19th century humans had an acute relationship with death: the average life span was around 50 years, the infant mortality rate was roughly fifty-percent, with women dying in child birth, and men dying in war. Families often held days-long wakes for the departed’s body in the parlor rooms of their homes. It’s no wonder that seances and communing with spirits …

Spiritualism, a religion that at it’s peak claimed over eight million followers in the United States and Europe, has very humble beginnings indeed. In late March of 1848, in a small cottage, on a small piece of land in Hydesville, New York, the two youngest daughters of John and Margaret Fox changed the Western notions of the Beyond forever.