Spiritism and Psychic Research

Modern Spiritualism began with the rappings at Hydesville in 1848 and within a decade had spread across America and Europe. In France, Allan Kardec systematised it into Spiritism, a doctrine of reincarnation and moral progress still practised widely in Brazil.

This room sets the believers beside the investigators: William Crookes’ laboratory sessions, Camille Flammarion’s case collections, the histories of Emma Hardinge Britten and Arthur Conan Doyle, and the psychical researchers who tried to test the phenomena scientifically.

Books here speak in three voices. Spiritualist histories and testimonies argue for the reality of communication with the dead; Allan Kardec’s works codify Spiritism as a moral philosophy of reincarnation; and the psychical researchers, among them Crookes and Richet, try to test the claims by experiment. Read at least one of each before forming a view. The movement also opened public platforms for women as mediums and lecturers, and its periodicals document reform causes of every kind. Whatever one concludes about the phenomena, the archive records a serious and sustained nineteenth-century debate.