A Victorian Seance
The following is an excerpt from one of the books I have written entitled "Spiritualism & The Seance" (Copyright 2001- Kerrigan Enterprises, Inc.) including the Introduction & the First Chapter.
The world of the Paranormal has always held a strange fascination for me as far back as I can remember. There was always, it seems, a question—at least in the back of my mind—Do Ghosts really exist? Are they real or just a figment of my imagination? I can remember, as a young teenager, attending one of those Midnight Live Spook Shows at our local Movie Theater. The show, although somewhat hokey in its presentation still left quite an impression. Ever since that night I’ve had a strong interest in theater and drama.
The Home Page lists me as a Civil War Magician & Theatrical Medium. Just what is, you may ask yourself, a Theatrical medium? Well this book you are about to read is, in fact, based on a theatrical presentation I have personally choreographed and include in a Dinner Theater presentation held regularly in Gettysburg, Pa. The production is a “One Man Show” of sorts where I have the distinct opportunity of portraying three entirely different characters from the Civil War Era… each one dramatically different from the other. The Séance portion of the show is based on research I have done on the history of the Séance and Mediums … those who officiate at them. So, as the title implies, I‘m not a real medium but I play one on stage. My extensive background in Magic has led me to study all the forms of the Magical Arts and The Séance & Spiritualism are considered to fall within that realm.
The Great Magician & Escape Artist of the day, Harry Houdini, was involved heavily in the Spiritualist movement through his friendship with Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He worked feverishly to expose the fraudulence that evolved from the practice of “communicating with the Dead”. Hopefully you will find this treatise to be both Educational and Entertaining and, possibly, you too will come to Gettysburg and experience for yourself our Dinner Theater Presentation at the Historic Fairfield Inn, 15 Main St., Fairfield, Pa. 17325. For reservations CALL TOLL FREE 1-888-246-4432
Spiritualism, as we have come to know it, got its start in 1848 in the little town of Hydesville, New York. Hydesville, at the time, was quite small. The total population was about 40.
The phenomenon responsible for the start of Spiritualism was a little ditty known as “Spirit Rapping”; not to be confused with “Rapping” as we’ve come to know it today. The whole thing was started by two young girls and, taken quite literally, they were only 6 1/2 and 8 years old. Those young girls came to be known as the Fox Sisters. If you do any study on the subject of Seances and Spiritualism, the name of the Fox Sisters will come up and it will come up quite often. The girls were, it seems, at that prankish age—6 1/2 & 8 years old—and they liked to fool their mother. Their mother was described by friends and neighbors as being somewhat “dim of wit”, she was easily fooled, as was their father.
The whole thing started off innocently enough as a sort of prank. The girls, you see, would simply take a string and tie it around an apple and, when mother wasn’t looking, they would pull on the string and the apple would make a rapping sound. These sounds were confounding and confusing to the mother. So much so that she had to confide in someone. She spoke to some close friends and neighbors and, eventually, to the girls themselves whereupon the girls readily confessed to the fact that the strange noises about the house...these rapping sounds... were, in fact “nothing more than...well they were simply… UH!... Noises being made by the ghost of an old man who had been murdered in the cellar of the old house sometime before the family had moved into the place...Yeah! That’s it..”
Well, as you might well imagine, in a small town such as was Hydesville, this news raised the eyebrows of at least a few of the 40 residents living there. None were aware of anyone having been reported missing, let alone having been murdered—in their town?
At first...they came...out of curiosity. Later...they came...out of obsession. You see, at that time people were dying at a young age. They left behind family, Friends, Neighbors, Loved Ones. Those left behind wanted to know that all was well “on the other side of the veil”. At first...they came out of curiosity. Later… they came out of sheer obsession.
The Fox Sisters had an older sister, some 23 years their senior, who had been living away from home for quite some time. When she heard about all the excitement being generated by this “Spirit Rapping” thing, she decided that it was time to come back home. Those who knew her felt that she could “Hear cash register bells ringing in her ears all the way home.” It didn’t take her long to get there. It took even less time for her to discover that her siblings did, in fact, possess a very special talent or skill. She soon learned that they were both double and triple jointed in their toes and ankles and they quickly discovered that, by seating themselves at a simple table, they could in fact, by controlling the muscles in their lower legs and in their ankles, re-create that “Rapping Sound” without the string and without the apple.
