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The History of Séances
18 Plays2 years ago
Happy Halloween boos & ghouls! 👻
We are thrilled to throw on our costumes and rip the shiny wrapper off on our spooktacular October series, featuring deep dives on specific spooky topics related to the history of All Hallows’ Eve! 🎃
In Part 4 of this month-long series, Felicia explores the history of séances and the Fox sisters - three sisters from Rochester, New York who conducted séances during the 19th century. They were only teenagers when they began "communicating with spirits," but they grew to become world famous mediums, performing séances for hundreds of people throughout their lifetimes. Listen to learn more about these iconic sinister sisters and how they were pivotal to the creation of Spiritualism.
We hope you enjoy these hair-raising Halloween episodes in October! Stay tuned for more tricks & treats and in the meantime: reach out to us on Instagram at @sinistersisterspodcast if you have more topic ideas for us to cover!
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Transcript
Introduction to Sinister Sisters Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff.
00:00:20
Speaker
And we were already literally in mid conversation about one of the recommendations. So let's just continue the conversation.
The Midnight Club: First Impressions
00:00:28
Speaker
So Lauren has watched the first episode of The Midnight Club. I watched all of it. So tell us your impression of that first episode and then I'll tell you like a mini review.
00:00:42
Speaker
I know. I was just saying to Felicia that I really hope it gets better. I didn't find that the writing was quite as good as I normally felt from Mike Flanagan's stuff. Also, I think it's a little difficult because it's younger performers who are doing
00:01:04
Speaker
doing great, but I think like it's just a little bit of a different feeling. And so like I was ready for it to be similar to his other things. And I think now I probably have to like reframe it to be more like, I don't know, stranger things territory. I don't know where it goes, but something like that. Yeah. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head in a couple of ways that it's just really different. Like it's a young adult. It's based on like a book series.
00:01:33
Speaker
And I felt the same way where it's like that first episode. I can tell it's Mike Flanagan in some ways, but I didn't feel captured by it or obsessed with it or addicted to it in the same way that I felt with his other series. And I'll say I'm not sure that that feeling gets better. There are a lot of great things that happen in the series and there's cool stuff to look forward to.
00:02:01
Speaker
you should definitely finish it. It's worth watching. If anyone else had come out with it, I feel like I'd be saying it was great. But I feel like the expectation is so high for Mike Flanagan's work. And what it doesn't do for me that most of his other works have is
00:02:20
Speaker
show me something I've never seen before and kind of blow my mind. And I feel like I didn't really get that moment in this series that I feel like I get in all his other ones. Like I'm thinking of Midnight Mass, like when you finally see what there is to see, it's so spectacular. Yes.
00:02:41
Speaker
I feel like you don't really get that kind of moment. But watching Heather Lincoln Camp is great. And because of the way the show is structured, you get to see her play a lot of different little parts. Oh, that's fun. And she is great. And it's really nice to see her as an adult actor doing a horror thing. And it's a very different, a grounded character like this.
00:03:08
Speaker
Great. Yeah. I love that. That's my review. Amazing. Keep watching. I will.
Review of Horror Movie 'Smile'
00:03:15
Speaker
I will. I have a couple others. I'm going to save some for next week, but I did see Smile and I really don't think I talked about it. I'm nervous that I did, but I saw Smile, which I thought was really good. I was very unsettled. I don't know that it's like an amazing movie. Some of the performances are really bad, but
00:03:36
Speaker
the scary thing like the people smiling is really unsettling and scary. And did you see the awesome marketing for it? I think we talked about this too. No, I don't think so. No, they had all these like
00:03:49
Speaker
I don't know, like experiential marketing moves where like they would have people like, I can't remember what big baseball game it was, but they had like people planted just like smiling in the audience. No. So that when like the big camera came around. That's so scary. It's so scary. Because there is something about that, that like when people are smiling in a way that's wrong, it's wrong. Like your brain can tell it's wrong.
00:04:15
Speaker
And it freaks you out. It freaks you out. And the gore is really intense. So like there's a couple like really good kills and really good scenes. And it's kind of similar to kind of reminded me of like Oculus or I mean, it really reminded me of what's the STD one? Oh, it follows. It follows. It really reminded me of it follows, of course, because it's kind of the same.
00:04:39
Speaker
concept of like this demon chasing you sort of and passing from people to people, person to person. People to people. But there are some really good moments and it really, yeah, it just like freaked me out. And I think too, it's because it's so subtle that it is kind of like it follows where like then after leaving the movie, I was like, is that person smiling and looking at me in a weird way?
00:05:07
Speaker
That stuff is freaky. So I would recommend seeing it. It's also fun because it's a, you know, standalone horror movie. It's not a remake. It's not a, you know, all those things, which I am just proud of it for. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And we do, I mean, we want original horror movies, so that's great. And it kind of came out of nowhere and seemed to, has done well. So that's kind of nice too. Agreed. Yeah.
00:05:32
Speaker
I don't really have any other recommendations right now. I'll probably watch Halloween ends this weekend, though I just saw someone give a terrible review of it. Oh, no. On my Instagram. So it's not I mean, it's just someone that's a YouTuber that I normally feel like I agree with. So I was like, I mean, it is a lot to ask, right? A big finale of a franchise, a franchise like which I'm sure it's not anyway. But the idea of ending a franchise.
