Calling the Spirits

A History of Seances Lisa Morton

Reaktion Books 2020

Hb, 351pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781789142808

The word séance conjures up images of a serious group holding hands around a table in a darkened parlour, or a less serious group around a ouija board. However, Lisa Morton covers a lot more ground than the séance as she charts the many ways the living have attempted to contact those who have gone before.

She begins with accounts of summoning spirits in antiquity, then proceeds chronologically, tracking the ways in which methods of communication have changed over the centuries. The early chapters, on Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic intercourse with spirits, and Christian attitudes to necromancy in the Middle Ages are fairly brief, but as Morton moves towards the modern period, and sources are more plentiful, the level of detail increases.

Reaching the 1840s, she examines the spread of Spiritualism and associated showmanship. Short sections are devoted to such stars as the Fox sisters, the Davenport brothers, Daniel Dunglas Home, Florence Cook, Helen Duncan, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. She briefly addresses phenomena such as spirit photography, slate writing and ectoplasm, before tracking the fluctuating fortunes of Spiritualism – and attempts to talk to the dead more broadly – into the 20th century.

For what purports to be a historical survey there are serious omissions, most glaringly the physical mediumship circle at Scole, Norfolk, and the Felix Group in Germany, both of which have received extensive publicity. Séances in the 21st century are dispatched in two pages and apparently are more or less confined to the Lily Dale Spiritualist community in New York State, and the Internet.

Depictions on stage and screen warrant only half-a-dozen pages despite being a crucial element in shaping the way the séance is widely perceived, particularly the ouija board’s lamentable association with demons. A section titled “The fall of parapsychology” implies incorrectly that there is now no academic research into the possibility of afterlife communication, while “The new psychical researchers” (a heading one would like to think is ironic but probably isn’t), actually deals with television reality shows in the Most Haunted mould.

Morton has provided an evenhanded overview but attempts to cram in too much at the expense of depth, and – apart from what is contained in the online archive of the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals – largely relies on secondary sources. The result is readable and a good jumping-off point for further exploration, but omissions and occasional inaccuracies mean caution is required.

★★★