Table Tilts and Levitations: Harry Price’s Experiments with Stella C.
Tables have long been important objects in séances. While sitting around these pieces of furniture, séance participants (often guided by...
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eframss
- Aug 16
- 4 min
Photographic Trust and Psychic Phenomena: Colin Evans and his Famous Levitation Trick
There is a long-standing discussion in studies of spiritualism centred on the credibility of photographic evidence. Can a photograph be...
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eframss
- Jul 10
- 7 min
A Brief History of Ectoplasm
The first time many people encounter the phenomenon known as ectoplasm is while watching the 1984 classic Ghostbusters. Early into the...
225 views0 comments
eframss
- Jun 21
- 5 min
Gambols with the Ghosts: The Secret Catalogue for Fake Mediums
When one thinks of stage magicians during the early decades of the twentieth century, they usually think of the big names like Harry...
148 views0 comments
eframss
- Mar 23
- 5 min
Harry Price’s Brocken Experiment: Can a Goat be Transformed into a Boy?
In 1932 the famed psychical researcher Harry Price travelled to the Harz Mountains in Germany to conduct an experiment using...
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eframss
- Jan 23
- 3 min
Harry Houdini’s Spiritualism Scrapbooks: A Glimpse into the Popular Occulture of the 1920s
The famous magician Harry Houdini was a leading spirit and psychic investigator during the 1920s. His most famous published work on the...
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eframss
- Dec 19, 2022
- 6 min
Tis the Season to be Spooky: Revisiting Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
With the holiday season fast approaching, I thought I would write a short festive entry about ghosts and Christmas. Are there any better...
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eframss
- Dec 7, 2022
- 3 min
Remembering Pepper’s Ghost: Victorian Magic’s Greatest Illusion
When modern spiritualism first arrived on British shores in 1852 with the American medium Maria B. Hayden, it created a sensation. It was...
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eframss
- Oct 24, 2022
- 4 min
Spiritualism and the Birth of Radio
There is a long history of spiritualists using new kinds of technologies to enhance their abilities to communicate with entities beyond...
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eframss
- Sep 15, 2022
- 3 min
Ectoplasm, Levitation, and Imposture: The Story of Kathleen Goligher
Not so long ago I wrote a short Twitter thread about the early twentieth-century Irish medium Kathleen Goligher. There has been a lot of...
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eframss
- Sep 5, 2022
- 4 min
The Amazing Davenport Brothers & A Question of Doubt
Among academics, Ira Erastus (1839-1911) and William Henry Davenport (1841-1877) are two of the most renowned (or infamous) mediums of...
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eframss
- Jul 25, 2022
- 3 min
The First Society for Psychical Research: Lady Conway’s investigation of the Faith Healer Valentine
We often think of mediumship as a nineteenth-century phenomena. Usually, spiritualists attribute the origins of their movement to the Fox...
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eframss
- May 23, 2022
- 6 min
The Case of the Crawley Poltergeist
What does this World War 2 Morrison shelter have to do with paranormal investigations? Answer: it marks the beginning of a fascinating...
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eframss
- Apr 27, 2022
- 3 min
Lottie Fowler: The Forgotten American Medium
Although she is relatively unkown today, during the second half of the nineteenth century, Lottie Fowler (née Charlotte Connelly) was one...
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eframss
- Apr 4, 2022
- 5 min
The Transit of Mrs. Guppy – A Teleporting Medium
SOURCE Spirit photograph of Mrs. Tebb (left), Georgiana Houghton (middle), Agnes Guppy-Volckman (right) circa the early 1870s. Elisabeth...
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eframss
- Mar 3, 2022
- 3 min
The Many Ghosts of Dragsholm Castle, Denmark
Since moving to Denmark I’ve naturally become interested in its paranormal history. While I could easily write a full-length book on the...
423 views0 comments
eframss
- Feb 21, 2022
- 4 min
William H. Mumler: The World’s First Spirit Photographer
One of the most famous spirit images ever to be captured in a photograph was produced by the American photographer William H. Mumler...
357 views0 comments
eframss
- Feb 10, 2022
- 34 min
What's in a Letter? Reflections of a Transcription Editor
Several years ago I wrote this article with the intention of publishing it in a journal. For various reasons, however, other projects...
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eframss
- Feb 8, 2022
- 3 min
The Magical Amulets of Edward Lovett
Recently, while digging through some material on the disciplinary origins of folklore studies, I came across this map, which was drawn by...
123 views0 comments
eframss
- Feb 1, 2022
- 4 min
The Real John Dee and Edward Kelley from A Discovery of Witches
John Dee and Edward Kelley are two real historical figures in the main storyline for season 2 of A Discovery of Witches. But who were Dee...
1,121 views0 comments
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