Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre

Say What? Séances and 19th Century Spiritualism

March 28, 2022 Matthew & Marissa Season 1 Episode 33
Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre
Say What? Séances and 19th Century Spiritualism
Show Notes Transcript

Today we're talking about spiritualism. Wait, what? Spiritualism deals with seances and trying to contact spirits after death. There was a lot of fraud and some debunking, and Houdini even promised he'd escape death if it was possible. Let's talk about that.

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Ref:
Elliot. (2019, November 6). Victorian ghosts: The story of spiritualism. Eskify. Retrieved March 27, 2022, from http://eskify.com/victorian-ghosts-the-story-of-spiritualism/ 

Mary Lincoln's seance at the soldiers' home - president Lincoln's cottage: A home for brave ideas. President Lincoln's Cottage | A Home for Brave Ideas. (2009, October 30). Retrieved March 27, 2022, from https://www.lincolncottage.org/mary-lincolns-seance-at-the-soldiers-home/ 

Swedenborg Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2022, from https://swedenborg.com/ 

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Marissa:

Macabrepedia makes light of dark subject matter and may not be suitable for all audiences, listener discretion is advised.

Matthew:

Spiritualism is defined as a system of beliefs or religious practices based on suppose in communications with the spirits of the dead, especially through mediums, the doctrine that the spirit exists as distinct from matter or that spirit is the only reality. In the 19th century, a movement began to take hold across the US and parts of Europe, and the handful of years that it was popular spiritual ism, was believed to be on track to become the leading religion of America. The beginning of the movement is often attributed to the fox Sisters of New York in the late 1840s. But there were already magazines and pamphlets in publication dedicated to the subject well before the 1840s stories of restless spirits haunting the places of violent and tragic deaths or of benevolent spirits offering protection and comfort to the living. Humans have always held a fascination and fear of what happens after one dies. So it is not hard to understand a willingness and desire for there to be the truth in claims of piercing the veil and communing with those that have passed over. loss and death are rarely taken well. And it is not unusual for loved ones to pass without the living gaining a feeling of closure, mediums. We G boards, spirit writings, Dream visions, and many more tools have been utilized in attempts to hear messages from the beyond. Today, we will discuss the modern history of spiritualism, the people, the gifted, and the hoaxes that it spawned. Join us as we add another entry into this our Macabrepedia.

Marissa:

Hello, and welcome to Macabrepedia a marriage of true crime in the truly bizarre. We're your hosts, Matthew, Marissa and Matthew, what did you spend this week becoming an expert on I became

Matthew:

the foremost expert on all things spiritual ism.

Marissa:

That's pretty hefty.

Matthew:

That is also not true, just like most of the acts of spiritual ism. So kind of like as we said, In the beginning, spiritual ism was It's the belief of being able to commune with with the dead. This this, you know, is gaining popularity in the 1800s. and into the early 1900s. You have to think like electricity was just invented. There's Telegraph's were a new thing where you could pass messages across.

Marissa:

Yeah, it's very mysterious. Yeah. So

Matthew:

if you can, if you can make if you get a message with a few ppppp clicks from New York to California,

Marissa:

I can't communicate with the dog catcher

Unknown:

do it wasn't good phone. They're all they're all electricity,

Matthew:

right? Well, maybe not. Of course, all of human existence has been colored with different shades of spiritualism. But we kind of have to start somewhere, you know. So that somewhere is going to be Stockholm, Sweden. Yeah. Emanuel Swedenborg. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Sweden, Borg, Sweden. On January 29 1688. A manual was the son of Jesper Swedberg. I don't really know the naming conventions of Sweden. But his dad was Swedberg. He was Swedenborg. And they're both in Sweden. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Anyway, Jasper is it was the Bishop of Scara, which is not where the Daleks are from. Scarborough. Close enough, close enough. I did. They were Swedish. Maybe they're these are not Danish Daleks. So he grew up surrounded. So this is a manual was grew up around the Christian faith. This has to be noted for a number of reasons. But one in particular is that he was both a man of science and a faith. Swedenborg was an inventor. He was sketching flying machines and mechanisms that were far ahead of his time.

Marissa:

He might say that he was a man of constant sorrow. Why would you say that? Faith and also science. Okay.

Matthew:

So he, Oh, brother, where aren't we? So he was also an engineer, musician and astronomer, an anatomist that he was born in 1688. Were in the early 1700s. And he had theorized the processes of the neuro system And the neuron. This is 200 years before they would be, quote, unquote, discovered in the 19th century. Now that's incredible. He wrote ceaselessly on his theories and scientific discoveries. And had he continued on that path of science. He would be as commonly known as like Leonardo da Vinci, or Albert Einstein, like this guy was

Marissa:

smart. So why haven't we heard of him?

