Volume 53, Number 3 · February 23, 2006
Summoning the Spirits
By Luc Sante
The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult
Catalog of the exhibitionby Clément Chéroux, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, Denis Canguilhem, and Sophie Schmit
an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 27–December 31, 2005.
Yale University Press, 288 pp., $65.00
In March 1848, the two Fox sisters, of Hydesville, New York, demonstrated that disembodied knocks and raps, presumably emanating from the beyond, occurred in rooms in which they happened to be present. Their mother soon displayed the same talent, and the three became a sensation, passing from local interest to international fame in what was, for the time, extreme speed. Although a neighbor reported that one of the Foxes had told her they were merely cracking their double-jointed knuckles, this had little effect on their reputation. Around the same time a young Scot, Daniel Dunglas Home, who claimed that his rappings predated the Foxes' by two years, and who possessed a much wider repertoire of effects, including abilities to levitate and float, alter his height, handle fire, and physically manifest spirits, in addition to a degree of personal charisma not apparently enjoyed by the Foxes, became the first true star of the nascent belief system known as spiritualism.
Review, 3571 words
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