The older sister was ecstatic. She immediately set herself up as their manager and, as such, designated herself to be a Medium. As a Medium, it became her self designated chore to serve as the communicator between the living...and the Spirit World. As a Medium, she would bring a small group of people into a small, dimly-lit room. The room was lit only by a single candle. Once in the room she would designate that small group of people to be what she referred to as “Sitters”. Actually the name fit quite well as that is exactly what those people were doing at the time...sitting. She would also, at that time, take upon herself the task of asking the Spirits various questions, on behalf of various members of that sitting group, whereupon those Spirits would answer those questions with, you guessed it, a Rapping Sound. One rap was “Yes!”, two raps meant “No!” and, as you may have already figured out for yourself...three raps meant “Can’t Say! Or “Don’t Know!”. Actually it was like walking into WAL-MART and picking up one of those Eight Balls where you turn it upside down and the answer floats slowly to the top, or maybe, you may be more familiar with the newer Executive Decision Maker where you simply press a button and lights blink and it beeps. It was all that simple, at first. But still people came. At first they came out of curiosity. Later… later they came out of TOTAL OBSESSION. You see, these people wanted...no these people needed to know... that all was indeed well on the other side of the veil. Many of them came bearing large sums of money, prepared to pay dearly just for the opportunity to communicate with the Spirit of their own loved ones.
Over the next six months the older sister worked very closely with her siblings, developing “Special Effects” for their program. After six months they had quite an elaborate program which they called a “Séance”. Oddly the Séance caught on. They became quite popular. Within the first two years, in Ohio alone, there were over 200 circles of Mediums. A circle consisted of 12 to 14 persons actively performing Seances in their community. That put it at nearly 3000 Seances being performed in Ohio alone...just within the first two years. By the end of the second year the craze, as it was referred to, had spread to Europe. Seances were being performed, on a regular basis, in London, England, and would soon be performed, on a private basis for Queen Victoria herself. By the end of the third year Seances were being performed literally around the world...they had become so popular they were designated as a Religion which was referred to as Spiritualism.
There were many personalities of the day sucked into the Spiritualist movement. Among these was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of “The Lost World” & “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. Sir Arthur actually believed, in his own heart, that the great Magician & Escape Artist of the day...Harry Houdini,,, was actually able to dematerialize his own body in order to make good his escape from that trunk in the “Metamorphosis Illusion”, an Illusion I, myself, have been performing on stages across the nation for the past 20 years.
There were many gifted people associated with the Spiritualist movement. There were many legitimate Psychics... as there are to this very day. It’s just that the Fox Sisters were never listed among the truly legitimate ones. In their later years, the Fox Sisters made a public confession to the fact that they had, in deed, been “bilking” people out of thousands and thousands of dollars over the years but, by then the public was so enamored with the idea that they had, in fact been communicating with the spirits of their own loved ones that they simply didn’t listen. The Fox Sisters lived to a ripe old age, in fact, one of them died quite wealthy.
Why was the Séance so popular? Well, people were, as was mentioned, dying at a young age back then. The proverbial flame was being fanned by the news media who were constantly writing articles about Seances, Spiritualism, the Fox Sisters, the Ghosts of the World. It seems there wasn’t a day that went by that some major publication didn’t feature an article about them in one way or another. Within 5 years The Séance had reached the height of its popularity, at least for the time being. Ten years later the Séance was still being performed with great regularity. In the twelfth year, however, something happened. The Séance, that year, seemed to bottom out. Why? The twelfth year...1860…the Civil War broke out here in the United States and, with the start up of the American Civil War, the news media simply quit writing about the Séance. They felt that that time and space was much better spent on the “Front Lines” and what was happening with our boys on the Battle Front. As a result, they just quit writing about the Séance & Spiritualism completely.