Matthew:

Well, beginning in 1741, he's still worth noting, like, this is not supposed to make him seem like a crackpot. But beginning in 1741, he completely shifts his focus from science and math into theology and religion. By 1744, after a number of visions and revelations, he had a profound life direction change. So you see, Swedenborg, was granted the ability to effortlessly pass from our world, into the spirit world, what Swedenborg was, he would go on to write more than a dozen books on the subject of the spiritual realm on heaven, hell, and God's plan and what it's like after you die, all of which, I, I will now greatly oversimplify, in just a few sentences Swedenborg would freely pass between these realms, right? And he would bring back knowledge of his observances over there. There was a there is, I guess, a spirit realm, that it's not that different than then this world. Okay, so you still like, do stuff, you know, they're still like trees and grass, it looks the same, for the most part.

Marissa:

So it looks the same, you do the same things. But somehow he was effortlessly able to go between the two. But they were they exactly the same. It's called blinking my

Matthew:

man. But no it. So he, the differences in the world was that you first of all, he, the big difference he had was that he was able to go there and speak to people who were knowingly dead. Right. So okay, so he could go to this other world and take back messages from people on the other side.

Marissa:

Okay, so he claims to speak to the dead. Gotcha,

Matthew:

yeah, but not as like a parlor trick for the most part, we'll kind of touch on that in a minute. But he goes, he goes over there. And what I say it's very similar, it is very similar, but you're you have a, a spiritual body, that's not that different than your own. Except it's like a true form of who you are. So all the bullshit gets stripped away, and you just are, your presence, your love. You're who you are, in a lot of his writings, he uses words that you would associate with a particular definition, but he's using them a little bit different because it's like more of like, that's the closest word but it's still he has 12 large books on heaven and hell. So I mean, like, this is not something like I said, I'm greatly oversimplifying, but this is kind of where we get the idea of, when you die. You you you have your loved ones waiting on the other side. Like that's not something that's like from the Bible, kind of a thing. Like you don't like when you know what, I'll see them in heaven. That's not actually a biblical belief as far as I can. I can tell like that. Is that is that comes mostly mostly from him. Really? Yeah, that okay, that's huge. Because most people when they I don't have all this like research out, so feel free to correct me in comments or, or Twitter or whatever. But when you die, yes, there is like a heaven and stuff. And you have your mansion and everything and you have your gifts and everything, but like this belief that like the people that you like, when you when the person you were married to here, if you had a good relationship, and there was like a real true love there. When you go to heaven, they're there. If you didn't have that, then they're not there. Why have you had it twice? Then they that's the thing. So it's based on and this this is not supposed to be like, a Swedenborg in depth discussion for like his book. I'm just curious. No, no, no, it's it's valid question. And it's fascinating too. I just wasn't when I fell down the Swedenborg rabbit hole. I was not expecting that. I was like, well, this dude, this dude's the shit. Yeah. But like, there is a possibility that if you were married twice, and you did love them, that that the love that you feel and the type of person you are kind of puts you into like a layer of this spiritual world. So if they're on that same kind of love spiritual world, they'd be there to doesn't necessarily mean y'all y'all live in the same house or whatever. But like all of the, all of the falsehoods of a personality go away, and it's just your true your true form. But that's where I feel like a lot of the the idea of like, when you die, you go to like this place that's kind of similar to Earth and you have that you you see grandpa and all of them again, and they're all waiting for you on the other side. And that kind of like, you know, when you when you die, you have like your person sitting there waiting, waiting to take you on. And there's like, there's like a group of people, or there's a group of spirit, Angel type people that are willing to like, guide you around everywhere, and they're willing to stay with you forever. And it's up to you to tell them to leave. And then you go into this. There's, there's, there's a lot of information and this is not something that died out with him or anything like and then it also went into spiritualism and a lot of people who later are in spiritual ism, they kind of guys, you, you she has a yond after almost every word I've said slay I really hope that the rest of our audience is sticking with me a little bit more. No, it's

Marissa:

not it's not I'm not bored. I'm just tired. That's all.

Matthew:

So the so with having these, these people that they there it, people in the spiritual movement often pull ideas from Swedenborg. But there are modern people who still are in this, like Swedenborg religion type thing. And they have YouTube channels and stuff to check them out. But it's pretty, pretty intense. So you, he claims that all the truth of your being would be revealed and you would be sent to this place. And you kind of create your own hell in the same fashion. If you're if you're a giving person. You're with all these like beautiful giving loving people. And if you're a shitstain you go with all the shit stains, and you just advance not because you're necessarily being punished you You reap what you sow in life. Like if you cultivate a shitty attitude, then you get put with all the people who cultivated shitty attitudes. And that's fair. Yeah, it's just like with like, it's not like it's not we're forcing you to do their god is like punishing you. It's no you're, this is the life you chose to live. This is the afterlife that you get because of it. And it's just it's not like a, there's a lot of layers to it. From what I can see. Again, I'm greatly oversimplifying it, but it's really really cool. Check it out. But the type of person that you were in life is a type of the type of spirit that you are in the spirit world. So it was in this spirit world, that Swedenborg was able to freely converse with the inhabitants and learn the secrets of the great beyond. Many later spiritualists would reference his teachings or something very similar mediums entering the realm of the spirits were where a loved ones would be provided would provide guidance, and you know what I mean? Like, when you think of it like a seance or you're, you're asking questions to your dearly departed kind of thing that that is very, very Swedenborg ish. Sure. And he would occasionally do some demonstrations.

