The Progressive era of the late eighteenth
century to the early nineteenth century sparked a dramatic shift in the
American social paradigm. The Industrial Revolution, beginning before
the Civil War, forced the rapid conversion of the nation from agrarianism to
urbanization with such magnitude that propelled our civilization into a new
reality, and with it, new concepts of being, living, and working that were
previously never considered. Scientific
discovery, industrial technology and social reforms of the Progressive era
fired the imagination and provided individuals with a new sense of identity and
purpose. New ideas and new possibilities
emerged in the minds of men and women once thought as utterly impossible. Nicola Tesla gave us electrical theory and
his precursory electronic inventions inspired the work of other inventors for
decades to come. Thomas Edison gave the
world the light bulb, and Tesla's and Edison's combined efforts literally shed
new light on a dark world. Samuel Morse
opened the door to instantaneous worldwide, two-way communication, and
Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless telegraphy gave us the radio. Aside from the material, human cognitive
machinations reconstituted the age-old quest of human physiological and
psychological existential understanding.
Regarding that quest, history textbooks list The Spiritualist Movement of the early
eighteenth century among the various social
reformation efforts during the Progressive Era. However, The Spiritualist Movement was not
the only spiritual revolution, nor the most recent, but was merely one of an
untold number of metaphysical ideations in a long succession of spiritualist
movements throughout history.
While history may record a defined
beginning and ending of the Spiritualist Movement, Spiritualism is not so
finite as it has no beginning and will never have an end. The Spiritualist
Movement began on a small farm in upstate New York. In Hydesville,
New York in 1847, John David and Margaret Fox and their two daughters, Kate,
age twelve, and Maggie, age fifteen,
began to experience a strange phenomenon in their small homestead that had
already been thought to be haunted. The
family became increasingly disturbed by strange sounds of unknown origin. Rappings and knocks on wood and sounds
similar to wooden furniture dragged across the floor could be heard almost
every night at bedtime. Considered to be
paranormal activity, Kate Fox took it upon herself to question and challenge
the source of the knockings and eventually developed a system to retrieve
yes/no answers from the supposed entity: one knock for ‘no’ and two knocks for
‘yes’. Upon discerning the messages they
received from the entity, The Fox Sisters, as they would later be called,
determined the entity to be the spirit of a traveling merchant by the name of
Charles B. Rosner who was murdered in the house five years prior and buried
under the homestead’s basement. Word of
the living-spirit interaction got out to the public and had an impassioned
ripple effect on and throughout the community.
Soon after, the Fox
Sisters were invited to exhibit their ability of spirit communication to the
community leaders, Isaac and Amy Post, who identified the Fox Sisters as spirit
mediums. The Posts helped the sisters
proliferate their ability, capturing the attention of a man named Andrew
Jackson Davis. Davis, a self-studied
intellectual in the concept of animal magnetism, was so impressed by and
believed so whole-heartedly in the Fox Sisters that he developed his
spiritualist theories around the phenomena and took the Fox Sisters on tours
from city to city showing off the sisters’ psychic abilities. Davis would then give lectures explaining the
esoteric “science” behind the events.
Thus, Andrew Jackson Davis became the “John the Baptist of Modern Spiritualism.” Within the next few years, The Fox Sisters
gained many more notables in following of the new faith such as P.T. Barnum,
Edgar Allen Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Even though Margaret Fox confessed that her and her sister’s promotion
of spirit manifestation was a deception, the “exposure did not slow down the
growth in spiritualism, nor damage the reputation of the sisters”
(Abbott). The Spiritualist Movement was
born, and its adherents were known as Spiritualists.