In all honesty, though, with the start up of the Civil War the Séance had gained in popularity. It had become more popular than at any time in its entire history. The Séance had become so popular , in fact, that—in April of 1863 a gentleman by the name of Charles Schockle did, in fact, perform a Séance, in the White House, for the Lincoln Family. Mrs. Lincoln, it seems, was obsessed with the idea of communicating with the Spirit of their son Willie who had died a year earlier in 1862.
With Willie’s death, however, tragedy was far from finished with the Lincoln Family. A few years after Willie’s death. Abe was assassinated, a few years after that another Lincoln son, Tad, was to pass over to the other side as well. With Abe’s assassination, Mrs. Lincoln was often seen in attendance at Seances; so often, in fact, that people soon began to spread rumors to the fact that she, herself, had become a Medium. Historians were never able to substantiate that as fact, however and, although Mrs. Lincoln was an ardent fan of Seances and Spiritualism, she never did become a Medium herself. Well, that sort of lets us hanging in 1863. Right smack dab in the middle of the American Civil War.
I have a reading that I would like to share with you, at this point. It will help convey the mood to follow. It is quoted from Mark Nesbit’s Book “More Ghosts of Gettysburg”, actually Volume number 2 of the five volume set of easy to read Ghost Stories based on the Many Ghosts of Gettysburg. The subject at hand is Time & its relationship with death.
Time is such a mysterious thing. The different ways we measure it, loosely based upon the turning of the earth relative to the sun, or even with atomic clocks, seem inadequate toward understanding time’s true nature. There is the time which flows forward and is measured by pieces on our wrists or on the walls or in towers and keeps us coordinated with the rest of the world. More important is the time ticked off by our own bodies that represents the gradual decay of our own physical forms, because when that clock stops, so do we. The only real reason time matters is death, and so we must be very careful with the way we kill time before it eventually kills us.
But what happens to time when we die?
Some parapsychologists believe that the sightings of apparitions indicate life after death, that the dead person is, in fact, the one sending the telepathic message to the living. And, if we do indeed move on, into another form or world, certainly some form of time must occur, because in order to exist in any form, something must be in existence for at least some time. Some philosophers have called it universal time, or even God’s time, wherein time travels not forward—in fact, doesn’t even flow—but merely exists as “now”. The existence somewhere of an ageless, timeless, non-decaying “now’ certainly explains the immutability and eternal nature of those gone before us.
Gettysburg is said to be, acre for acre, the most haunted place in America today. Experts attribute that to the fact that thousands upon thousands of young men, ages 15… 17… 19… were so tragically and traumatically ripped from life by the ravages of what has come to be known as our American Civil War.The town of Gettysburg is, indeed haunted. Stories of the many Ghosts abound and people come from all over to experience, for themselves, or perhaps even to see at least one of the many Ghosts of Gettysburg.
Do you believe in Ghosts? There are many folks who do, in fact, believe in Ghosts … there are many more who would like to believe, they’re simply waiting for the spirits to show themselves so they can justify it in their own minds, and then there are those who cringe at the mere thought that there could really be something out there … something unseen … something, as yet, unknown. I’ve never seen a Ghost myself but, in spite of that statement, I believe that they do exist. Obviously so do many others. Why else would they be so anxious to attempt to contact them? People from all over the world, from all occupations and lifestyles have, over the centuries, been willing to pay, and many paid large sums of money for the opportunity, to communicate with the spirits of lost loved ones. There are, on the other hand, those that declare it to be “against their Religion” to even sit through a Theatrical Re-creation of a Séance. The purpose of this book is not to sway you one way or the other in your belief or disbelief of Spiritualism or The Séance but merely to shed some light on it for what it was and, in fact, still is. There were many who were involved solely for the purpose of separating the grieving party from their money rather than to provide any kind of legitimate service. There were many gifted people, on the other hand, who really thought that they were, in fact, able to communicate with those spirits on the “other side of the veil”. The real question here, I guess is … “Do You Believe In Ghosts?”