Marissa:

So he did do the seance.

Matthew:

He didn't do a sales, so he could pretty freely drop right in. And sometimes it seems like he would get these, these messages from from beyond the veil. Like he's at this dinner party in 1759. And he starts all of a sudden, like seeming like agitated, and they're like, what's going on? Like, what? And he's like, there's a fire that's raging through my town right now. And it's just consumed my neighbor's house, and it's going to get mine. Or it's on track to get mine. And he's a bit nervous about it in this and everyone's like, well, what how do you know this? And he said, Well, you know, I have my waist. And then a little bit later, he says, It's under control. My house is fine. Don't sweat it. I'm good. We're back in it back at the party. Let's let's roll. And then everyone's like, how are you getting these messages because his house is 400 kilometers away. Oh, wow. Okay. And there's no way that you could have got a message like this like, this is 1759 You can't call somebody or text somebody pagers weren't even invented. This is what so he so he's just like getting so the people at the dinner party. He there's no way for him to have known this. But turns out there was in fact, a fire that had raged through the city at that same time while he was at this dinner party, and it stopped burning three doors down from his Oh wow. In 1758 When Swedenborg was visiting the Queen of Sweden, Luisa Orica she she said As to him, if you can go into the spirit world, prove it to me. My brother's has died. Ask him something that only he would know. So the next day, I say he can drop right in and out some sub accounts have it where it's like, he's just like, Alright, hold on, whoop. And he just bits out bits back in and not not like teleporting out of the room, just kind of going into a trance, coming back to telling telling them what's up. Some accounts say that it's like the next day. But he comes to her and he whispers something into her ear that makes her instantly go like, why does it go? Like just like super pale? And she says, there's no possible way that you could have known that only my brother would have known that. It means like, Well, I mean, I told you. And he also there was this woman who had lost this document that had like some very important information about like, probably money, or something along those lines. She goes to him and says, can you ask one of the one of my relatives who has died if they know where where it's at? And he says, All right, and he steps out, comes back. Again, this this says later that night or something, but he comes back to her and he's like, oh, yeah, it's in your such and such. And boom, there it was. Wow. Yeah. And he's not doing this as like, he doesn't I don't have anything that shows uh, he was doing this is like a very, like, show Bodie kind of a way.

Marissa:

It's just who he is. Yeah,

Matthew:

I mean, it's just very much effect to heaven. That's why he spends all this time writing all these books. Like I said, he wrote, like a dozen books on this. So that's kind of Swedenborg. He's kind of like the person who starts it off. I give you kind of a lot of history on him, because a lot of people skip over his contribution to it. But it seems like a pretty obvious through line to me. Go check him out. He's got some really interesting stuff there. And then, going just slightly further, kind of just another obvious kind of pull from that same kind of time period. Just slightly, slightly later, you get into Franz Anton Mesmer. And who is he? Mesmer mesmerism mesmerism. Yep. So he is he he also popularizes the idea of animal magnetism, that there are unseen forces and poles that are like this electromagnetic field that connect all people and objects and stuff like that, that that can kind of be manipulated through hypnosis, and other kind of trance like states, again, kind of seems to be in that same vein. And this is at this point in time, we're kind of like, just in the just in the very early stages of 1800s. Now you get to a bit of a jump, you get to where if you talk about spiritualism, seances, spirit talking, that kind of that kind of heart of it. You're you inevitably come across the fox sisters. These are two young girls live in New York in a very rural area. Their family buys this house. That seems the best I can figure out was like, kind of like a like maybe like a tavern or something. It's like this cottage on the road. Yep, that that was sometimes traveled by but not necessarily like it's not like in a town it doesn't feel fairly close. Maybe but I don't know. Not particularly important. The Fox sisters move into this house with with their parents and other siblings and they're the youngest of the siblings. I think there's like seven total and it's a Katie and Maggie. Yeah, Katie, Kate and Maggie Maggie. They are they start one night they there's this clicking sound like a knocking sound that that can be heard throughout the house. And the mother comes into the room she comes up the stairs and she says what's going on? What does that sound they say that it's that's not It's not them it's there's there's there's a ghost in the house? Oh no. And it's and it's and then they get kind of like this like call and response kind of thing. You ask a question. You hear some knocks it's not verbally communicating back. Well,

Marissa:

they did this later. Oh, well, not them but this was something that happened later with like seances they would knock under the table to be like, not two times if