The movement took America
and Europe by storm and eventually boasted over eight hundred million members
across the two continents. The largest
amplification of the Spiritualist Movement came during and after the Civil War
by which the staggering death toll sent thousands flocking to Spiritualist
churches and seances hoping to make contact with deceased loved ones slain in
the war. By the early 1900’s, and as the
Spiritualist Movement was sweeping the nation despite serious opposition, such
as the great illusionist and magician Harry Houdini who made it his life’s work
to discredit the movement, Spiritualism became not only a predominant religious
movement but also a new scientific discipline, albeit unempirical. An editorial of the Journal of Scientific Exploration
explains the scientific community’s growing interest in Spiritualism during
this period stating,
“One
of the reasons this period is so important is that some physical mediums clearly
stood out from the crowd. No matter how carefully they were controlled, and no matter
how alert, competent, and familiar with conjuring were their investigators,
these mediums produced effects that couldn’t plausibly be dismissed as
fraudulent or attributed to malobservation” (Braude 220).
Therefore, debunkers exposed and routed a great number of obvious
charlatans, but more than enough undeniable evidence remained that warranted further
attention and study.
Educated followers of the
Spiritualist Movement helped to develop this new parapsychological science by referring
to and incorporating the theories and teachings of the forerunners of modern
psychology such a Franz Mesmer. In the
1700’s, Franz Anton Mesmer of Vienna, Austria researched
astronomy and its magnetic effects on human
health as it pertained to his theory of Animal Magnetism. Mesmer used alternative healing techniques in
which the subject would be mesmerized
into an altered state of consciousness. During
this half-sleep state, the subject’s ailments reportedly healed through the
power of suggestion. Mesmer’s technique
would be later coined as hypnosis by
hypnotist John Braid in 1841. Emanuel
Swedenborg (1688-1772), designated as “The Father of Spiritualism” is another
major reference source of the Spiritualist Movement. Further justification of Spiritualism came
from the resurgence of Old World, pre-Christian era Paganism. The basic tenets of Spiritualism are derived
from shamanic beliefs and practices of indigenous cultures all over the world
and dating back to the beginnings of man.
Humans are naturally hard-wired with gravitation towards spiritual
thought, and our evolutional development has always carried with it conscious
and subconscious awareness of the mind-body-spirit connection. It has been the lifelong study of
philosophers throughout the ages from Sophocles to Egyptian sleep temples to
the Greco-Roman Oracle of Delphi and on.
Over the course of human existence, spiritual philosophy evolved into
intricate webs of thought and discipline branching into various organized
religions, eclectic and personal spiritual paths, even transforming into
concrete, empirical scientific disciplines of sociology, psychology, and healthcare.
Technological advances of the nineteenth
century has also lent credibility to the Spiritualist Movement as
some scientists and engineers converted and
redesigned electronic instruments for use in paranormal investigation
and spirit communication. These wondrous technologies produced the world we
live in today, but one invention served in quite a different capacity. Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph in
the 1870’s which recorded audio on a foil cylinder. For the first time, music and human voice can
be recorded and played back to a fascinated audience. Edison’s phonograph, designed initially to
revolutionize the music entertainment industry, also served a latent function;
it may have enabled communication with the dead.
Progressivists utilized cutting-edge
technology of the times to further the study and practice of communication with
the afterlife. Later investigators and
practitioners found the phonograph to be a useful tool for the endeavor. In
fact, the first known case, decisively coining
the term Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), was entirely
unexpected. In 1901, anthropologist,
Waldemar Bogoras, used a phonograph in Siberia to record the sounds, chants,
and incantations of a Chukchi tribal elder during a shamanic ritual. During the ceremony, Bogoras quietly
observed. When Bogoras played back the
audio of the ritual from the phonograph, he heard voices that apparently did
not belong. These voices were not
speaking in the Chukchi language but spoken
in English and Russian. Bogoras could
not explain where the voices were coming from since he was the only person of
Anglo decent present at the ritual. The
disembodied voices remain unexplainable
to this day. Demetrius, the Co-Founder
of the Ontario Catholic Paranormal Research Society (OCPRS), mentions Bogoras’
findings in the society’s newsletter stating, “According to some sources, the
Minnesota State University continues to maintain and study the recording.