00:06:04
Speaker
Okay, all right, let's dive in. So we've talked for a while now. Maybe we just save more Halloween stuff since we have that Q&A episode next week.
The Fascination with Seances
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so today I'm going to be discussing a topic that I can't believe I haven't done more research about in the past because it's
00:06:24
Speaker
near and dear to my heart. And that is seances. Yes. Speaking to the dead. Which we will do now. Which we will right now perform a podcast seance. I wonder if anyone's ever done that. Would people like that? I don't know. Or like a seance live stream.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yes. I feel like that's probably happening already somewhere on the internet. Maybe when my dad retires, he'll do them again for us. He used to do them. I'm like, I want you to do it again. Yeah. You told me it was pretty some spectacular theatricals. Yes. He just went to a like seance convention like a year ago. No way. Yes. They're seance conventions. Yeah.
00:07:07
Speaker
I got to start just following your dad around and just go where he goes. Maybe we should do a trip sometime with him. How funny would that be? Yes. That would be really fun.
Origins of Seances: The Fox Sisters
00:07:19
Speaker
There's a lot of types of seances, so I'm going to specify a little bit about what I'm talking here today. I'm talking about the seance where people are sitting around a table, like a whole group of people. They turn the lights down low. They light some candles. One person typically, the medium.
00:07:36
Speaker
is calling upon whatever spirit to talk to the dead. And everyone goes, ooh ah, and then maybe the table moves, maybe the lights go out, maybe something crashes, something spooky happens. The ones we watch in the movies, you know? I love it. Yeah. So the first thing I was really delighted to find is that the seance, as we understand it today, was invented by two teenage girls
00:08:06
Speaker
in their bedroom in 1848 in the United States. You're kidding. No. Isn't that crazy? So there is like older forms of the idea of talking to the dead. But in terms of like a seance that feels theatrical in some way, this is the beginning of the modern day seance. Two teenage girls. I love it. Two teenage girls.
00:08:34
Speaker
So we have the Fox sisters, which like, that's a good name. Should we change our name? Should we change our name? So there's actually three of them, but the story is really focused on two here.
Seances Go Public
00:08:47
Speaker
And that is Maggie and Kate Fox. And they and their additional sister, Leah, kind of not only started seances, but the whole spiritualism movement in the United States that then moved across to Europe.
00:09:04
Speaker
And it all started in their bedroom. So when they were so young, literally, Kate was 11, Maggie was 14, they were in Rochester, New York with their parents. And they, in their room one night, and this is like, and I hate to even start it like this, because I would like to have some mystique, but I feel like it's best to explain
00:09:31
Speaker
with facts, so here's a quote. 1888, Maggie tells the story of how this all happened and how this all started. She says, when we went to bed at night, we used to tie an apple to a string and move it up and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor, or we would drop the apple on the floor, making a strange noise every time it would rebound.
00:09:58
Speaker
Mother listened to this for a time. She would not understand it and did not suspect us of being capable of a trick because we were so young. Okay. This is where we're going. The greatest story. Yes. I love this like tricky little girls. These tricky little girls. So on March, let's see, it says March 34.
00:10:26
Speaker
34th? What? Sorry. Sorry, March 31st. I was like, is she gonna catch it? No. Yeah, my brain is only half mush. 1848. So they're saying there's these like mysterious wrappings happening in their room. They tell that they tell their parents that they think it's a spirit. So one night they call upon the spirit.
00:10:53
Speaker
to repeat the sound they make. So I'm gonna snap my fingers if you can hear me snap your fingers. And then they would hear a snap. And it was like, whoa! So then the parents were so like freaked out by this. They called all the neighbors over to watch them do this.
00:11:15
Speaker
So then over the next few days, yes, they are building their performance and they kind of got a code going on for the signal that the spirit could give for yes and no in response to different questions they would ask. Or the snapping or raps could indicate a letter of the alphabet. So we're also looking at like the bear, like pre Ouija board territory.
00:11:44
Speaker
which I've already decided is going to be a separate episode because I started looking into that and I was like, this is a whole another situation. I can't do it all. So we will deal with that another day. But so it's kind of the beginning of the beginning of all that.
00:11:58
Speaker
So they started calling the spirit Mr. Splitfoot, which they they thought it was some sort of devil spirit. They were religious. I mean, 1848, I think most a lot of people were, but they were Methodist. And then later on, they also claimed that the spirit was actually a man that had been murdered and buried in the cellar of their house. And so they're starting to create these stories and they get more and more popular.
00:12:27
Speaker
So they started going to town and are being sent to town to perform these things and it's getting bigger and bigger and then eventually it's getting out of control. Okay. So the first time, cause there's also the type of seances that we have nowadays where people are on stage, right? And they're like talking about someone in the audience, whatever.
00:12:53
Speaker
So by 1849, the sisters were doing their spiritualist rapping, which is like the noise like that at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, and people paid to come see it. So it's getting big. Now they're getting some cash.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, now they're getting some cash. And then, so that's when their sister, Leah, was like, oh man, we can make money off of this. This is about to be a whole big thing. So then they kind of keep doing their thing. They're giving lectures. They're talking about how to talk to the dead, this whole thing. And it basically spirals out of control. And this spiritualism movement gets really big in the US.
00:13:41
Speaker
Kind of sparked sparking from this there was other other things going on at the time for example you know.