Matthew:

right? Knock knock knock once for yes. twice for no. Yeah, thanks. That's kind of what's happening here. The mother starts to freak out about this. They have the neighbors. These are the Quakers. This this area is heavy and Quakers Quakers are very freewill kind of people and stuff like that. But it also plays into their susceptibility to this idea. So they start all these neighbors start coming over and they're asking these questions and and They're hearing the knocks and and it seems to be attracted to the girls. When the girls aren't there, the knocks aren't aren't heard. So, they seem to be like the conduit to that the spirits are trying to communicate through. So, they one of the neighbors comes up with this like alphabet, you know, like owls, he repeats he repeats the alphabet, A, B, C, D and then the NOC would happen on the letter you're supposed to stop that. And then from there, they start writing all this down and they come up with a story. While and this is not the girls this is like the the neighbors are coming up with a story that as these knocks are are spelling out this message. They it it uncovers this peddler who years ago with the previous owners, a peddler being like a traveling salesperson comes through, comes through the area, comes to this cottage starts selling his wares, it gets dark out he stays. Because that's kind of like a fairly common thing. Like you don't just put people out on the road, you would have them stay over if they're even if they're just like salespeople, right, there's not a hotel. Yeah. So you just kind of put them up for the night. So this the the he stays there. And while he's there, the owners of the house murder what and then bury him in the basement.

Marissa:

Why

Matthew:

they don't cover it all that. But this is the story that the fox sisters tell. That's what that's what it is. And there was like some, there's some some claims that like the house was hard to sell. And it was probably because this guy's ghost was haunting the area yada yada. So he, so they, the girls have this, this continuing situation with us so that they are like, well we'll figure this out. He's supposedly buried in the basement, let's go dig up the basement. So they go down there. Apparently there's a flood that happens similar times what fills in all of the progress that they had in this this basement or whatever. Some accounts say that eventually, some scraps of hair and fragments of bone were found down there. Which I mean, hit at the time period. It unless you find the whole human body there. It's not that hard to believe that someone might have killed an animal in there. No, not at all. Yeah, hundreds, you know, or a cat just died in their basement, you know, did murder somebody or there was a person who was murdered, shoved in there. So the mom starts to freak out. She's very superstitious. So she freaks out about this. And she's takes the two daughters, like I said they had like they're the youngest of like seven children, send them to go up to Rochester and live with their older sister New York. This is all in New York. Yep. And the there's older sister's name is Leah. They go there, Leah on covers, while she's talking to the girls that she is a medium and that the girls are like the the focal point that collects the spirits but it's Leah that can communicate to them. So they're a team boom, the family Partridge Family style, take their show on the road and they start traveling around doing these shows. And this is picking up crazy speed. So this is like 1847 by like 1848 They're like playing sold out halls and stuff. And whenever

Marissa:

they show they would have been great influencers now

Matthew:

people start well there's the the knocking happens and you hear all this stuff and the girls are able to do that and they have people that would come up on stage and stand near them and observe them at close while they're asking these questions and they could sure as hell hear the knocks, you know, and they would even have like them examine to show that they're not they don't have anything on them probably and you know, not the most modest of ways. But offstage kind of in the present doctors come out say like they ain't got nothing so yeah so they're they're hearing all these these bangs and clicks wherever they're whenever they're around. So this starts to pick up more and more speed within the spiritualism community. This is this is the boom of spiritualism. She's still yawning every damn second sorry. Oh my goodness. So the the so that this starts to pick up momentum and the fox sisters they start to lose a little bit of their fame rather quickly because other mediums when they're having these moments, they're having these seances in these private homes. There's instruments that can be heard playing tables are turning up on their edges all kinds of crazy things are happening there's there's predators are doing it up right so all of a sudden like it's like oh, well the foxes are cool knocking spirit knocking it's pretty cool. about these Yeah, but these people have like spirits leaping into their bodies and speaking to them and yeah, and you can hear bells ringing and knocks and also like you can hear the whispers of the dead in your own head and turns out well, we'll get to that. So what ends up happening is the fox sisters have a bit of a falling out. This is years later after been they've kind of been doing this for a little while. Similarly to to reports that their father was also an alcoholic, they kind of turn and turn to alcohol fall, and the band starts to fall apart. Leah goes back to her house in Rochester, and she kind of does her own private seances still. And the the, the two other sisters Katie and Maggie, they go out and they get married and whatever. One of their husbands I believe was Katie, Katie's husband dies. She has a couple of kids. She's a raging alcoholic. And Leah ends up using that against her. And I think she loses her kids because of it. Or Leah takes her kids because of this. So Katie is now like, having having a bad run. So she she kind of they kind of disappear for a while. Then she comes back to the stage and says it's all a hoax. And her sister Maggie is there with her. At this time, Leah still like it's not a hoax. It's not a hoax. Katie and Maggie go to the stage. They take their shoes off and put their feet on a bet on a stool. And what they're able to do is make that knocking sound by cracking their toes. Oh, so they would be able to repeatedly crack their toes, which is actually a skill I used to have not loud enough that I feel like people in the room would be able to I can't do that was a doc Yeah, skill. They've I don't think anybody in the room would think it was a ghost that was knocking. But yeah, so they they have doctors come up. And they're like, yes, their toes cracking. So they do this demonstration turns out that she was paid, like $1,500 to come up there and say that it was a hoax. And they said that it started off as a game because their mom was just very superstitious. So they're trying to scare their mom and just play a joke on her kind of thing. And it just spiraled out of control. Like her their their mom has been so superstitious that she like it was like Knock Knock knock. Who's that? No, you know what, don't answer that. Let me go get somebody soon as you want got all the neighbors and then just, you know, they're young girls, they were only in their, their early teens. So like my 14 and like 12 or something, I think. So they start to like, they they got swept up in it. And then Leah kind of seemingly saw, like, the money that can be made here, became their manager effectively, and took the show on the road. And she made some profit off of that. And then she ended up trying to make a career out of it. Leah's comes forward and says it's not a hoax. She's only doing that because she's mad at me kind of a thing, you know? And they think that and then she's like, she's like, Look, if she's only doing it because you paid her the money and she needed the money. That's why she does it later. Maggie and Katie come back and say it's not a hoax. We were only doing that for because whatever family issues, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they're never able to capture the fire that they had with with with their first first run. Particularly after saying it's all a hoax, I could prove it,