The world of the Paranormal has always held a strange fascination for me as far back as I can remember. There was always, it seems, a question—at least in the back of my mind—Do Ghosts really exist? Are they real or just a figment of my imagination? I can remember, as a young teenager, attending one of those Midnight Live Spook Shows at our local Movie Theater. The show, although somewhat hokey in its presentation still left quite an impression. Ever since that night I’ve had a strong interest in theater and drama.
The Home Page lists me as a Civil War Magician & Theatrical Medium. Just what is, you may ask yourself, a Theatrical medium? Well this book you are about to read is, in fact, based on a theatrical presentation I have personally choreographed and include in a Dinner Theater presentation held regularly in Gettysburg, Pa. The production is a “One Man Show” of sorts where I have the distinct opportunity of portraying three entirely different characters from the Civil War Era… each one dramatically different from the other. The Séance portion of the show is based on research I have done on the history of the Séance and Mediums … those who officiate at them. So, as the title implies, I‘m not a real medium but I play one on stage. My extensive background in Magic has led me to study all the forms of the Magical Arts and The Séance & Spiritualism are considered to fall within that realm.
The Great Magician & Escape Artist of the day, Harry Houdini, was involved heavily in the Spiritualist movement through his friendship with Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He worked feverishly to expose the fraudulence that evolved from the practice of “communicating with the Dead”. Hopefully you will find this treatise to be both Educational and Entertaining and, possibly, you too will come to Gettysburg and experience for yourself our Dinner Theater Presentation at the Historic Fairfield Inn, 15 Main St., Fairfield, Pa. 17325. For reservations CALL TOLL FREE 1-888-246-4432
Spiritualism, as we have come to know it, got its start in 1848 in the little town of Hydesville, New York. Hydesville, at the time, was quite small. The total population was about 40.
The phenomenon responsible for the start of Spiritualism was a little ditty known as “Spirit Rapping”; not to be confused with “Rapping” as we’ve come to know it today. The whole thing was started by two young girls and, taken quite literally, they were only 6 1/2 and 8 years old. Those young girls came to be known as the Fox Sisters. If you do any study on the subject of Seances and Spiritualism, the name of the Fox Sisters will come up and it will come up quite often. The girls were, it seems, at that prankish age—6 1/2 & 8 years old—and they liked to fool their mother. Their mother was described by friends and neighbors as being somewhat “dim of wit”, she was easily fooled, as was their father.
The whole thing started off innocently enough as a sort of prank. The girls, you see, would simply take a string and tie it around an apple and, when mother wasn’t looking, they would pull on the string and the apple would make a rapping sound. These sounds were confounding and confusing to the mother. So much so that she had to confide in someone. She spoke to some close friends and neighbors and, eventually, to the girls themselves whereupon the girls readily confessed to the fact that the strange noises about the house...these rapping sounds... were, in fact “nothing more than...well they were simply… UH!... Noises being made by the ghost of an old man who had been murdered in the cellar of the old house sometime before the family had moved into the place...Yeah! That’s it..”
Well, as you might well imagine, in a small town such as was Hydesville, this news raised the eyebrows of at least a few of the 40 residents living there. None were aware of anyone having been reported missing, let alone having been murdered—in their town?
At first...they came...out of curiosity. Later...they came...out of obsession. You see, at that time people were dying at a young age. They left behind family, Friends, Neighbors, Loved Ones. Those left behind wanted to know that all was well “on the other side of the veil”. At first...they came out of curiosity. Later… they came out of sheer obsession.
The Fox Sisters had an older sister, some 23 years their senior, who had been living away from home for quite some time. When she heard about all the excitement being generated by this “Spirit Rapping” thing, she decided that it was time to come back home. Those who knew her felt that she could “Hear cash register bells ringing in her ears all the way home.” It didn’t take her long to get there. It took even less time for her to discover that her siblings did, in fact, possess a very special talent or skill. She soon learned that they were both double and triple jointed in their toes and ankles and they quickly discovered that, by seating themselves at a simple table, they could in fact, by controlling the muscles in their lower legs and in their ankles, re-create that “Rapping Sound” without the string and without the apple.
