* Please note that the following history is not intended to promote the religion of Spiritualism but is simply a historical overview explaining the historical roots of mediumship.

With the recent uprise and popularity in talking to the other side, one has to wonder, "Where did it all begin?" and "What's the meaning to all of this?"

Questions about life after death and talking to the other side had it's strongest rise in popularity in the past century and a half because of a religion called Spiritualism. So to answer the above questions we have to travel back in time to the 1800's and read the story of where it all began.

Definition: Medium - one who communicates with entities in the spirit world. One whose organism is sensitive to vibrations from the spirit world and through whose instrumentality, intelligences in that world are able to convey messages and produce the phenomena of Spiritualism.

Definition: Spiritualism - The science, philosophy and religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, by means of mediumship, with those who live in the spirit world.

Spiritualism was at it's peak in the 1800's and most of what we have learned today about life after death, what happenes after we die, reincarnation, spirit guides, guardian angels and the like, and guardian angels was information obtained and received through mediumship.
The main ways that this information was received was by deceased loved ones communicating through a medium and the more detailed information came from mediums who had passed through the "veil" and delivered the information of what life was like on the other side through other mediums.

All major religions believe in some form of life after death but Spiritualism carries it one step further saying that "Life after death is a fact that has been proved through mediumship."

We have to step back a bit in time to March, 31, 1848 to a little town called Hydesville, New York.

There were two little sisters named Katie and Maggie Fox and they had been hearing spirit rapping in their house for the past two weeks.

Definition: Spirit Rapping - A sound made by spirit that is described as a short knocking sound or popping sound similar to a tapping your knuckles on a piece of wood or other hard surface.

On this particular evening, Katie decided to jump out of bed and play with the spirit that was making it's presence known through these raps.

So she clapped her hands a few times and the spirit answered with the same number of raps. The two sister continued to play this way and then their mother decided to join in. So their mother asked the spirit how many children she had and the raps answered correctly, including one of her children who had died.

One can only imagine how quickly the word spread in this small town and before they knew it the neighbors started to join in. All having had the same types of experiences with these raps as the Fox family had previously experienced.

Through these rapping sessions, they had come to discover that the rapper was a peddler named Charles B. Rosna who had been murdered for his good. The goods would have been worth about $500.00 in todays currency. He said that a previous tenet who lived in the cottage that the Fox family now lived in had murdered him and that the tenet had buried him in the cellar of the home.

As one would expect, the people quickly went to the cellar and started to dig. Upon their digging was discovered, some hair, some human bones and a tin cup.

The discovery that it was possible to communicate with the spirit world and loved ones who had died was the beginning of Modern American Spiritualism.

Helen Duncan
1897-1956

          SCOTTISH MATERIALISATION medium of Dundee, around whose phenomena lively controversy ensued in Light, 1931, following her sittings for the London Psychic Laboratory, the research department of the London Spiritual Alliance. These sittings promised, at first, very interesting results. "Ectoplasm" was seen in quantities, specimens were obtained for analysis, figures of adults and children appeared under voluminous drapery, movements of objects beyond the reach of the medium were observed and as a means of control the medium was placed nude into a sleeved sack with stiff buckram fingerless gauntlets sewn to the sleeves of her suit. The sack was sewn in at the back and fastened with tapes and cords to the chair. At the end of the sitting the medium was often found outside the bag, the seals, tapes and stitchings remaining intact.

The first report of the London Psychic Laboratory was published in Light, May 16, 1931. It advanced no definite conclusion but disclosed a favourable impression. Meantime, Mrs. Duncan also gave sittings at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. In the July 14, 1931, Morning Post, a long article was published on her exposure there and Harry Price branded her in a statement "as one of the cleverest frauds in the history of Spiritualism." A portion of her teleplasm was found to be composed of woodpulp and white of egg. Photographs taken during the séance disclosed India rubber gloves and rough portraits wrapped in cheesecloth. An X-ray examination revealed that Mrs. Duncan was possessed of a remarkable faculty of regurgitation and she merely swallowed the necessary paraphernalia before the séance.

Two days after this article the second report of the London Psychic Laboratory appeared in Light, July 17. It also branded Mrs. Duncan as clear-cut fraud and quoted a confession of her husband. In subsequent issues of Light many spiritualists stood up for the medium. Dr. Montague Rust who was responsible for introducing Mrs. Duncan to London, deplored the precipitate conclusions and despite the adverse report maintained that Mrs. Duncan was the most remarkable physical medium in Europe. Indeed, many other weighty testimonies came forth on her behalf. Will Goldston, the famous magician, confessed to have witnessed astounding results which no system of trickery can achieve. (Psychic News, May 28, 1932).

However, another exposure followed on January 5, 1932, in Edinburgh. Peggy, the materialised child control, was seized by Miss Maule and found to be identical with the medium.

"I see no escape from the conclusion," wrote J. B. M'Indoe, President of the Spiritualists National Union in Light, Feb. 10, "that Mrs. Duncan was detected in a crude and clumsy fraud - a pitiable travesty of the phenomena she has so frequently displayed. I have no doubt that the fraud was deliberate, conscious and premeditated."

Yet in the Edinburgh Sheriff Court, where the exposers carried the case, he said that he had considerably modified his view owing to the evidence of the Crown witnesses. E. Oaten and Montague Rust were the chief witnesses for the defence, the latter describing amazing experiences of the partial dematerialisation of Mrs. Duncan's body. The court found Mrs. Duncan guilty of fraud and sentenced her to a fine of £10 - or a month's imprisonment.

The records of the séances at the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, with impressions of the phenomena by several professors, were published by Harry Price in book form under the title: Regurgitation and the Duncan Mediumship, 1931.

Source: An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).