Marissa:

you're gonna lose something there.

Matthew:

I didn't I mean it. I was I was faking it that time. So and then again, at this time, everybody else is becoming more and more popular with this with the tables floating and these disembodied speech spirits speaking to people in this in these these halls. Spiritual ism is collecting some really smart people that are that are really buying into this. So there's like big thinkers who are getting involved with the spiritualism movement. We've got like, Arthur Conan Doyle, the guy who wrote Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes. Like there's a lot of there's a lot of this is not just some, like country bumpkin kind of grassroots kind of religion or anything like that. Like, there's some big there's some big influential people that are being brought into this, including Mary Todd Lincoln.

Marissa:

Oh, Abraham Lincoln's wife. Yes.

Matthew:

And making another appearance but she's not going to get as much time as Mary Todd. Is a Victoria Queen Victoria. Always. Yeah, she's an average so many. You can't you can't Yeah, you can't do the McCobb without you bizarre anywhere in her life anywhere in the 1800s. You gotta sit I mean, Victorian age, right? Yeah. But Mary Todd Lincoln. She becomes like very obsessed with with with us now, she starts her and Ayub Abraham Lincoln.

Marissa:

Okay? Yeah.

Matthew:

Yeah, me and him me in a We go way back way back to the 1860s. But he, they, they they had a couple of tragedies with the loss of their children. William or Willie died in 1862 at the age of 11, from typhoid fever, and that kind of had them both kind of just fallen apart. They don't think they had any children that survived. They lost two sons, I believe. But I think it's Edward. Edward was younger Willie was the was the older.

Marissa:

Abraham Lincoln had four kids, only one of them actually survived past childhood. So he actually made it to 1926.

Matthew:

Good on him. Yeah. So I think Willie must have been the first one that died then that started this whole depression and there's in some of these seances that Mary goes to he's with, I think it's at Edward that the younger, like a much younger Lincoln. And he's he's like bringing messages from from him and whatnot. So they're, they're all safe, whatever. That kind of plays just a moment here. But Abraham Lincoln seems to be just kind of supporting Mary Todd during her or dealing with her grief and whatnot. He's not he doesn't have that full buy in like she does, but maybe he should have because it's

Unknown:

actually thought, little conspiracy theory kind of stuff here. But it's

Matthew:

actually thought that John Wilkes Booth, the man who would later assassinate Lincoln, not only attended seances, but also possibly had had seances hosted by a spirit talker named Lord Colchester who, though having no recorded Lordship, but whatever Lord Colchester was doing seances for Mary,

Marissa:

to really okay, so lots of connections, a couple of little things there.

Matthew:

And they may have been associated in some way, probably not to the point of like, working to do anything with this, but Colchester was a medium who had managed to work in some favor with Mary Todd, who after you know, losses of children and all that was growing more and more into the spiritual spiritualism movement, but Colchester who had claimed to be the illegitimate son of some Duke, and he had garnered some suspicion amongst some historians, one of them was like the, the head of the Smithsonian or something. And he begins to kind of do some investigation into this guy's lineage, because he doesn't he doesn't buy it, he just doesn't buy what this guy saying. So it's determined that he's very unlikely to be an illegitimate son of this nuke that he's claiming to be the son of, which also leads people to believe that there's also other fraudulent things that he's doing maybe like speaking to the president's dead son, you know, so called Chester was known to do the instruments trick. And I say trick, bear with me spoiler. So Colchester, he's known to do these, this instrument track where he has a bell, and a drum and some banjo, laying out on the table, and then they turn off the lights, and he starts to have like a seizure kind of a thing. No one can see anything. And then once it calms down, you start to hear the instruments playing. And they're all like holding hands and everything during this.

