When Seances Were All the Rage in America
In nineteenth century America and Europe, a myth about the ability of mediums to communicate with the dead grew in popularity. Seances – attempts to communicate with the spirits – were one of history’s more macabre pastimes. From the mid-1800s through the 1920s, a rise in spiritualism led to an increased belief in the feasibility of communications with the deceased. So seances became a growth industry, and mediums who claimed an ability to contact and speak with the spirits of the departed proliferated.
Attempts to contact and communicate with the dead have been made since the dawn of recorded history. Those who claim an ability to speak with the departed often elicit extreme reactions. Believers think they offer comfort to the bereaved, while skeptics view them as despicable predators, out to exploit the bereaved. The Bible falls in the latter camp: Leviticus expressly forbids the use of mediums. The rise of Christianity caused mediums to nearly vanish for centuries, but as seen below, they made a comeback in the late nineteenth century.