Ghost Hunters: The Victorians and the Hunt for Proof of Life After Death

by Deborah Blum

  12: “vermin revealing themselves”: Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 241.

  14: The Night Side of Nature: Catherine Crowe and the influence of The Night Side of Nature are referenced in every book on the early history of spiritualism. In his book Ghosts, Demons and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), literary scholar Peter G. Beidler calls this work “the most influential single book about ghosts in the second half of the nineteenth century.” A 2000 reprint of Crowe’s book by Wordsworth Editions, Ware, England, contains a thoughtful introduction by Gillian Bennett, editor of Folklore.

  16: a couple of farm girls: The life story of the Fox sisters has been dissected almost since they were born, and every book on the history of the supernatural discusses them. R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), on the history of spiritualism in the United States, contains an excellent description of the reaction of the clergy to the Fox sisters. For very different viewpoints, I also relied on Frank Podmore’s cynical look at the Fox family in Mediums of the Nineteenth Century and Arthur Conan Doyle’s detailed account of their career in The History of Spiritualism, 60-118, which includes their adoption by P. T. Barnum and a description of the sitting with James Fenimore Cooper.

  20: table talking: Entire books are devoted to table talking and its place in Victorian spiritualism; see, for instance, Ronald Pearsall, The Table Rappers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972).

  20: A letter in the Times of London: Michael Faraday’s letter to the Times was printed on June 30, 1853. He expanded that letter into the article “Professor Faraday on Table-Moving,” Atheneneum, July 2, 1853, 801—3.

  22: the impossible, unearthly Daniel Dunglas Home: Home is one of the best-known (and written about) mediums of the nineteenth century. Here and elsewhere in the book where I discuss his story, I relied particularly on Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 2:205-44; Inglis, Natural and Supernatural, 225-39; and William Barrett, On the Threshold of the Unseen (New York: E. F. Dutton, 1917), which describes Home as “the most remarkable psychic ever investigated” (57). The descriptions of the religious overtones with which Home infused his sessions and the general quality of his seances come from Conan Doyle, History of Spiritualism, 1:187-207; and Hereward Carrington, A Primer of Psychical Research (London: Rider, 1932). The attitude of Robert Browning toward D. D. Home is thoroughly discussed in Dingwall, Some Human Oddities, 191—228, with a strong implication that Browning was as disgusted by rumors of Home’s homosexuality as by any possibility that he cheated as a medium.

  23: Ira and William Davenport: The Davenport Brothers are a staple of books on early spiritualist history. I particularly liked the snide description of the Harvard investigation in Conan Doyle, History of Spiritualism, 1:211-29; and the cynical overview of the brothers’ career in Harry Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1924).

  25: “How often has ‘Science’ killed off”: William James’s discussion of “spook philosophy” comes from “Confidences of a Psychical Researcher,” first printed in the American Magazine in Oct. 1909. It is widely reprinted; for purposes of citation, I used Murphy and Ballou, William James and Psychical Research, 312.

  26: “bloody howl of the Civil War”: The discussion of James’s family during the Civil War and the long-term effect on personal relationships and attitudes, even toward war, are beautifully told in Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 73-77 and 146-48.

  27: “Now, don’t, sir! Don’t expose me!”: “Mr. Sludge the Medium,” in Robert Browning, Dramatis Personae (London: Chapman & Hall, 1864).

  28: “such things are so indeed”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s letter to her sister is printed in Dingwall, Some Human Oddities, 128.

  28: “a nauseating example”: Ira Davenport’s account of their problems in England, as well as an assessment of their career and the tricks involved in Houdini, Magician among the Spirits. 29: “an ingenious wire dummy”: Other tricks in this selection are catalogued in Isaac Funk, The Widow’s Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena (New York: Funk & Wagnall’s, 1905); John Nevil Maskelyne, Modern Spiritualism (London: Frederick Warne, 1875); and David Abbott, Behind the Scenes with the Medium (Chicago: New Open Court, 1908).

  30: “Stranger than Fiction”: This story appeared in the August 1860 issue of the Cornhill Magazine and was written by an Irish journalist named Robert Bell.

  30: “you would hold a different opinion”: Thackeray’s defense of spiritualism is cited in Inglis, Natural and Supernatural, 231.

  2. A Spirit of Unbelief

  33: famous (or infamous) book On the Origin of Species: As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, in the early 1980s, I took a history of science class, Darwin and the History of Biology, which stands in my memory as one of the best and most influential classes I ever attended. In it, we read three progressive editions of On the Origin of Species, through which we tracked Darwin’s efforts to wrestle with and respond to the flood of attacks—both personal and scientific—which inundated him following publication of the first edition. I still have my favorite book from that class, which is a facsimile of the first edition, published by Harvard University Press in 1979. The first edition itself was published in London by John Murray, Albemarle Street, in Nov. 1859, and its full title was On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection; or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

  I found two books and one dissertation helpful in thinking about the underlying tensions between science and religion at this point of time: Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Frank Miller Turner, Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974); and John James Cerullo, “The Secularization of the Soul: Psychical Research in Britain, 1882-1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980).