The older sister was ecstatic. She immediately set herself up as their manager and, as such, designated herself to be a Medium. As a Medium, it became her self designated chore to serve as the communicator between the living...and the Spirit World. As a Medium, she would bring a small group of people into a small, dimly-lit room. The room was lit only by a single candle. Once in the room she would designate that small group of people to be what she referred to as “Sitters”. Actually the name fit quite well as that is exactly what those people were doing at the time...sitting. She would also, at that time, take upon herself the task of asking the Spirits various questions, on behalf of various members of that sitting group, whereupon those Spirits would answer those questions with, you guessed it, a Rapping Sound. One rap was “Yes!”, two raps meant “No!” and, as you may have already figured out for yourself...three raps meant “Can’t Say! Or “Don’t Know!”. Actually it was like walking into WAL-MART and picking up one of those Eight Balls where you turn it upside down and the answer floats slowly to the top, or maybe, you may be more familiar with the newer Executive Decision Maker where you simply press a button and lights blink and it beeps. It was all that simple, at first. But still people came. At first they came out of curiosity. Later… later they came out of TOTAL OBSESSION. You see, these people wanted...no these people needed to know... that all was indeed well on the other side of the veil. Many of them came bearing large sums of money, prepared to pay dearly just for the opportunity to communicate with the Spirit of their own loved ones.
Over the next six months the older sister worked very closely with her siblings, developing “Special Effects” for their program. After six months they had quite an elaborate program which they called a “Séance”. Oddly the Séance caught on. They became quite popular. Within the first two years, in Ohio alone, there were over 200 circles of Mediums. A circle consisted of 12 to 14 persons actively performing Seances in their community. That put it at nearly 3000 Seances being performed in Ohio alone...just within the first two years. By the end of the second year the craze, as it was referred to, had spread to Europe. Seances were being performed, on a regular basis, in London, England, and would soon be performed, on a private basis for Queen Victoria herself. By the end of the third year Seances were being performed literally around the world...they had become so popular they were designated as a Religion which was referred to as Spiritualism.
There were many personalities of the day sucked into the Spiritualist movement. Among these was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of “The Lost World” & “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. Sir Arthur actually believed, in his own heart, that the great Magician & Escape Artist of the day...Harry Houdini,,, was actually able to dematerialize his own body in order to make good his escape from that trunk in the “Metamorphosis Illusion”, an Illusion I, myself, have been performing on stages across the nation for the past 20 years.
There were many gifted people associated with the Spiritualist movement. There were many legitimate Psychics... as there are to this very day. It’s just that the Fox Sisters were never listed among the truly legitimate ones. In their later years, the Fox Sisters made a public confession to the fact that they had, in deed, been “bilking” people out of thousands and thousands of dollars over the years but, by then the public was so enamored with the idea that they had, in fact been communicating with the spirits of their own loved ones that they simply didn’t listen. The Fox Sisters lived to a ripe old age, in fact, one of them died quite wealthy.
Why was the Séance so popular? Well, people were, as was mentioned, dying at a young age back then. The proverbial flame was being fanned by the news media who were constantly writing articles about Seances, Spiritualism, the Fox Sisters, the Ghosts of the World. It seems there wasn’t a day that went by that some major publication didn’t feature an article about them in one way or another. Within 5 years The Séance had reached the height of its popularity, at least for the time being. Ten years later the Séance was still being performed with great regularity. In the twelfth year, however, something happened. The Séance, that year, seemed to bottom out. Why? The twelfth year...1860…the Civil War broke out here in the United States and, with the start up of the American Civil War, the news media simply quit writing about the Séance. They felt that that time and space was much better spent on the “Front Lines” and what was happening with our boys on the Battle Front. As a result, they just quit writing about the Séance & Spiritualism completely.
