5 ms·

Why Did So Many Victorians Try to Speak with the Dead?

37 points by samclemens 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
The article has a few interesting non-fiction book recommendations (are Houdini's books in the public domain? They don't seem as easily found online as I'd expect), so I'll add a random fiction book to the list: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27272632-summerland https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27272632-summerland A sci-fi/fantasy/spy novel that builds from the assumption that the victorians discovered a real afterlife. Fairly unique in setting, and I found it an enjoyable enough read that I'm looking into picking up the author's other books.
- yorwba 5y ago
  Wikisource has transcribed versions of some of Houdini's books, but not yet of "A Magician Among the Spirits" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Harry_Houdini https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Harry_Houdini The Internet Archive has a scan of the book: https://archive.org/details/1924HoudiniAMagicianAmongTheSpirits https://archive.org/details/1924HoudiniAMagicianAmongTheSpir...
polytronic 5y ago
Because they had no tv?
pmoriarty 5y ago
One interesting thing that happened in that era was the unlikely friendship that developed between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.[1][2] Doyle was a true believer in spiritualism while Houdini was a debunker of it. They became friends despite this conflict of views, but later had a falling out over it when Doyle arranged for a seance for Houdini where Houdini's dead mother allegedly appeared. [1] - https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2016/04/the-real-story-of-houdini-doyle.html https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2016/04/the-real-story-of-h... [2] - https://medium.com/picture-palace/harry-houdinis-spiritual-feud-with-arthur-conan-doyle-702eca2f16ee https://medium.com/picture-palace/harry-houdinis-spiritual-f...
- darkhorse22 5y ago
  > Houdini was immediately suspicious. The message was written in English and his mother only spoke German. At the top of each page was a cross. His mother was the wife of a rabbi and devoutly Jewish. There is no way she would have drawn a cross. Finally, the day of the séance was her birthday. Why didn’t she mention this?
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    This would probably sound laughable for anybody who has basic idea of extrasensory practice. Even assuming ghosts exist, you really can't contact them directly as if they were on a telephone/fax. That only works this way in cartoons. The only slightly realistic scenario is them channeling pure meanings/thoughts into a medium's mind. The medium then interprets them and turns them into words/drawings in accordance with habits of his own mind. For example some times I (not a medium, I mean in ordinary life) really know what do I want to say and that is a simple one-word concept but I have hard time recalling the word in ANY of the languages I speak, I only have a pure meaning experience without a verbal representation to express. If I somehow could pass this sense to someone else telepathically they would still probably misinterpret it, e.g. because they have a different context in their minds. And I would hardly waste time/traffic mentioning my birthday if I were talking to my son through an unreliable inter-dimensional telepathical connection.
    - mjburgess 5y ago
      Have you considered how you would distinguish this from ghosts simply not existing? It seems like what you're describing is merely a means by which a non-existent phenomenon may seem plausible.
      - qwerty456127 5y ago
        It seems obvious they probably don't exist and it's hardly possible to prove they do. But if they did (proving they don't exist seems equally impossible to me), I could only imagine they would communicate the way I describe. Nevertheless it indeed seems a curious exercise to invent a framework for meaningful communication to be logically possible over a channel of such a nature keeping its fuzziness in mind.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
desktopninja 5y ago
The dead know all the secrets?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Presumably for the same reason people in every other era, including today, try to speak with the dead: they miss them.
PaulHoule 5y ago
This was popular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost
hasmanean 5y ago
Because they had new surveillance technology (the telephone) and they needed a plausible explanation for what the source of all their secret information was. You can turn a specially modified telephone into a listening device. All important people had phones in their offices sitting right on their desks. But obviously, to the gullible public, they were getting it directly from “the dead”.
canadianfella 5y ago
Ignorance

37 points by samclemens 5y ago

The article has a few interesting non-fiction book recommendations (are Houdini's books in the public domain? They don't seem as easily found online as I'd expect), so I'll add a random fiction book to the list: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27272632-summerland https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27272632-summerland A sci-fi/fantasy/spy novel that builds from the assumption that the victorians discovered a real afterlife. Fairly unique in setting, and I found it an enjoyable enough read that I'm looking into picking up the author's other books.

yorwba 5y ago
Wikisource has transcribed versions of some of Houdini's books, but not yet of "A Magician Among the Spirits" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Harry_Houdini https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Harry_Houdini The Internet Archive has a scan of the book: https://archive.org/details/1924HoudiniAMagicianAmongTheSpirits https://archive.org/details/1924HoudiniAMagicianAmongTheSpir...

polytronic 5y ago

Because they had no tv?

pmoriarty 5y ago

One interesting thing that happened in that era was the unlikely friendship that developed between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.[1][2] Doyle was a true believer in spiritualism while Houdini was a debunker of it. They became friends despite this conflict of views, but later had a falling out over it when Doyle arranged for a seance for Houdini where Houdini's dead mother allegedly appeared. [1] - https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2016/04/the-real-story-of-houdini-doyle.html https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2016/04/the-real-story-of-h... [2] - https://medium.com/picture-palace/harry-houdinis-spiritual-feud-with-arthur-conan-doyle-702eca2f16ee https://medium.com/picture-palace/harry-houdinis-spiritual-f...

darkhorse22 5y ago
> Houdini was immediately suspicious. The message was written in English and his mother only spoke German. At the top of each page was a cross. His mother was the wife of a rabbi and devoutly Jewish. There is no way she would have drawn a cross. Finally, the day of the séance was her birthday. Why didn’t she mention this?
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  This would probably sound laughable for anybody who has basic idea of extrasensory practice. Even assuming ghosts exist, you really can't contact them directly as if they were on a telephone/fax. That only works this way in cartoons. The only slightly realistic scenario is them channeling pure meanings/thoughts into a medium's mind. The medium then interprets them and turns them into words/drawings in accordance with habits of his own mind. For example some times I (not a medium, I mean in ordinary life) really know what do I want to say and that is a simple one-word concept but I have hard time recalling the word in ANY of the languages I speak, I only have a pure meaning experience without a verbal representation to express. If I somehow could pass this sense to someone else telepathically they would still probably misinterpret it, e.g. because they have a different context in their minds. And I would hardly waste time/traffic mentioning my birthday if I were talking to my son through an unreliable inter-dimensional telepathical connection.
  - mjburgess 5y ago
    Have you considered how you would distinguish this from ghosts simply not existing? It seems like what you're describing is merely a means by which a non-existent phenomenon may seem plausible.
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      It seems obvious they probably don't exist and it's hardly possible to prove they do. But if they did (proving they don't exist seems equally impossible to me), I could only imagine they would communicate the way I describe. Nevertheless it indeed seems a curious exercise to invent a framework for meaningful communication to be logically possible over a channel of such a nature keeping its fuzziness in mind.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

desktopninja 5y ago

The dead know all the secrets?

thaumasiotes 5y ago
Presumably for the same reason people in every other era, including today, try to speak with the dead: they miss them.

PaulHoule 5y ago

This was popular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost

hasmanean 5y ago

Because they had new surveillance technology (the telephone) and they needed a plausible explanation for what the source of all their secret information was. You can turn a specially modified telephone into a listening device. All important people had phones in their offices sitting right on their desks. But obviously, to the gullible public, they were getting it directly from “the dead”.

canadianfella 5y ago

Ignorance