Marissa:

Did he have fake hands? Was he doing it with his toes? What was he doing? Let me know.

Matthew:

The you Okay, well, I will, I will let you know that some of that's not covered here in a second. But during that seizure moment, so everyone's sitting around a table, they turn off the lights, the instruments are sitting on the table. He has this seizure moment. What happens during the seizure is he pulls his hand away from one of the people and then grabs it with his off hand. Right? So the people on either side of him on his left and his right, he has a person on his left holding his left wrist personalities right holding his right, his right wrist. So they're holding his hands. He's not holding, there's he they're holding his wrists.

Marissa:

So his hands are free at this point. Yeah,

Matthew:

but they're still being held. So he pulls his right hand out of the grip of the person next to him and then takes her we'll say her her wrist with his hand. So now to the people in the dark. It's the same as it was yeah, there's there's she can't she's just she's being held by by him now is what she's feeling. But the person who's next to him is holding his hand is not free because he's pretending that the hand that was once home right his one hand is during this Yes. And he's reaching across himself to hold on. So there's a journalist By the name of Noah Brooks, he manages to get himself invited to one of Cole Chester's seances and kind of give you a better idea as to what's happening in this situation with these banjos. I'll let you know of Brooks tell you what happened that night.

Marissa:

What happened, Noah?

Matthew:

I'm not going to do a voice for probably shouldn't but I'm not I don't I don't really know what uh, I don't know where he was from. And you know, I don't want to mess up any more regional accents. But, quote, after the company had been seated around the table in the usual approved manner, and the lights were turned out, the silence was broken by the thumping of a drum, the tweaking of a banjo and the ringing of bells, all of which instruments had been laid on the table ready for use. By some Hocus Pocus, it was evident Colchester had freed his hands from the hands of those who sat on either side of him, and was himself making music in the air. Loosening hid my hands from my neighbors who were also unbelievers. I rose and grasped in the direction of the drumbeat grabbed a very solid and fleshy hand in which was held a bell that was being thumped on the drum head. I shouted strike a light, my friend after what appeared to be an unconscionable length of time lighted a match. But meanwhile, somebody had dealt me a severe blow with the drum, the edge of which cut a slight wound on my forehead. When the gas was finally lighted. The singular spectacle was presented of the son of a Duke firmly grasped by a man whose forehead was covered with blood while the arrested cyan of nobility was glowering at the drum and bells, which he still held in his hands. So lights go out. No, it just leaps across the table and grabs the do Colchester you know, in front of all these people is now standing there with a drum in one hand after just beating Noah in the head and a bell in the other. Yeah, so he is pretty, pretty much outed at that point. Colchester obviously starts to fall out of favor with all the people that are connected to him. And he plans on using Mary Mary Todd's, you know, sadness against her and basically comes to her and tries to blackmail her. And is like, if you don't, whatever, pay me off or whatever. I'm going to tell everybody, that all the secrets that you've told me during this whole, you know, saying

Marissa:

that she only told him because she was so sad,

Matthew:

right? I mean, he's really playing. Yeah, a lot of Spiritualism is kind of playing on the sadness of others. Yeah, taking advantage of the sad Yes. And even like, I know, like when I was growing up, there were a lot of like, mediums that were on TV and stuff that would do the light Miss Cleo? Well, she was a psychic as well. Now,

Marissa:

yep, I used to watch Star Trek Voyager every like frickin day and 6pm. And Miss Cleo, she was on every single commercial,

Matthew:

but she just uses a psychic and another level but there was like people who would sit there and they would like they would have like the live audience and be like, I'm getting I'm getting a person. The M M. Does anybody here does that. Does that somebody lose somebody with

Marissa:

Amazon, somebody who knew somebody named Mary, your Marianne or Marissa or

Matthew:

sitting in this room or two ends right now you got a letter and someone goes,

Unknown:

oh my god, I couldn't be mom. That is mom. It was my mom. She's standing right behind you. Does she have kind of like short kind of a bob cut? No. lady whose mom has a bob maybe it was curly? Yeah. Oh, it was my mom. Oh, yeah. Okay,

Matthew:

your mom. Okay. She's just she was she's moving across the audit. You know, that kind of that kind of bullshit. Actually, if you want to see a really cool seance II kind of video on YouTube. Maybe we'll link it. Darren brown who's the guy who he like he like hypnotizes people using like hidden messages and oh yeah, and words and stuff. Super cool stuff. That guy but he has a special where he does a seance to kind of show you the debunking of it. Anyways, Mary Todd is confronted by Colchester, Colchester is like, I'm gonna tell everybody that you have secrets and she's like, Oh, no. And no, Brooks shows up, finds Colchester and is like, hey, but remember me hit me in the head with the drum. Better remember me? Why don't you Why don't you roll out because I'll tear you to the floor. But so Colchester disappears. Mary would later so that's kind of the end of that part. Mary would later go on to say that she doesn't she didn't really care if the seances were real or not improvised added her some level of comfort. And there's actually a famous picture of Mary, Mary Todd. I don't know. I'm assuming she goes by Mary time. I'm not as close to her as I was with old age. But there's a famous picture of her seated with her like black morning clothes. And there's a ghostly image of Abraham. It he's like standing behind her, and his hands are like comfortingly placed on her shoulders. And this is a real photograph. And it was taken by William mumbler. Who he kind of this he discovered spirit photography. This is still kind of in the early

Marissa:

this is after his death.