In all honesty, though, with the start up of the Civil War the Séance had gained in popularity. It had become more popular than at any time in its entire history. The Séance had become so popular , in fact, that—in April of 1863 a gentleman by the name of Charles Schockle did, in fact, perform a Séance, in the White House, for the Lincoln Family. Mrs. Lincoln, it seems, was obsessed with the idea of communicating with the Spirit of their son Willie who had died a year earlier in 1862.
With Willie’s death, however, tragedy was far from finished with the Lincoln Family. A few years after Willie’s death. Abe was assassinated, a few years after that another Lincoln son, Tad, was to pass over to the other side as well. With Abe’s assassination, Mrs. Lincoln was often seen in attendance at Seances; so often, in fact, that people soon began to spread rumors to the fact that she, herself, had become a Medium. Historians were never able to substantiate that as fact, however and, although Mrs. Lincoln was an ardent fan of Seances and Spiritualism, she never did become a Medium herself. Well, that sort of lets us hanging in 1863. Right smack dab in the middle of the American Civil War.
I have a reading that I would like to share with you, at this point. It will help convey the mood to follow. It is quoted from Mark Nesbit’s Book “More Ghosts of Gettysburg”, actually Volume number 2 of the five volume set of easy to read Ghost Stories based on the Many Ghosts of Gettysburg. The subject at hand is Time & its relationship with death.
Time is such a mysterious thing. The different ways we measure it, loosely based upon the turning of the earth relative to the sun, or even with atomic clocks, seem inadequate toward understanding time’s true nature. There is the time which flows forward and is measured by pieces on our wrists or on the walls or in towers and keeps us coordinated with the rest of the world. More important is the time ticked off by our own bodies that represents the gradual decay of our own physical forms, because when that clock stops, so do we. The only real reason time matters is death, and so we must be very careful with the way we kill time before it eventually kills us.
But what happens to time when we die?
Some parapsychologists believe that the sightings of apparitions indicate life after death, that the dead person is, in fact, the one sending the telepathic message to the living. And, if we do indeed move on, into another form or world, certainly some form of time must occur, because in order to exist in any form, something must be in existence for at least some time. Some philosophers have called it universal time, or even God’s time, wherein time travels not forward—in fact, doesn’t even flow—but merely exists as “now”. The existence somewhere of an ageless, timeless, non-decaying “now’ certainly explains the immutability and eternal nature of those gone before us.
Gettysburg is said to be, acre for acre, the most haunted place in America today. Experts attribute that to the fact that thousands upon thousands of young men, ages 15… 17… 19… were so tragically and traumatically ripped from life by the ravages of what has come to be known as our American Civil War.The town of Gettysburg is, indeed haunted. Stories of the many Ghosts abound and people come from all over to experience, for themselves, or perhaps even to see at least one of the many Ghosts of Gettysburg.
Do you believe in Ghosts? There are many folks who do, in fact, believe in Ghosts … there are many more who would like to believe, they’re simply waiting for the spirits to show themselves so they can justify it in their own minds, and then there are those who cringe at the mere thought that there could really be something out there … something unseen … something, as yet, unknown. I’ve never seen a Ghost myself but, in spite of that statement, I believe that they do exist. Obviously so do many others. Why else would they be so anxious to attempt to contact them? People from all over the world, from all occupations and lifestyles have, over the centuries, been willing to pay, and many paid large sums of money for the opportunity, to communicate with the spirits of lost loved ones. There are, on the other hand, those that declare it to be “against their Religion” to even sit through a Theatrical Re-creation of a Séance. The purpose of this book is not to sway you one way or the other in your belief or disbelief of Spiritualism or The Séance but merely to shed some light on it for what it was and, in fact, still is. There were many who were involved solely for the purpose of separating the grieving party from their money rather than to provide any kind of legitimate service. There were many gifted people, on the other hand, who really thought that they were, in fact, able to communicate with those spirits on the “other side of the veil”. The real question here, I guess is … “Do You Believe In Ghosts?”
CURRENT MOON
Take a look at our CIVIL WAR SLIDE SHOW, a specially selected group of slides of People, Places & Things from the Civil War Era. I think you will enjoy this "Journey Back in Time". To go there click HERE