History / United States / Body, Mind & Spirit / Occultism / Social Science / Popular Culture / Spiritualism / Death & Dying
An examination of America's long and dark history with the occult and how the spiritualist movement has forever changed our understanding of politics, science, and pop culture.
Spiritualism's influence affects every corner of society. As political as it is spiritual, the movement was once defined by the belief that the living could speak freely with the dead, and that the dead spoke back. Since the mid-1800s, Americans have increasingly embraced occult rituals that have been stripped of their darkness and shined up like a lucky penny. But how did these once forbidden practices, like séances and horoscope readings, enter the mainstream?
Beginning with the Fox sisters, who could converse with the dead in New York, When We Spoke to the Dead traces spiritualism’s brightest and darkest characters across the nation through extensive research and interviews with present-day believers, debunkers, and historians to make sense of how Americans, who once hung women for witchcraft, have now accepted occult practices so much that they buy ritual sage at Walmart. Digging through layers of colonialism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, health, and politics, When We Spoke to the Dead examines how we got here and why America continues to be obsessed with the occult.
