Séances, scares, spiritualism – ghost summonings in the 1920s

A dark room. It smells of incense and dusty old curtains. The only light comes from a few burnt-down candles standing on a shabby sideboard. The flames flicker slightly, even though there is no draught. A few people are sitting at a table in the middle of the room. At the centre of the group is a woman in a loose-fitting robe, rocking back and forth with her eyes closed, seemingly in a trance. A humming sound seems to emanate from her, growing louder and louder. Suddenly, the curtain billows, a handkerchief that had been lying on the floor rises as if by itself and sweeps through the room at high speed. The candles flicker wildly and finally go out. The handkerchief falls onto the table. The humming stops.

Belief in the supernatural – as old as humanity itself

As one can imagine, since the dawn of time, people have been searching for answers to the question of what happens after death. Is everything over, or is there perhaps life after death in another dimension or even on this earth, as a disembodied soul or spirit? To find out, one needs a way to make contact with the afterlife, and since ancient times there have always been people who claimed to be able to do so. It is difficult to say whether this was always done by honest means. Supernatural services have probably always been a lucrative business, provided one could find a willing and wealthy audience.

Spiritualism in modern times

However, anyone who thinks that ghost conjuring belongs solely to the distant past is mistaken. Growing technological progress has not diminished public interest in the supernatural, but may even have increased it. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, magnetism and electricity opened up entirely new possibilities for approaching the spiritual world. If it is possible to make natural forces such as electricity visible through illuminated light bulbs, then this could also work with other invisible forces, some argued. Photography was a popular means of making such supernatural forces visible. As early as the 19th century, but also into the 1920s, so-called spirit photography became established. Photographers such as the Englishman William Hope gained fame with photographs that allegedly showed the spirits of the deceased.

Ghost photography by William Hope: Two faces can be seen in what looks like a cloud of smoke.

These images enjoyed great public favour and gave many people hope that their relatives and friends who had died prematurely due to illness or war were still close to them in spectral form. Authorities such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famous author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, also publicly advocated the authenticity of these spirit photographs and other paranormal phenomena, which certainly contributed to their popularity and further dissemination. However, even back then, there were many sceptics alongside the passionate supporters, and William Hope was soon exposed as a fraud: old photographs of the deceased, which he obtained from his customers, were inserted into new ones, creating an image that was given a ghostly effect through double exposure.

Increasing interest in the 1920s

It should come as no surprise that the First World War and the subsequent Spanish flu pandemic caused deep trauma among the people. In just a few years, the population had been violently decimated to such an extent that the bereaved had little time to process the shock of losing family members and friends. Many of them sought answers that could not be found in this world. For some, this search for meaning led them to the home of a medium, where the spirit of the deceased was summoned during a spiritualist session or séance. The medium would enter a kind of trance in order to speak with the supposed voice of the spirit. Another way of contacting the other world was to use a Ouija board. This was a wooden board painted with numbers and letters, which had a movable pointer. A finger was placed on the pointer and the participants waited for a supernatural apparition to move it across the board until a message appeared. Automatic writing was similar and was also often used during séances. Here, the medium waited with pen and paper for the spirit of the person being summoned to guide their hand in order to convey a message.

Advertisement for a Ouija board. The board was initially developed as a party game.

The popularity of the Ouija board in media and music

Occultism en vogue

After the horrors of the war, the new political order and the drastic changes in living conditions that people had to endure during the Weimar period, a deep sense of uncertainty remained among the population, particularly in Germany. Many perceived technological progress and rapidly growing cities such as Berlin as a threat, places where poverty, crime, shady characters and other nameless horrors could be found. This gloomy zeitgeist of the post-war years was depicted by artists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz in grotesque and demonic-looking paintings. In silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu and Unheimliche Geschichten (Eerie Tales), the world also appears as a sinister place, full of supernatural dangers and mysteries.

Demonic elements in expressionist silent films; excerpts from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Unheimliche Geschichten (1919) and Nosferatu (1922)

The turn towards the occult became en vogue, so to speak, through art and culture, which also carried over into private life. Séances became increasingly popular and were soon attended not only by mourners. Curiosity or thrill-seeking may have been a motivation for many, and so the German writer Thomas Mann also took part in several spiritualist séances, including at the home of the so-called Ghost Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. When he witnessed the medium (a young man named Willi Schneider) making objects float through the room seemingly without any independent action, this experience filled him with amazement and unease, as he later described in his essay collection Occult Experiences:

The bell is taken – it cannot possibly be taken with one hand, for how else, if not with one hand, can a bell be taken by its handle? – lifted up, held high at an angle, rung vigorously, swung in an arc across the room, rung once more, and then thrown with gusto and clatter under the chair of one of those seated around the table. Slight seasickness. Deepest astonishment with a hint – not of horror, but of disgust.*

Albert Freiherr von Schrenck-Notzing (l.) and Thomas Mann (r.)

Faith vs. the pursuit of truth, or Doyle vs. Houdini

As real as these supernatural phenomena seemed to many, it was often possible even back then to prove that they were merely staged performances. In order to scientifically verify the authenticity of paranormal phenomena, special societies were founded as early as the 19th century, such as the Society for Psychical Research in London. The writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, mentioned at the beginning, was a prominent member of this society. As an ardent supporter of all things occult and supernatural, he fell out with other members who, in his opinion, were fundamentally hostile to spiritualism. Another rift for similar reasons occurred with the famous escape artist Harry Houdini, with whom Doyle had previously been friends. Houdini had attended a séance in which Doyle's wife, acting as a medium, had allegedly spoken with the voice of Houdini's deceased mother, which he strongly doubted:

Although my sainted mother had been in America for nearly fifty years, she could not speak, nor read nor write English - and Lady Doyle's message was in perfect English.**

His disappointment about this may have prompted Houdini, after a decades-long career as an illusionist, to finally take it upon himself to publicly expose fake mediums. To this end, he collaborated with investigator Rose Mackenberg and her network of detectives, who attended séances in disguise and, using fabricated stories of supposedly deceased individuals, were able to expose many mediums who did not recognise these lies and conjured up spirits that did not exist. Houdini made many enemies through these revelations, but this did not deter him from his mission to take action against fraudulent mediums. In 1924, he noted with regret:

It is with the deepest interest and concern that I have watched this great wave of spiritualism sweep the world. It had become a menace to health and sanity.***

Harry Houdini demonstrates how to make synthetic hands. These ‘ghost hands’ were frequently used during séances.

The woman with a hundred faces: Detective Rose Mackenberg in her numerous disguises.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the realms of the strange and supernatural. Perhaps it even sent a shiver or two down your spine. Or maybe you now feel like watching one of the famous horror classics from the Weimar period. In any case, I wish you a pleasant start to the dark season – take care!

Yours, Marleen Tigersee

*translated from: Thomas Mann, Okkulte Erlebnisse, in: GKFA 15.1, 639.

**Harry Houdini, quoted after: Matthew L. Tompkins, The Spectacle of Illusion - Magic, The Paranormal & The Complicity of the Mind, London 2019, 102.

***ibd.

Further recommended reading: Lisa Morton: Calling the Spirits - A History of Seances