A Turn to the Supernatural
In the Victorian era, religion and rationality, faith and science, clashed as never before. It was an intellectually turbulent time, in which new ideas such as the theory of evolution challenged bedrock religious assumptions. Against that backdrop, many of the religiously inclined turned to the supernatural for reassurance and comfort. Mediums met that desire for the supernatural with popular performances that included ghostly materialization, ectoplasm, table rapping, and other spooky stuff. And people ate it up. Audiences ranged from big enough to fill huge theaters, eager for a spectacle, to small ones at intimate private gatherings of bereaved family members and friends, desperate to commune with a beloved departed.
Needless to say, the ability of mediums to communicate with the dead is just a myth. Seances were either outright scams by cynical charlatans and con artists who exploited the gullible and the grieving, or pious fraud by spiritualists who sought to enhance faith in their belief by any means available. It started in Upstate New York, in 1848. There, two young girls, Maggie and Katie Fox, convinced their parents and neighbors that they could communicate with the dead, who answered questions with a series of knocks. Of course, as seen below, the knocks were made by the little girls.
