Spiritualism and Psychical Research
Séances, mediums, and the scientists who tried to test them.
Modern Spiritualism began in 1848 with the rappings at the Fox sisters’ house in New York and became a mass movement within a decade. Its claim that the dead could communicate prompted serious scientists to investigate, founding the field of psychical research.
This guide pairs the movement’s own histories and teachings with the investigators’ reports.
What It Is
Spiritualism was a religion of demonstration: séances, trance speaking, materialisations. In France, Allan Kardec codified Spiritism as a philosophy of reincarnation and moral progress. Investigators such as William Crookes and Charles Richet brought laboratory methods, with contested results.
Why It Matters
Spiritualism shaped women’s public voices, reform movements, Theosophy and early psychology. Its archive is also an extended case study in evidence, belief and fraud.
Core Texts
Histories, Spiritist teaching, occult-Spiritualist works and scientific investigations.
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism I
Anonymous
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism I
Anonymous
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits
Emma Hardinge Britten
Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Nineteenth Century Miracles; or, Spirits and Their Work in Every Country of the Earth: A Complete Historical Compendium of the Great Movement Known as 'Modern Spiritualism'
Emma Hardinge Britten
Nineteenth Century Miracles; or, Spirits and Their Work in Every Country of the Earth: A Complete Historical Compendium of the Great Movement Known as 'Modern Spiritualism'
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Occult Philosophy
Ghost Land; or, Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism: Illustrated in a Series of Autobiographical Sketches, in Two Parts
Emma Hardinge Britten
Ghost Land; or, Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism: Illustrated in a Series of Autobiographical Sketches, in Two Parts
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Occult Philosophy
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
What Is a Ghost? and Phantasms of the Dead
Hereward Carrington
What Is a Ghost? and Phantasms of the Dead
Hereward Carrington
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
A Beginner’s Sequence
A history
Conan Doyle’s two volumes are partisan but vivid, and written by a committed believer.
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism I
Anonymous
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism I
Anonymous
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism II
Anonymous
Arthur Conan Doyle The History of Spiritualism II
Anonymous
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Spiritism codified
Kardec’s Spirits’ Book and Book on Mediums, the foundation of the French and Latin American movement.
Occult Spiritualism
Emma Hardinge Britten’s circle produced Art Magic and Ghost Land, where Spiritualism meets occultism.
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
Art Magic, or Mundane, Sub-Mundane and Super-Mundane Spiritism. A Treatise in Three Parts and Twenty-Three Sections, Descriptive of Art Magic, Spiritism, the Different Orders of Spirits in the Universe Known to Be Related to, or in Communication with Man; Together with Directions for Invoking, Controlling, and Discharging Spirits, and the Uses and Abuses, Dangers and Possibilities of Magical Art
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Occult Philosophy
Ghost Land; or, Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism: Illustrated in a Series of Autobiographical Sketches, in Two Parts
Emma Hardinge Britten
Ghost Land; or, Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism: Illustrated in a Series of Autobiographical Sketches, in Two Parts
Emma Hardinge Britten
English · Occult Philosophy
The investigators
Crookes’s researches and Richet’s thirty-year survey: scientists weighing the phenomena.
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism
William Crookes
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Being a Treatise on Metapsychics
Richet
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
A sceptical coda
A psychical researcher’s analysis of apparitions, weighing evidence case by case.
What Is a Ghost? and Phantasms of the Dead
Hereward Carrington
What Is a Ghost? and Phantasms of the Dead
Hereward Carrington
English · Spiritualism & Psychical Research