Despite examinations by physicist, the recording remains
unexplainable”. Demetrius goes on to state, “Bogoras’ recording is not only the earliest
but is the most credible and fascinating piece of evidence considered to be
paranormal.” News of Bogoras’ discovery
found its way back to America which sparked the Spiritualist Movement’s
increased usage of the phonograph to attempt communication with the beyond. Groups of individuals conducting seances
using the phonograph to play specific musical selections that were thought to
stimulate spirit activity wildly proliferated.
After completion of the seances, researchers scrutinized the phonographic recordings attempting to audibly detect subtle verbal utterances from the ranks of the
deceased.
Inspired by the Spiritualists use of
his phonograph, Edison and his assistant, Dr. Miller Hutchinson, embarked upon
a project in the 1920’s to invent a telephonic machine designed for the sole
purpose of communication with the dead.
Edison announced his development of the device in an article of The
Scientific American in 1921, by stating:
If our personality survives, then it is
strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect,
other faculties, and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth. Therefore, if personality exists after what
we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave the Earth
would like to communicate with those they have left here. I am inclined to believe that our personality
hereafter will be able to affect matter.
If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so
delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life,
such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something. (Lescarboura 458)
Unfortunately,
Thomas Edison died in 1931 before he could finish his project and no other
successor appeared to continue his work.
New and improved technologies such as the gramophone and the radio soon replaced the phonograph, and the search for
intelligent supernatural afterlife continued through them. (Yarbrough)
With the film and television industry
notwithstanding, technological advances in the late 1920’s leveled off as the Progressive era tapered to
its inevitable end. The stock market
crash of 1929 and the ensuing devastation of the
Great Depression deprived American society of its former glory. Progressivism and the zeal of social reform
lost its luster. The 1930’s marked the
end of the Progressive era as America
returned to an isolationist state, and with it, the Spiritualist Movement. However, Spiritualism
was never truly abandoned but only retreated to the shadows of society and
reserved for itself the proverbial backseat until it found future favor in the
hearts and minds of society once again. Another
major social paradigm shift shook the foundational laissez-faire social attitude and revitalize the U.S. economy as
well as the American individual from lowly farmer to factory foreman to federal
politician. The Great War, or World War
I, awakened the American spirit and pushed the passive into action. As the death toll of the war escalated, a
revival of the Progressive era Spiritualism emerged just as it did, and for the
same reasons, as the Civil War decades prior.
From there, the Spiritualist Movement relocated its path and reembarked
upon its evolutionary course.
Over the next four decades, refueled
by subsequent conflicts such as World War II, The Korean War, and the Vietnam
War, the Spiritualist Movement remained intact even though it never fully
recovered its prominent position on the societal stage it once held in the
early 1900’s. Spiritualism diverted on a
new trajectory in the 1960’s and 70’s as paranormal studies transitioned from
the domain of the general layman to scholarly review. Scientists in the fields of technology and
healthcare began taking a closer look at undeniable and overwhelming amount of
unexplainable aspects of supernatural experiences. Much was
reasonably explained away and those things disproven were cast to the
side, but much more created more
questions than they answered. With the
general but undeclared sentiment of, “If there is nothing to it then there
would be nothing to experience,”
paranormal studies captured the attention and imagination of the scientific community
and thus, furthered its evolution from merely the stuff of fiction and fantasy to
serious empirical study.
A 2013 BBC News article entitled, The
people that think they tune into dead voices, investigated a critical
moment in paranormal investigation history with the study of early EVP
experimentation. In 1969, a
Latvian doctor, Konstantin Raudive, publicly
introduced a machine that he had been using for experiments in spirit
communication. Raudive’s technique used basic radio frequency to produce what he called “white noise” as a medium and
energy source for spirits to use for communication with the living. During the sound of constant radio static,
the investigator would ask a series of questions, then stop the device and
playback a recording of the static session to listen for possible answers to
the questions. Raudive called his technique Electronic Voice Projection or EVP (Jenkins). His technique proved to revolutionize
the field of paranormal research that continues development to this day.
