American Spiritualism–Hidden History

The Haunting of America—William J. Birnes and Joel Martin, 2009

Before I begin this review, you need to know something about me.  I buy books.  Lots of them.  Sometimes I don’t get around to reading them for years.  At last count, I owned over fifty tomes on a variety of subjects from different genres that have never been read.  Why don’t I read them when I get them?  Let’s just say that life can be a little too interesting sometimes. However, the result of life’s intrusion is that my library has a deep backlog of books that I’m finally trying to read.  I’ve seen YouTubers and websites do ‘Retro Movie Reviews’, so I thought I’d do the same for my vast collection of unread books of Forteana.  I intend to focus the majority of my reviews here on recent books, none more than a year or two old, but sometimes we’ll have something like The Haunting of America:  From the Salem Witch Trials to Harry Houdini, published in 2009 by Forge Publishing.

True to the title, Birnes and Martin begin with the story of Salem, before proceeding through George Washington’s ‘angelic intervention’ (my term) at Valley Forge, and then moving on to the Bell Witch and beyond.  All of this is deeply researched and well-sourced, as demonstrated by over thirty pages of chapter notes and bibliographical references at the end.  However, I feel that the title is somewhat misleading.  When we hear a phrase like ‘haunt’, our minds are culturally attuned to think about ghosts in creaky old houses, whispering in your ear, or stomping in the attic, or tossing around grandma’s china plates.  Here, it’s meant as the feeling of ‘supernatural otherness’ that has pervaded much of America’s daily life over the past 400 years.  A little over halfway through Chapter 2, the authors bring up spiritualism, and, at that point, the ‘scientific religion’ of spiritualism becomes the focus of the book, from its beginnings with the Fox sisters to Harry Houdini’s ferocious efforts to discredit all mediums.  A more apt title for the book would be ‘American Spiritualism—A History.’  Sound a little boring?  Maybe.  But at least it’s more accurate.

That minor quibble aside, Birnes and Martin have truly put together an impressive piece of work.  By reading the previous paragraph, you’d be forgiven if you thought it only hits the well-known people involved in the spiritualist movement, such as famed medium D. D. Home, Madame Blavatsky, and Arthur Conan Doyle.  And you will, indeed, meet these people, who are covered in great detail.  But the authors also cover names that are all but lost to history, such as Nettie Colburn, who was Mary Todd Lincoln’s favorite medium, including during the 16^th president’s time in the White House.  If Colburn’s own memoir is to be believed, they tell us, even President Lincoln himself sat with Colburn and listened to advice from beyond, even as the American Civil War raged.  It’s truly fascinating.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is how Birnes and Martin demonstrate just how much Spiritualism wove its way into the mainstream of American life.  Lincoln himself may have believed, and his wife certainly did.  Thomas Edison, while skeptical, still spent his final years trying to invent a machine for communication from the other side.  And even Harry Houdini’s famous cynicism was fueled by meeting fraudulent mediums who claimed to be channeling his mother in an attempt to communicate with her after her death.

Overall, The Haunting of America is an often compelling, occasionally mesmerising, well-documented read that, misleading title notwithstanding, is most definitely worth seeking out.  It took me ten years to get around to reading it, and I wish I’d gotten to it much sooner.  4.5 out of 5 Armchairs