Keeping in Touch: An Anthology of the Victorian Seance

Confessions of a Medium: Public Displays

            In these excerpts from Confessions of a Medium the narrator explains how he and his cohort of medium performed séances for the public on several occasions. These excerpts reveal several key points about the public séance: first, they explicitly reveal how spiritualism and the séance itself was commodified (the financial arrangements in private séances are much more subtle or do not appear at all in print); second, they explain how mediums could subvert any tests the public may choose to enact; third, they illustrate how public séances were a communal act in which people were brought together by the desire to test new epistemological methods.  

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