Mass media television broadcasts
greatly impact our lives today more than any other time in American
history. Reality TV was born in the
1950’s through the 1960’s when producers and directors began experimenting with unscripted drama formats,
but it wasn’t until the late 80’s to early 90’s that Reality TV reached its
highest apex. Television producers broke
the mold of contrived “perfect family” sitcoms and debuted television shows
such as “Cops,” “Survivor,” “American Idol,”
and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” From the midst of these new provocative,
unscripted dramas in which anything could happen, paranormal reality shows,
documentaries, and docudramas specifically focused on ghost hunting took root
and began transforming viewer perceptions about the existence of human and
other ethereal spirits walking amongst us.
The Travel Channel capitalized on the massive ratings these paranormal
shows were producing and became more of a ghost channel than what its name
advertises.
“Paranormal State” and “TAPS” were the first of a long line
of competitive television programs featuring groups and societies of paranormal
investigators dedicated to serious paranormal research while inspecting abandoned
buildings and graveyards attempting to locate, communicate with, and document
spirit manifestations. Equipped with all
the latest cutting-edge electronic detection devices derived from the
Industrial Revolution and the Spiritualist Movement of the eighteenth century,
a new version of the Spiritualist Movement is underway. Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recorders, electromagnetic
frequency (EMF) meters, night vision/full spectrum video cameras, FLIR thermal
cameras, motion detectors, and ghost boxes are just some of the modern
technological adaptations of eighteenth century and early nineteenth century
components. With modern technology in
hand, paranormal investigators on and off the record have conducted thousands
of cases and captured, documented, and recorded an extensive amount of
unexplainable phenomena. Seeing is
believing, and even though paranormal research is still in its
pseudo-scientific infancy, the truly scientific community can no longer deny
the incontestable evidence.
The mysterial trappings of the
Spiritualist Movement predates the Fox Sisters
by millions of years, ever since man began standing upright and making stone
tools. Existence
of the human soul, death and life after
death, the Spirit World(s), the mind-body connection, and the mysterious
emergent properties of human intelligence and potential have plagued scientists
and philosophers for ages. Driven by
technology, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are the beginning of a new
spiritual era as modern scientists conceptualize and theorize on these age-old questions. As empirical supernatural
study moves into the scientific realm, the Spiritualist Movement, in any form,
is here to stay and will continue to push the boundaries of human development
and enlightenment for many more ages to come.
Work Cited
“History of Modern
Spiritualism.” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/spiritualism/history/history.shtml.
Accessed 20 Mar. 2018.
Abbott, Karen. “The
Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism.” Smithsonian.com,
30 Oct. 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-fox-sisters-and-the-rap-on-spiritualism-99663697/.
Braude, Stephen.
"Editorial." Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 28, no. 2,
Summer2014, pp. 219-227. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=97436411&site=ehost-live.
Demetrius. “The ‘Ghost
Box’ Fraud.” Ontario Catholic Paranormal
Research Society, Toronto, Canada, 17 Feb. 2011,
https://ocprstoronto.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-%E2%80%9Cghost-box%E2%80%9D-fraud/.
Jenkins, Jolyon. “The
People Who Think They Tune into Dead Voices.” BBC News, 25 March 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21922834.
Lescarboura, Austin C. “Edison's Views on Life and Death.” Scientific American,
vol. 123, no. 18, 1920, pp. 446–460., www.jstor.org/stable/24991827.
Yarbrough, Don. Blog
Post. “The Phonograph: The First Paranormal
Communication Device.” Blogger.com, 12 March 2018, https://donparadocs.blogspot.com/.
Don Yarbrough
Originally authored: 6 April 2018
