How the Inventions of the 19th Century Brought People Closer to Talking with the Dead
In DepthWith the harnessing of electricity and the advent of the telegraph, the 19th century was a great time for advancements in communication. Not just between the living, but also between the living and the dead.
In a new video released by New York’s Morbid Anatomy Museum, Brandon Hodge, a curator of spirit communication devices, explains how the social and technological climate of the 1800s led to an increase in Spiritualism in the United States and Europe. Rituals such as séances and table tipping became more popular and instruments—like planchettes and dial plates—were developed and put into use.
“[These devices] came at a time when the telegraph was very new, when electricity was very new as this unknown force…You could charge this wooden planchette—you can’t charge wood with electricity, it’s a nonconductor, but those conceptions were so nascent when these devices were first being created and [there was] this idea that ‘Well, if I can receive a message through a telegram from someone hundreds of miles away within a few minutes, we can sort of—we just raise those poles a little higher and maybe communicate with something beyond.”
By the mid-1800s, communing with the dead was so popular, it was often used as parlor games.