Matthew:

He was Yeah, yeah, he this is this is much later.

Marissa:

Oh, no, I'm not familiar.

Matthew:

Yeah, it's, yeah, I'll post it. But yeah, so it's like, it's a picture of Abraham Lincoln. In this. He's like ghostly standing behind her. And she's kind of just sitting there. And he's got his hands on her shoulders. And William mumbler. He popularized spirit photography. This is kind of also like, fairy pictures and stuff, where you have like those apparitions that are kind of, he found out that if you basically use the same materials twice, it leaves the former image on there as the same film. Yes. So it leaves if you double expose it, or whatever. So it basically leaves the the the image and it's not hard to get a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Right? He had a few of them. He was the president. So what he did was he took one of those doctored it up a little bit to make it make it look like Hans Photoshop. Yeah, in 1890, or whatever. Yeah. But then takes it and and then when he took the picture of the person, he would just put that other, that other slide in there so that it would double, double impose it. It's, it's, it's it. I can understand that. Even if people were doing that it still has like this strangely. If you take out the fact that he's lying to people and getting them to pay them for fake pictures of dead dead people, it has like this kind of comforting thing to it. And absolutely, she seemed to treasure it regardless. Like she I mean, it still felt you I mean, like it still has a McCobb beauty to it, I guess. And again, this is like this is at a time where these are big scientific advancements that not every person understands how they work. So it was kind of easy to utilize that. So there's spirit photography, we've got the knocking stuff, we've got seances tables are tilting and stuff like that. A lot of mediums that are really popular are women. And a lot of the messages that they have are about women's suffrage and equal rights and stuff like that. So that's a lot of the messages that are coming from the other side which Swedenborg also it's like people should be treated equal nice but um but yeah, so the in a lot of people are thinking that like women are more like susceptible because of their emotional states to the spirit world and all this and also, you know, they don't I would hazard a guess that you know, women don't have a ton of power and a lot of ways. So if they can talk to the spirit world that kind of gives them a leg up and share in a lot of ways.

Unknown:

But not everybody

Matthew:

believes you know that this is that this is real. And this we get to Houdini This is where we get to not only Houdini but got PT Barnum PD has had an episode on how he Barnum when he saw spirit photography is like not as bullshit. He's like, that is not real. He's like that is somebody getting getting some coin from somebody else? He was like, That is not real. Does it look real? No, but no, yeah. He's like, he's like, I'm, I am the master. I am the prince of humbug hurry. This is not it. But Harry Houdini, who's also a master of all kinds of, you know, misdirection and escape artists and all this stuff. He is profoundly saddened by the loss of his mother. So he got he starts going to mediums as a believer to try to get to connect with her. And almost instantly is like, no, like, there's no no, there's no way and so he makes it where he starts to like, go to these these public seances and, and debunk them in the show, you know, where he's like, No, you're, you have a false shoe. And that's how you're taking that's how you're ringing this bell is your slot, there's no heel on your shoes. So you're able to slide your foot out, grab the ball with your toes and then wring it out of the table. Yeah, there's these other contraptions that are that are raising the tables up that we can you know, all this kind of things and they the the disembodied voices are actually like these like brass, like funnels, like these trumpet kind of things, that that the the person doing the seance would would point towards somebody else's ears and then whisper something into it would make it so that only they could hear it clearly. Nobody else could hear anything so then they would be my It was free. But yeah, so yeah. So they wouldn't be able to do that. So Houdini starts to like go on this campaign to start debunking everything. You know, he's he's like, Look, if you can, if you can really do this, like, I'm super into it, you know, like, just you got it, you show me you could do it, I believe I just don't believe you can do it. And then he ends up making a pact with his his wife. And he says, Yes,

Marissa:

I've heard about that one. You can tell him about that. Well, it was just that he said that if once he died, if there was a chance that you'd come back that he would an order to speak to her,

Matthew:

right. So being the master skate escape artist, he's like, anybody can escape the veil to get close enough.

Marissa:

You know what, that's a fair point. Like,

Matthew:

I'll figure out how to do it. I can't get out of a sealed milk jug thrown into a river. I can get on a straight jackets, prisons, whatever I can get if it is possible to get out of death. I'll do it. So they started holding seances. I believe it was on his birthday and Halloween as when they do that. And his wife did it for a couple of years. I

Marissa:

think she did it for several, several years. Yeah.

