By the late 19th century, many new religious movements were gaining ground in our relatively new country. But perhaps the fastest growing movement was not a name most people are familiar with today: Spiritualism.
The central belief of Spiritualism is that our consciousness — our spirit — survives the death of our physical bodies and that it’s possible to communicate with the spirits of the departed. The heyday of spiritualism overlapped and intersected with the golden age of stage magic, and a new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum, “Conjuring the Spirit World,” explores the complex and convoluted relationship between art, magic and the people who claim to talk with the dead.
GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath explores Massachusetts’ role in the rise of spiritualism in a four-part series. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 1 with guests Dee Morris, author of “Boston in the Golden Age of Spiritualism”; George Schwartz, curator-at-large at the Peabody Essex Museum; and Anton Andresen, the official magician of Salem.
Dee Morris: Massachusetts was one of the key central factors — a real destination for spiritualism because out of Boston came the Banner of Light, which was the most prominent newspaper of that movement.
Arun Rath: As she said, it was the birthplace of the spiritualist press, spirit photography and media for mediums. It was also home to some of the most famous spirit mediums — real superstars of the time.
George Schwartz: The famous Fox sisters, who sort of started the spiritualist movement in 1848, heard sounds in their house. They told their parents and then those neighbors around who would gather [at] their house that this was communication from the spirit of someone who had been buried in the basement of their home.
They figured out that the knocking was actually a code — one knock for yes, two for no — of communication. Later, it sort of grew into knocking a series of times to spell out words. But the Fox sisters became famous very early on. They started to perform on stage … their spirit communication abilities, which was just captivating and mesmerizing.
Rath: George also tells us about another set of siblings, the Davenport brothers, who really played into a more theatrical side of spiritualism, using magic to dazzle on stage and introducing props like the Spirit Cabinet.
Schwartz: The Davenport brothers — they’d sort of build up the theatrics, and they created a device known as a public cabinet seance using what they called a Spirit Cabinet that influenced many mediums and magicians to come.
It basically looks like an oversized armoire. They would be bound with their hands behind their back, tied to these benches. Instruments would be put into the cabinet, and then the doors would close.
Pandemonium ensued as the instruments would suddenly play, and a luminous hand might come out of the opening in the cabinet. But when the doors were open, they were still in the same position.
Were they mediums? Were they magicians? Their followers sort of debated that. Sometimes, the performance started with a talk about spiritualism to get people set up. But they really introduced theatrics, and they influenced magicians such as Harry Kellar, who worked with the Davenport brothers and became the most famous magician by the turn of the century, and one that [Howard] Thurston took the mantle of, of world-famous magicians.
Their act also influenced Harry Houdini — specifically the rope typing that [the Davenport brothers] used in their act, that [Houdini] used in some of his escape artistry.
Rath: Anton says magicians like him are still using some of the same props and methods that the Fox sisters and Davenport brothers developed.
Andresen: One of the things, as a performer, that I love about seeing this here is — whether it’s with spirit rapping with the Fox sisters or the Spirit Cabinet with the Davenport brothers, these are still things that are used by magicians today.
Rath: For Anton, being able to see the posters and props that were used for these performances opens a window into what they experienced.
Andresen: We can see the evolution of them through the artwork and the posters with Spirit rapping. We end up with Carter’s Astral Hand, which is an amazing poster where there’s this spirit and it’s filling the entire theater. In reality, the prop was maybe like ten inches.
What’s amazing about that, though, is the fact that the poster conveys the feeling that the audience received of having the spirits in the room, and that this small prop actually had a larger-than-life effect on them. We actually have an interactive version of the rapping hand that people can engage with here in the exhibit, which is quite nice. It’s our, sort of, modern updated version of it.
And then, the Spirit Cabinet — the purpose being that the darkened space gives an area to lure the spirits into. That idea has been used by many magicians since then. Falkenstein and Willard, Mike Caveney — they present amazing Spirit Cabinet pieces, and so to see these two things side-by-side and to know that the threads of where everything started still continue to this day is a pretty amazing thing that we get to see here in the gallery.
Rath: Whatever you believe about their act, things didn’t end well for the Fox sisters.
Schwartz: Eventually, their older sister, Leah, becomes a part of the act. … It’s said that Leah Fox was at the piano, and the spirits gave her the tune for the sheet music, the Haunted Ground.
But they experienced … they were popular, they had a good career as mediums. But there was a point where it was just souring, and one of them did a public expose on the stage in New York, saying this was all trickery.
Actually, some of it might have been directed directly towards the older sister, who was seen as very dictatorial and hard on both of them. And, you know, because very early on — the minute they’re performing in 1850 — there’s an exposé happening on stage showing that they’re there, cracking their knuckles or making noises with their joints. … One of them claimed to actually be doing [it]. But then, she retracted it a year later, and maybe the thought is that, well, she’s cutting off her career, you know? Unfortunately, both of them — their lives ended sadly, dying young as alcoholics.
Rath: And for the brothers …
Schwartz: The Davenports, you know, it said one of them died overseas when they were touring, and someone else who was part of the act took over. But the remaining Davenport brother — I mean, Houdini visited him when he was older and, according to Houdini, claimed that the rope-tying tricks were how they were doing their act. But, you know, that was Houdini’s opinion. Others have made other claims.
So, again, the mystery is always sort of there, you know — the different interpretations, whether it’s, you know, someone recanting and then taking it back. Even if someone recanted, the spiritualist community wouldn’t hear of it in terms of like the Fox sisters.
Part two of this series looks at how Boston was, in many ways, the cradle of spiritualism in America and how it intersected with the early women’s rights movement.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