  33: One author who proposed that the universe might have developed: The anonymous author was a Scottish journalist named Robert Chambers; the church’s extremely angry reaction to his 1848 book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation anticipated reaction to Darwin’s work (as Darwin himself noted).

  34: Alfred Russel Wallace: Wallace gets a very sympathetic portrait from Arthur Conan Doyle in History of Spiritualism; a complex portrayal in Turner, Between Science and Religion, 68-99; and a fairly critical analysis in Oppenheim, Other World, which includes some discussion of Charles Darwin’s reactions to Wallace’s spiritualist ventures.

  Wallace describes his early investigations—and their implications—in a series of writings, including an 1866 pamphlet, The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural, and a letter to the editor of the Times of London, Jan. 4, 1873, titled “Spiritualism and Science.” Links to these and others of Wallace’s writings, including his work on natural selection, can be found on Charles Smith’s outstanding Alfred Russel Wallace page, www.wku.edu/~smithch/.

  40: “I feel convinced”: A. S. Sidgwick and E. M. S. Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir (London: MacMillan, 1906), 187-88.

  40: Henry Sidgwick: Sidgwick’s letters and the biographical details of this section come from Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick. The original papers are archived at the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.

  41: “When I found out how selfish”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 271-72.

  42: the son of a well-to-do Yorkshire clergyman: Myers writes about his life and his place in Fragments of Inner Life: An Autobiographical Sketch (privately printed, 1893; reprint, Society for Psychical Research, 1961).

  44: “It may all be true”: Huxley to Wallace, cited in James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper & Bros., 1916), 418; the book also details Wallace’s early investigations of spiritualists and efforts to interest his
colleagues. Huxley’s second letter is quoted in Report on Spiritualism, of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, Longman, Green & Co., London, 1871.

  45: William Crookes: Crookes and his psychical research can be found in all good histories of the movement. I also found useful M. R. Barrington, ed., Crookes and the Spirit World (New York: Taplinger, 1972). The detail on thallium poisoning comes from Renee Haynes, Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1982: A History (London: MacDonald and Company, 1982), 179-81. Details of his early experiments are given in his “Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science,” Quarterly Journal of Science, July 1870; and “Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual During the Years 1870 through 1873,” Quarterly Journal of Science, Jan. 1874. Crookes’s controversial first report on D. D. Home was titled “Experimental Investigation of a New Force” and was in January 1871; his second (also referenced at the start of chapter 3) was done as the 1870-73 overview. Selected text from these papers and many others by psychical researchers can be found at the International Survivalist Society Web site: www.survivalafterdeath.org/home.htm.

  45: One of the first mediums: Crookes’s meeting with the planchette-wielding medium is reviewed in the Encyclopedia for Psychical Research, 199-201.

  48: “We speak advisedly”: Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 1:150-52, cites the article in Quarterly Review, Oct. 1871, and the fact that it was written anonymously by the famed physiologist W B. Carpenter. Podmore, himself a notable psychic skeptic, characterizes Carpenter’s attack on Crookes and Varley as “impaired by extraordinary egotism and malevolence.” Crookes lodged a formal complaint against Carpenter with the Council of the Royal Society, forcing it to pass a resolution acknowledging that the statements in the Review had been inaccurate. But the incident did Carpenter no harm; the following year he was elected president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

  49: “a December evening in 1871”: Myers’s thoughts are described in Myers, Fragments of Inner Life; and in Myers’s obituary of Sidgwick in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 15 (1901): 452-62.

  3. Lights and Shadows

  52: “a much perplexed man”: Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: D. Appleton, 1888).

  53: “worthless residuum of Spiritualism”: The conclusion of Crookes, “Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science.”

  54: “The impregnable position of science”: John Tyndall, “Address Delivered before the British Association Assembled at Belfast, with Additions” (London: Longmans, Green, 1874). The text can be found at: http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/belrast.html.

  55: “his warmest sympathies but no more”: Gurney’s first refusal to join in ghost hunting is cited in a letter from Sidgwick to Myers, from Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 288. Edmund Gurney has long intrigued historians. There are two books that focus on him particularly. Gordon Epperson, The Mind of Edmund Gurney (London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), offers a very kind portrait. Trevor H. Hall, in The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1964), portrays the man as extraordinarily unstable. A balanced picture is given in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research.

  55: “those grand mysterious phenomena”: A. R. Wallace, “A Defense of Modern Spiritualism,” Fortnightly Review 15 (1874). 56: “mystery of the Universe”: Gurney to WJ, Sept. 23, 1883, Houghton.

  56: their first serious investigation: The Newcastle investigations are described in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick; and Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 107-14.

  56: Sidgwick’s attraction to Nora Balfour: The courtship and eventual marriage of Henry Sidgwick and Eleanor Balfour is based on accounts in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 118, 301—306; and, Ethel Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1938), 48-50.