Matthew:

And she and she and well, as far as we can tell, we never Yeah. But it seems like I mean, like he was a real believer. It's just a matter of, you know, he's like

Marissa:

I you know, if it can want it to believe it and believe these people,

Matthew:

right, exactly. And there was also the spirit of Katie King. Katie King was believed to be a woman, a very young woman who died in 1850 or somewhere there abouts in England, and she she starts to appear in British seances, but she's actually appearing in the seances. So they're so like, she's the spirit. Yeah, like not like you can touch her and stuff. And then yeah, like she appears in the seance being summoned by another girl who is often still in sight. And then I've heard this a couple different ways, where she would be seated in a chair, the original, the medium would be seated in a chair and an adjacent room, you could see her and then the lights would be lowered. And then from there, a spirit would then get out of her body, and walk, walk out of that room, and then come and interact with the people in the other room, answering questions, telling their story, shaking their hands, letting them touch her. And then she would go back into the room and then sit back down on the girl you can see the whole time. And she's like, okay, there, Katie King is all like wearing the all the white and everything. There's a picture of her actually on on somebody snapped a photo of her. And then she would sit back down on this other girl and then the girl would come out of her little trance, and then she'd be back and then she'd come back into the room. Oh, you've made her if there's a belief that it was like a series of mirrors, so that the girl had another chair that was depending on the angle that you're sitting at. She she could sit in that chair and you would see her in the reflection looking like she was sitting on a chair so she was able to get up and then when she when she came out of the room, you know it would she be able to repeat it to go back in. There was a bunch of people that were claiming to get to have the presence of Katie King showing up in their seances as well. And on occasion, young girls were tackled to the floor by non believers who were like no flesh and blood. Turns out she was also people that would come forward and beat and say that they were they were hired to play this part and do this. But yeah, you can see a picture of that too. as

Unknown:

well. It's kind of getting a bit longer than

Matthew:

I had expected with all this stuff. So

Unknown:

let's do an ad break at the end. Let's see what we can dig up from our sponsors late isn't it? Well, you know, the Spirit took me I was moved by the spirits to stop, stop when you start to stop, Check. Check. Check.

Marissa:

What are you doing

Unknown:

our sound that's in between our sponsors.

Marissa:

Oh. That was supposed to be digging. Okay, gotcha. This week, brought to you by EMF sensors. These lovely little devices can measure electromagnetic fields in your home, at your work and even in your ghosts. That's right ladies and gentlemen, these handy dandy little contraptions can help you find evidence from the great beyond isn't an electrical current or is the ghost of dear departed grandmama your device and your choice? spook your friends on a dare yourself In a dark house or spook pappy, who was lurking inside the wall of the cellar, get your EMF sensor today, use offer code. For a free smudging stick with your order, or use offer code who you're going to call for $20 off an electromagnetic Ghost Trap, not combinable. Because your great great uncle might be watching you as we speak. And knowing that corner is hot, hot, hot with Ghost energy is better than not knowing. Right? Get your EMF sensor today. And now back to the very short amount of show that we have left.

Matthew:

No. And now thank you to our actual sponsors, who are our patrons. Thank you very, very much for all that you do there. We had Jen excited. We had just released a Patreon episode featuring our daughters, stepdaughters and biological, whatever, however you want to call them, who had recently found out that we had a podcast and because they were talking about True Crime podcasts, and I said, Hey, I got one for you. So we let them take a crack at at hosting. And you can find that over on Patreon. If you so wish. It was kind of fun. It's only about eight episodes. Yeah, it was like they only had like two hours to kind of come up with a come up with a script and or a subject and write it all down and kind of did a good job. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. They're just teeny. They're just young teenagers. But, but go check that out if you want over on Patreon slash Macabrepedia. And now, back to the show.

Marissa:

And now back to the show.

Matthew:

No, okay, well, we'll actually put that in there. Well, actually, there's not a whole lot to show left, guys. That was pretty much all that we had there. I didn't really have an actual break set for when we could put that in there. So I will just say thank you for joining us. And if you have any questions, concerns, comments, or, you know, corrections that you have towards what I was saying there, or you want to give us some of your cool ghost stories. definitely open to hearing, hearing those or if you What do you guys who's who's, who's out there as a believer of seances, and in the ghosts

Marissa:

do you believe reach out to us on Twitter?

Matthew:

Yeah, reach out on Twitter, at Macabrepedia or on Facebook, also at Macabrepedia.

Marissa:

We're on Instagram also Macabrepediapod and reach out to us on D mal macabrepediapod@gmail.com. Please, please, please. If you listen on Apple podcasts, leave us a five star review

Matthew:

and comment because that's I guess how the algorithm actually says anything about it. We're trying to get the message out there. And thank you to those who have already done and share us with your friends and all that jazz. And that'll do it. So join us next week as we add another entry into this our Macabrepedia

Marissa:

Yeah, he stopped commenting on the whisper a while back.

Matthew:

It just grew on me. It's kind of our thing.