Mediums and Debunkers

Mediums

Popular 19th century trance medium lecturers include Cora Scott Hatch, Achsa W. Sprague, Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899), and Paschal Beverly Randolph(1825-1875).

Among the notable people who conducted small leader-assisted séances during the 19th century were the Fox sisters, whose activities included table-rapping, and the Davenport Brothers, who were famous for the spirit cabinet work. Both the Foxes and the Davenports were eventually exposed as frauds.

Attendees

Notable people who have attended séances and professed a belief in Spiritualism include the United States President Abraham Lincoln, and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln; the social reformer Robert Owen; the journalist and pacifist William T. Stead ; Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister of Canada for 22 years, who sought spiritual contact and political guidance from his deceased mother, his pet dogs, and the late US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ; the journalist and author Lloyd Kenyon Jones; and the physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle.

Scientists who have attended séances and believed that contact with the dead is a reality include the chemist William Crookes, the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, the inventor of radio Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of telephony Alexander Graham Bell, and the inventor of television technology John Logie Baird, who claimed to have contacted the spirit of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison

Debunkers

Among the best known exposers of fraudulent mediumship acts have been the researchers Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research, Harry Price of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, the professional stage magicians John Nevil Maskelyne (who exposed the Davenport Brothers) and Harry Houdini, who clearly stated that he did not oppose the religion of Spiritualism itself, but only the trickery by phony mediums that was being practiced in the name of the religion.