spirit mediums

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.

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.

Apparently some people communed with spirits to locate the first underground oil reserves.

Kevin Dann on the spiritualists of New York City and beyond.

A story of a philosopher, his sister, and belief.

Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.

As an undercover investigator, Rose Mackenberg unmasked hundreds of America’s fake psychics.

A classic ghost story has something to say about America—200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.

How dreams of other worlds, above and below our own, reflect the unfulfilled promises of Emancipation.

A new history of spiritualism during the Civil War era suggests an unexpected link between the Lincoln family and that of John Wilkes Booth.

The story of Kate and Margaret Fox, the small-town girls who triggered the 19th century movement known as Spiritualism.

The story of a spiritual visionary who in 1884, set out to create a colony of orphans in the New Mexico desert.

On the occasion of Halloween, an exploration of previous generations' fascination with ghosts, spirits, and witches.

In early 20th-century St. Louis, Pearl Curran claimed to have conjured a long-dead New England Puritan named Patience Worth through a Ouija board.

“Spectropia” demystified the techniques used by mediums who claimed they could speak to the dead, revealing the “absurd follies of Spiritualism.”

For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?

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.

"Late Night with the Devil," a “found footage” horror film, perfectly captures the mood and style that surrounded media depictions of the occult in the 1970s.

Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.

‘Time Warp’ all the way back to the 1800s.

A radio drama series from 1941 based on Dr. Hereward Carrington's case records of psychic phenomena.

Celtic rituals, tricks of nature, and deals with the devil have all played a part in creating this iconic symbol of Halloween.

The hidden history of Utopian Socialism and its close relationship with cultures of esoteric spirituality in the nineteenth-century United States. 

Telegraph operators were the first to know news of the Civil War.