Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief that humans can communicate with the spirits of the dead. It was popular in the nineteenth century up to the 1930s. The main centres were in America and Europe, with the Caribbean and South America, where it is usually called Spiritism.
Spiritualism did not have a book with authority, but it had pamphlets, meetings and mediums. A medium is a person, often female, who acts as a go-between between the living and the dead.
At its peak, spiritualism was very popular, and its followers formed Spiritualist churches.
Spiritualism Media
Spiritualism was equated by some Christians with witchcraft. This 1865 broadsheet, published in the United States, also blamed spiritualism for causing the American Civil War.
Hypnotic séance. Painting by Swedish artist Richard Bergh, 1887
The Fox Sisters
Cora L. V. Scott
Houdini exposed the tricks of "mediums"
Allan Kardec, author of five books on spiritualism
Middle-class Chicago women discuss spiritualism (1906)
The spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten.
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