[HN Gopher] Why Did So Many Victorians Try to Speak with the Dead?
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       Why Did So Many Victorians Try to Speak with the Dead?
        
       Author : samclemens
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2021-05-29 02:22 UTC (20 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
        
       | hasmanean wrote:
       | Because they had new surveillance technology (the telephone) and
       | they needed a plausible explanation for what the source of all
       | their secret information was. You can turn a specially modified
       | telephone into a listening device. All important people had
       | phones in their offices sitting right on their desks.
       | 
       | But obviously, to the gullible public, they were getting it
       | directly from "the dead".
        
       | pmoriarty wrote:
       | One interesting thing that happened in that era was the unlikely
       | friendship that developed between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry
       | Houdini.[1][2]
       | 
       | Doyle was a true believer in spiritualism while Houdini was a
       | debunker of it.
       | 
       | They became friends despite this conflict of views, but later had
       | a falling out over it when Doyle arranged for a seance for
       | Houdini where Houdini's dead mother allegedly appeared.
       | 
       | [1] - https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2016/04/the-real-story-
       | of-h...
       | 
       | [2] - https://medium.com/picture-palace/harry-houdinis-
       | spiritual-f...
        
         | marcodiego wrote:
         | Conan Doyle and the Wright family helped propagating the
         | Cottingley Fairies. Sometimes I get impressed by how much the
         | western developed world was still so mystical by the begining
         | of the 20th century... then I see people mixing religion and
         | politics and I see how we haven't advanced so much in this
         | area.
        
         | darkhorse22 wrote:
         | > Houdini was immediately suspicious. The message was written
         | in English and his mother only spoke German. At the top of each
         | page was a cross. His mother was the wife of a rabbi and
         | devoutly Jewish. There is no way she would have drawn a cross.
         | Finally, the day of the seance was her birthday. Why didn't she
         | mention this?
        
           | qwerty456127 wrote:
           | This would probably sound laughable for anybody who has basic
           | idea of extrasensory practice. Even assuming ghosts exist,
           | you really can't contact them directly as if they were on a
           | telephone/fax. That only works this way in cartoons. The only
           | slightly realistic scenario is them channeling pure
           | meanings/thoughts into a medium's mind. The medium then
           | interprets them and turns them into words/drawings in
           | accordance with habits of his own mind.
           | 
           | For example some times I (not a medium, I mean in ordinary
           | life) really know what do I want to say and that is a simple
           | one-word concept but I have hard time recalling the word in
           | ANY of the languages I speak, I only have a pure meaning
           | experience without a verbal representation to express. If I
           | somehow could pass this sense to someone else telepathically
           | they would still probably misinterpret it, e.g. because they
           | have a different context in their minds.
           | 
           | And I would hardly waste time/traffic mentioning my birthday
           | if I were talking to my son through an unreliable inter-
           | dimensional telepathical connection.
        
             | mjburgess wrote:
             | Have you considered how you would distinguish this from
             | ghosts simply not existing?
             | 
             | It seems like what you're describing is merely a means by
             | which a non-existent phenomenon may seem plausible.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | polytronic wrote:
       | Because they had no tv?
        
       | ZeroGravitas wrote:
       | The article has a few interesting non-fiction book
       | recommendations (are Houdini's books in the public domain? They
       | don't seem as easily found online as I'd expect), so I'll add a
       | random fiction book to the list:
       | 
       | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27272632-summerland
       | 
       | A sci-fi/fantasy/spy novel that builds from the assumption that
       | the victorians discovered a real afterlife.
       | 
       | Fairly unique in setting, and I found it an enjoyable enough read
       | that I'm looking into picking up the author's other books.
        
         | yorwba wrote:
         | Wikisource has transcribed versions of some of Houdini's books,
         | but not yet of "A Magician Among the Spirits"
         | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Harry_Houdini
         | 
         | The Internet Archive has a scan of the book:
         | https://archive.org/details/1924HoudiniAMagicianAmongTheSpir...
        
       | desktopninja wrote:
       | The dead know all the secrets?
        
         | thaumasiotes wrote:
         | Presumably for the same reason people in every other era,
         | including today, try to speak with the dead: they miss them.
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | This was popular
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-29 23:01 UTC)