 14, 2024
The Plunder and the Pity
Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.
by
Ian Frazier
via
New York Review of Books
on
January 18, 2024
Throngs of Unseen People
A new history of spiritualism during the Civil War era suggests an unexpected link between the Lincoln family and that of John Wilkes Booth.
by
David S. Reynolds
via
New York Review of Books
on
September 15, 2022
“Pajamas from Spirit Land”: Searching for William James
After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.
by
Alicia Puglionesi
via
The Public Domain Review
on
February 23, 2022
She Spoke to the Dead. They Told Her to Free the Slaves.
In 1850s Vermont, Achsa Sprague swore that the spirits who helped her walk again also possessed her with a crucial mission: freeing every soul in America.
by
Madeline Bodin
via
Narratively
on
October 21, 2021
The Invisible Landscape: Tracing the Spiritualist Utopianism of Nineteenth-Century America
The hidden history of Utopian Socialism and its close relationship with cultures of esoteric spirituality in the nineteenth-century United States.
by
Edmund Berger
via
Reciprocal Contradiction 2.0
on
April 11, 2020
partner
The Fox Sisters
The story of Kate and Margaret Fox, the small-town girls who triggered the 19th century movement known as Spiritualism.
via
BackStory
on
October 25, 2019
This 19th-Century ‘Toy Book’ Used Science to Prove That Ghosts Were Simply an Illusion
“Spectropia” demystified the techniques used by mediums who claimed they could speak to the dead, revealing the “absurd follies of Spiritualism.”
by
Vanessa Armstrong
via
Smithsonian
on
October 29, 2024
How a Young Harriet Tubman Found Solace in Syncretic Religion
Childhood trauma led Minty Ross (Harriet Tubman) to seek divine intervention.
by
Tiya Miles
via
Literary Hub
on
June 18, 2024
Tomorrow People
For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?
by
Roger Luckhurst
via
Aeon
on
June 3, 2024
The Prophet Who Failed
After the apocalypse that wasn’t.
by
Emily Harnett
via
Harper’s
on
May 24, 2024
Rocky Horror Has Surprising Roots in Victorian Seances
‘Time Warp’ all the way back to the 1800s.
by
Victoria Linchong
via
Atlas Obscura
on
October 11, 2023
A Poisonous Legacy
Two new books reveal the story of Stanford University’s early years to be rife with corruption, autocracy, incompetence, white supremacy, and murder.
by
Jessica Riskin
via
New York Review of Books
on
June 1, 2023
The Emancipatory Visions of a Sex Magician: Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Occult Politics
How dreams of other worlds, above and below our own, reflect the unfulfilled promises of Emancipation.
by
Lara Langer Cohen
via
The Public Domain Review
on
February 8, 2023
Stop All the Cocks! Who Killed Jane Stanford?
Many of the private colleges and universities in the US arose as much out of vanity as necessity. But for morbid narcissism, nothing comes close to Stanford.
by
James Lasdun
via
London Review of Books
on
December 1, 2022
This House Is Still Haunted: An Essay In Seven Gables
A spectre is haunting houses—the spectre of possession.
by
Adam Fales
via
Dilettante Army
on
February 15, 2022
Music and Spirit in the African Diaspora
The musical traditions found in contemporary Black U.S. and Caribbean Christian worship originated hundreds of years ago, continents away.
by
Livia Gershon
,
Teresa L. Reed
via
JSTOR Daily
on
February 4, 2022
Mesmerizing Labor
The man who introduced mesmerism to the US was a slave-owner from Guadeloupe, where planters were experimenting with “magnetizing” their enslaved people.
by
Emily Ogden
,
Matthew Wills
via
JSTOR Daily
on
January 18, 2022
The Mediums Who Helped Kick-Start the Oil Industry
Apparently some people communed with spirits to locate the first underground oil reserves.
by
Paul H. Giddens
,
Jess Romeo
,
Rochelle Ranieri Zuck
via
JSTOR Daily
on
June 18, 2021
The Strange Revival of Mabel Dodge Luhan
The memoirist is at the center of two new, very different books: a biography of D. H. Lawrence and a novel by Rachel Cusk. Has she been rescued or reduced?
by
Rebecca Panovka
via
The New Yorker
on
June 2, 2021
Why Did Everyone in the 19th Century Think They Could Talk to the Dead?
Kevin Dann on the spiritualists of New York City and beyond.
by
Kevin Dann
via
Literary Hub
on
January 5, 2021
The ‘Psychic Highway’ that Carried the Puritans’ Social Crusade Westward
Elements of the Puritans’ unique worldview were handed down for generations and were carried westward by their descendants, the people we call Yankees.
by
Gregory Rodriguez
via
Contra Mundum
on
November 22, 2020
The Twisted Transatlantic Tale of American Jack-o’-Lanterns
Celtic rituals, tricks of nature, and deals with the devil have all played a part in creating this iconic symbol of Halloween.
by
Blane Bachelor
via
National Geographic
on
October 27, 2020
Dispatches from 1918
Thinking about our future, we look back on the aftermath of a century-old pandemic.
by
Radiolab
via
WNYC
on
July 17, 2020
Speaking with the Dead in Early America
A new book recovers the many ways Protestant Americans, especially women, communicated with the dead from the 17th century to the rise of séance Spiritualism.
by
Erik Seeman
via
The Junto
on
December 9, 2019
William James and the Spiritualist’s Phone
A story of a philosopher, his sister, and belief.
by
Emily Harnett
via
Lapham’s Quarterly
on
February 4, 2019
Modern Mindfulness is Rooted in a Racist History
Before Americans turned to Buddhism for life hacks, they treated it like a dangerous cult.
by
Ryan Anningson
via
Quartz
on
March 15, 2018
Orphan Utopia
The story of a spiritual visionary who in 1884, set out to create a colony of orphans in the New Mexico desert.
by
Reed McConnell
via
Cabinet
on
August 15, 2017
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