Lisa Morton tells the fascinating history of seances in her new book, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances. Discussion included necromancy, spook shows, Spiritualism, fraudulent mediums, D.D. Home, Helen Duncan, Florence Cook, William Crookes, the American Civil War, spirit rapping, EVP, and of course, plenty of ectoplasm! PLUS, Patrick didn't miss the opportunity to ask a Halloween expert about how the pandemic could change our favorite holiday! Visit BigSeance.com/170 for more info.

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In this episode:

Episode Teaser :00

Intro :53

Are you subscribed to the show? Also, don't miss updates on my upcoming book! Sign up for the Big Seance Newsletter! 1:37

Lisa Morton's Bio 1:27

Book description for Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances 4:33

Necromancy and calling forth the dead could be seriously gross! 5:50

Was sacrifice involved in necromancy? 8:41

Spook shows, phantasmagoria light shows, and Pepper's Ghost! 9:33

So many debunked mediums from the days of Spiritualism! Were any of them real? 14:40

D.D. Home 16:40

Helen Duncan, Harry Price, and ectoplasm 18:05

Why don't we have more mediums producing the ectoplasm and physical phenomena in seances today? 20:17

Patrick reminisces about the spirit rapping he experienced several years ago during some Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) sessions. 23:02

Sometimes we hear what we want to hear in EVP. A story from the son of William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist 25:04

Lisa shares a spirit box experience from the Stanley Hotel 28:55

Patrick's "Ouija Board" EVP using the spirit box 30:56

The fascinating story of William Crookes, Florence Cook, and the spirit of "Katie King" 32:25

An erotic element of the seance 38:50

Emma Hardinge, brave Spiritualist soldiers, mediums saving the lives of civil war soldiers, former slaves having visions of the upcoming civil war, and the story of Raymond 40:09

The modern seance and why we have an obsession with it 45:50

Since Lisa Morton is an expert on Halloween, Patrick asks about the concern of how the pandemic could affect our favorite holiday! It turns out there's hope, since after 9/11, Halloween emerged better than ever! 48:30

Lisa's final thoughts and her upcoming books! 53:47

A special THANK YOU to Patreon supporters at the Super Paranerd and Parlor Guest level! 55:30

Outro 57:25

Easter egg/Blooper 59:05

For more on Lisa Morton

LisaMorton.com

Calling the Spirits on Amazon

Twitter: @cinriter

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The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at [email protected]. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!