How Séances Work and What to Expect
The word “séance” comes from the French for “session” and refers, in its spiritualist sense, to a sitting at which one or more mediums attempt to communicate with the dead. The form varies enormously by era, by tradition, and by the medium involved, but the basic structure — a small group, a darkened room, a period of waiting, and a delivery of messages — is consistent. This article describes what a Victorian-era sitting actually involved, what the medium and the sitters said they experienced, and what a contemporary Spiritualist service looks like in practice. The standard historical accounts are Janet Oppenheim’s The Other World (1985), Alex Owen’s The Darkened Room (1989), and Logie Barrow’s Independent Spirits (1986), which together form the scholarly basis for any account of what was actually going on.
A Victorian Séance in Practice
A typical late-nineteenth-century private séance in London or New York would involve six to twelve sitters, a medium, and sometimes a companion or nurse. The group would gather in a private parlour or hired room in the early evening. The medium would arrive in normal dress. The lights would be dimmed but not extinguished. A small wooden table would be set in the centre of the room, the sitters arranged around it, hands placed on the surface, often with the little fingers linked to make a closed circuit. A hymn would be sung. A clock might be set as a timer.
The medium would then “go under.” A physical medium might become rigid, breathe heavily, and pass into a state in which the body could be levitated, partially or fully. A mental or trance medium would more typically close the eyes, sink the head, and after some minutes begin to speak in a voice not her own, addressing sitters by name. The medium would offer consoling messages, sometimes with particular information — a name, a place, a date — that the sitter was meant to recognise.
The sitting might last from an hour to two. A great many séances, especially in the early years of the movement, took place without any professional medium, in private home circles, and the form was often more informal.
What the Medium and the Sitters Reported
The medium’s reports were often detailed and consistent. A physical medium might describe a sense of heaviness in the limbs, a bright light at the back of the eyes, a feeling that some non-physical force was operating through the body. The trance medium would report an inner separation, a “going away” of the self, and a return with only partial memory. The British medium Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882-1968) produced long periods of trance speech and clairvoyant description that she could not reproduce in ordinary consciousness; her sittings with the control “Feda” continued for over forty years and form one of the largest single bodies of mediumistic material in the SPR archives.
The sitters’ reports were equally detailed. They described sudden changes in temperature, sensations of being touched, lights moving across the room, the sense of a presence near the shoulder, the appearance of a recognisable form in the cabinet. The American psychical researcher Hereward Carrington, in The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism (1907), published an extensive catalogue of the kind of phenomena reported in séances, including apports, levitations, the appearance of luminous forms, and the materialisation of hands, faces, and full-bodied figures. The variety of these reports is one of the most striking features of the historical record, and the temptation to dismiss them all in a single gesture should be resisted.
What the Skeptics Reported
Sceptical investigators produced a parallel catalogue, in which the same phenomena were attributed to known methods of fraud. The British magician John Nevil Maskelyne published several books in the 1890s and 1900s describing the stagecraft of the séance, drawing on his first-hand exposure of the Davenport brothers in 1865. The Society for Psychical Research, despite its name, exposed a number of the most famous mediums, including Eusapia Palladino, whose hand was caught cheating at Cambridge in 1895, and the Boston medium Mina “Margery” Crandon, who was exposed by the magician Harry Houdini. The most important of the methods the sceptics catalogued were the use of confederates, the manipulation of lighting, the substitution of costume for “ectoplasm,” the use of speaking tubes for “direct voice,” and the deliberate use of small muscular movements to produce apparent levitation or table-tipping.
The most interesting question, in this context, is not whether fraud was common — it certainly was — but whether the best-attested cases of mediumship were also explained by fraud. The Society for Psychical Research was itself unable to settle the question. By the mid-twentieth century, its surviving investigators had split into two camps, and the question was never resolved.
What a Modern Spiritualist Service Looks Like
A typical service at a British or American Spiritualist church today looks quite different from a Victorian séance. The congregation sings hymns and listens to a sermon. The service then moves into a “demonstration,” in which a visiting medium delivers messages from the dead to members of the congregation, often addressing individuals by name, offering a few sentences of consolation, occasionally a personal detail, and a brief claim of contact with a specific deceased relative. The British Spiritualists’ National Union requires its ministers and demonstrators to undergo formal training and to abide by a published code of conduct.
The phenomena of the Victorian physical séance — ectoplasm, levitations, apports, materialisations — are not part of the modern service. Spiritualist churches have tended to treat the more elaborate physical claims of the late nineteenth century as embarrassing relics of an earlier, less disciplined period. The point of a modern Spiritualist service is the religious and pastoral function. The most famous Spiritualist communities in North America — Lily Dale Assembly in Chautauqua County, New York, founded 1879, and the Cassadaga spiritualist camp in Florida, founded 1894 — are open to the public in the summer months. For the historical context, see spirit communication and mediumship.
What to Expect as a Participant
A curious visitor to a Spiritualist church is generally welcomed. Most churches will explain, in advance, what a service consists in. A first-time visitor is not required to do anything other than to be present. The medium, in a typical service, will not single out a visitor unless the visitor has indicated a wish to receive a message. Visitors are not expected to know anything about Spiritualism in advance, and the etiquette is no different from that of any other religious service.
In practical terms, most British and American churches publish their service times on their websites. There is normally no charge for admission, although a collection plate is common. The cost of a private sitting with a working medium varies widely. Séances are legal in most jurisdictions, although most modern mediums do not call their sittings “séances” precisely to avoid the connotations of the historical form. Anyone who feels psychologically vulnerable, in acute grief, or in the middle of a psychiatric crisis should approach with caution; the same caution, in fairness, applies to a great many religious and devotional practices. For a detailed description of the historical setting, see mediums, spirits, and the séance. For a discussion of the most common household spirit-writing technology, see the Ouija board and automatic writing.