Religion, conservatism, and U.S. paranormal culture

This is first episode in a series called The Spirit-Era and Its Aftermaths. Across the next few installments of AEWCH, I’ll be investigating the way the spiritual, technological, and occult flourishing at the turn of the 19th/20th century is affecting our lives to this day.

The Spirit-Era was a time marked by spirits, of course. But also miracles, hucksters, paranormal investigators, and genuine spiritual teachers. There were seances and fakirs, performances of incredible feats in private and on stages both which were thought to be revelations of different worlds, or worlds that could be possible.

The intelligentsia of the time might go to see spirits materialize in dark rooms. They might write novels inspired by meeting  notorious occult figures. Or maybe they would decide to form societies to investigate the afterlife. Many of the Spirt-Era's most famous artists and writers found themselves inspired by and even joining occult orders. New occult organizations and forms - some with anarchist aspirations, others connecting to labor rights movements, still others taking fascist turns, - were rising and falling.

Like in our own era, new technologies emerged and others became popularized. The telephone became more available, and so, later, did the car  and motion picture with sound. But also there was the fortune cookie, bringing a sort of precogniostic levity to the everyday. These innovations marked changing experiences of time and space across the planet.

Plagues, wars, sinking ships. It seemed like there was never a moment of rest.
I’m sure you can relate.

Two themes ran through the Spirit-Era: the shifting relationship of the spiritual and material, and the deep understanding that everything was changing, so anything might be possible.

In these episodes, we won’t just be trying to learn from history to avoid repeating it, but rather to deeply consider the Spirit-Era and conjure its best aspects.

Because within the spectacle, there were many revelations to be had. Some of them we take for granted in our everyday lives, and forget they were handed to us by people who took the great risk or the absurd plunge into the era's spiritual possibility.

We’ll look at the ways paranormal investigations pushed on science, how esotericism informed advancing literature and performance. We’ll even investigate whole world views with their own coherence, that developed at the time, and see why we can learn so much from  them.

And we'll look at why so many of these boundary-pushing advances are stigmatized today. One reason I’ll mention now:
The Spirit-Era is difficult for us because it isn’t part of the past, but something beyond us.

A future where we allow ourselves to think in ways that dissolve the material realm as we know it, and try to understand the forces - whether social, dialectical, economic, or spiritual - fully anew.

The Spirit-Era reflects the past and the future through smoke and mirrors. Yes, the tools of illusionists and frauds. But amongst the trickery, the truth of light and surface is there. In the aftermaths of the Spirit-Era, we continue to use its insights and gestures to figure out what we think is real, what is solid, and where illumination comes from.

Welcome to this series.

On the first episode, I talk with ALICE VERNON, author of Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting, and Why We Keep Looking. The book is vast in scope, and considers the many emotional resonances we have with paranormal investigation, ghost-hunting, and why it is important to us. We start in the 1st century, and go all the way to AI in this wide-ranging conversation about the topic.

But the Spirit-Era here is unavoidable. People grieving, hustling, debunking, and believing all surround the seance tables, inviting new presences, new technologies, and new methods of investigation.

I’m so happy to present this series and episode.

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Buy Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting, and Why We Keep Looking by Alice Vernon