  59: “prepared to be converted”: Letter from Rayleigh to his mother, written after talking with Crookes and attending a sitting with Kate Fox-Jencken, cited in Oppenheim, Other World, 331. Rayleigh’s overall position on psychical research is outlined in Haynes, Society for Psychical Research, 198-99.

  59: “Everything is always better”: Letter to Myers in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 301; Rayleigh letter to Sidgwick in Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, 50.

  59: new fad of “apports”: Wallace wrote up his report on apports in the Spiritualist, Feb. 1, 1867.

  60: a very pretty new medium: Among the many profiles of Anna Eva Fay, my favorite is in Eric J. Dingwall, The Critic’s Dilemma (privately printed, 1966), 40-49, which does a terrific job of capturing her as a cheat and a complete charmer. The investigations of the Sidgwick group and interactions with William Crookes are recounted in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research; Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 2:85, and Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 294.

  61: Home took a fierce stand: D. D. Home, Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, written in 1876 and published in 1877 by Virtue & Co. of London. In it, Home writes of receiving dismayed correspondence from Crookes and his wife and from leading spiritualists, one of whom wrote: “Astonishment! Surprise! Marvel! Have the heavens fallen upon you, Mr. Home, and crushed out your humanity? ... I cannot think of a more ungracious, ill-repaying task than exposing the faults of others” (184).

  62: His reports on Florence Cook were so smitten: Of the many accounts of William Crookes and Florence Cook, I found the most illuminating to be the “Florence Eliza Cook” chapter in Dingwall, The Critic’s Dilemma; see also Podmore’s ruthless expose in Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 2, 97-103; and Pearsall, The Table Rappers, 93-100. The damage caused to Crookes’s career, and his belated recognition of the risks of spending time with vindictive street mediums, are well covered in Inglis, Natural and Supernatural, which quotes Crookes’s plaintive letter to Home on p. 276.

  63: William Fletcher Barrett: Barrett’s story appears in all of the histories of psychical research I have already referenced.

  63: “If you can help me”: The 1871 letter Barrett received from William Crookes is reprinted in E. E. Fournier D’Albe, The Life of Sir William Crookes (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923), 199.

  64: “On Some Phenomena Associated with Abnormal Conditions of Mind”: The paper rejected for publication by the BAAS was first printed in the Spiritualist Newspaper 9 (Sept. 22, 1876): 85-94. A revised version appeared in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882): 238-44.

  65: “My opportunities have not been so good”: Rayleigh’s comments supporting Barrett’s mind-reading studies to the British Association for the Advancement of Science are cited in Shepard, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, vol. 1, 770.

  67: “a dreamy mystical face”: The newspaper description of Slade’s physical appearance is cited in Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 2:87.

  67: insisted that Slade be prosecuted: Lankester’s investigation of Slade and the resulting trial are detailed in all good histories of paranormal studies. Most of them also deal with the aftermath of his trial in England, which I did not. After fleeing to the Continent, Slade became the subject of some rather famous investigations by the German physicist and astronomer, Johann Zollner, of the University of Leipzig, who was then investigating mathematical notions of a fourth dimension in space. He ran a series of experiments with Slade, seeking to determine if the medium’s apparent ability to levitate and transport objects was due to a talent for accessing the fourth dimension. Slade apparently performed brilliantly in these experiments, but the result was a broadside scientific attack on Zollner’s reputation, including suggestions that he was suffering from senility, although the scientist was only in his early forties at the time.

  Henry Slade’s story is summarized in Shepard, Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, vol. 1, 838-40, which describes the last days of his life with some self-righteousness: “He fell victim to the drink habit, his moral standing was far from high and he sank
lower and lower. He died penniless and in mental decrepitude in a Michigan sanitorium in 1905.”

  68: a woman he could not have: Frederic Myers’s love affair with Annie Marshall dominates his, autobiographical sketch, Fragments of Inner Life, and is recounted in all histories of the psychical research movement, in the most detail in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 116—24.

  69: Myers caught the dark scent of the occult: His sittings with the Parisian mediums are described in a letter to Henry Sidgwick on August 16, 1877, archived at the Society for Psychical Research, London, and reprinted in Gauld (1968).

  70: “hints that Gurney’s pretty wife ... had married for money”: The most critical view of the marriage between Edmund Gurney and Sara Kate Sibley can be found in E. A. Sheppard, Henry James and “The Turn of the Screw” (Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 1974), 128-33, which speculates that the troubled relationship formed the background for one of James’s later stories.

  70: “You can live without me”: Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 134-36, cites Evie Myers’s letters. The story of Myers’s courtship of Eveleen Tennant (and the implication that Annie Marshall overshadowed it from the beginning) is given in Trevor Hall, “The Mourning Years of F. W H. Myers,” Tomorrow 12 (1964).

  71: William Barrett published his second report: Barrett’s second report on thought transference was first summarized in Nature in July 1881 under the title “Mind-Reading versus Muscle-Reading.” He coauthored a longer and more detailed article, based on those results, with Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers, published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882), the same issue in which his first report appeared.

  72: The British Society for Psychical Research formally convened: Founding of SPR and Sidgwick’s presidential address is reproduced in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 360-64.