For more than 60 years in the late 19th century and early 20th century, a New Religious Movement known as Spiritualism swept across the Western World. Everyone from famous authors to housewives took part in engaging with spirits and Mediumship via Séances and other means. These days Spiritualism is mostly taken as a period of time in which every participant was either delusional or being conned by frauds. Yet there is much more to Spiritualism and Spirit Mediumship than what most people are familiar with. Going through it with us is the one and only Dr. Jack Hunter.
Dr. Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion, ecology and the paranormal. He is the Author and Editor of some of my favourite books, including Manifesting Spirits, Greening the Paranormal, Engaging the Anomalous and many more. Be sure to check out what Dr. Hunter gets up to at his website as well as on YouTube. And definitely be sure to Join his Patreon! I’m a Supporter! For all things Dr. Hunter click the pic below!
Show Notes
- Manifesting Spirits: An Anthropological Study of Mediumship and the Paranormal by Dr. Jack Hunter – Must Read!
- The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the Dead in America and Around the World by Christopher M. Moreman – These 3 Volumes are pretty much the best history of Spiritualism that you will find
- The History of Spiritualism by Arthur Conan Doyle – The creator of Sherlock Holmes gives his history of the movement which he truly believed in. Worth a read
- The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience by John Benedict Buescher
- Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance by Cathy Guiterrez
- The Spiritualists: The Passion For The Occult In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries by Ruth Brandon
- I have to say, but this is by far The Best Booklist about Spiritualism that I’ve ever come across. Fantastic reading here, whoever compiled this list knows what’s up
- The Society for Psychical Research
- International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals. This is an amazing site but be sure to click through their archives, it is unbelievable
- Afterlife Library
- The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult
- Frederic W. H. Myers – Definitely worth knowing about this fella
- Phantasms of the Living by Gurney, Myers and Podmore – Vol One & Two
- Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by Frederic Myers
- American Spirit: A History of the Supernatural – Some Fantastic Listening here. Well worth your time
- The Scole Experiment – Pretty Amazing and incredible stuff here
- A Basic Guide To The Development and Practice of the New Physical Psychic Phenomena – Set up your own Scole-style Séance
- The Scole Experiments – Documentary
- Is Spiritualism based on Fraud? by Joseph McCabe
- Houdini and the Spiritualists
- The Heyday Of Spiritualism by Slater Brown
- Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead by Christine Wicker
- Eusapia Palladino: Remembering a Great Physical Medium with Carlos Alvarado
- Eusapia Palladino: An Autobiographical Essay
- Daniel Dunglas Home – This guy was off the charts
- Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr. D. D. Home
- Lectures on Psychical Research by C. D. Broad
- Helen Duncan – Last person tried for witchcraft in England with her doll “Peggy.”
- Oliver Lodge
- The Story of Robert Owen
- Kenneth Batcheldor in Séance Science
- The Cottingley Fairies
- Shannon Taggart has a book coming out in which she photographs folks at séances. There’s a wonderful interview with her at Weird Studies.
- The Bristol Spirit Lodge Circle – This group was kind enough to have Dr. Hunter take part in some of their Mediumship sessions, which Dr. Hunter wrote about in Manifesting Spirits
What Magic is This? 