Séance Girl Summer: Talking to the Dead So You Don’t Have To

tldr; Women in the 1850s couldn’t vote, preach, or even say “abolition” without getting side-eyed by the patriarchy. So they lit some candles and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not speaking — that famous dead philospher is.”
💅 Teenage girls became celebrity mediums.
🛏️ A disabled abolitionist used her sickbed as a pulpit.
👻 One woman ran for president and dropped ghost-powered free love manifestos.
🕯️ And a mixed-race occultist built his own magical order — and got ghosted by history for being too radical.
There’s drama. There’s possession. There’s ectoplasm that should’ve stayed in the drafts.Because when society says “be quiet,”
the girls summon the dead and talk louder.

⚠️Trigger Warning⚠️

Before we get started, a quick heads-up: this episode talks about grief, death, spiritualism, racism, ableism, and historical injustice — including things like child loss and pet loss. It’s not graphic, but it is tender in places.

So if you’re not in a space for that today, or if you need to hit pause and come back later — that’s totally okay. Take care of you.

Hi friends! Welcome to Bygone Echoes, a history podcast. I’m your host, Courtney — and today? We’re getting ghosted.

On purpose.

So, picture it: the COVID-19 quarantine era. That weird, soft-chaos time when we were all stuck inside, trying our best and bingeing whatever Netflix put in front of us.

And for me? One of those shows was Freud.

Now, it was not because I like Sigmund Freud because spoiler: I do not. The man was a racist, sexist theorist whose ideas aged like unrefrigerated milk. And the show? Also not my vibe. If you liked it, I love that for you — but personally? No thanks.

Still, I was starved for spooky period drama. I would’ve watched a Regency butter-churning championship if it had haunted vibes, pretty architecture, and a brooding lead with mysterious trauma.

So I hit play, hoping for ghosts and grim psychology. What I got was… séances, sex cults, gunfights, and — I swear — people eating a mummy like it was just another day. Which, fun! But not the spooky-mourning-lace energy I was craving.

I was hoping for the Fox Sisters. You know, the OG séance girlies. But they were American, and this show was very much in Vienna.

Then I found Alias Grace — and that one? That one hit.

Based on a real 1840s Canadian murder case, adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel, Alias Grace gave me everything I wanted: trauma, silence, spirits, and one unforgettable séance scene. A woman’s grief breaks through — not in her own voice, but someone else’s. It was eerie. It was devastating. And it made a point.

Because historically? Women were often only heard when they were speaking through someone — or something — else.

And that got me thinking:

Why were so many white women channeling spirits in the 1800s?

What were they really saying?

Who was listening?

And why was it suddenly acceptable when just a few centuries earlier, doing the same thing could get you labeled insane, a witch… or worse?

Because séances weren’t just about ghosts.

They were about power.

They were about grief.

And sometimes? They were about rebellion.

Now, if you’ve never heard of a séance — first of all, welcome to the weird side.

Let me set the mood for you: low lights, candles, joined hands, someone in a trance, and the occasional rap on the table or full-body possession. Some had trumpets. Some did automatic writing. Some produced ectoplasm that looked suspiciously like chewed-up tissue paper. There was also a woman who used her body to create her…own ectoplasm. Which was a…choice.

And to be clear — we’re not doing a full séance history today. They didn’t end in the 1800s. They stayed strong well into the 1920s.

We’re starting at the roots, in the mid-to-late 1800s. When spiritualism was still raw. When grief was fresh. And when women were just starting to realize that maybe — just maybe — table-rattling was the loudest voice they were allowed to have.

This episode is about the women who used that voice — and what they chose to say.

We’re talking:

Cora L. V. Scott, who channeled spirits at 15 and toured the country.

Achsa Sprague, a disabled abolitionist who turned her sickbed into a pulpit.

Victoria Woodhull, who talked to ghosts and ran for US president.

And our séance disruptor — not a girl, but an integral part of the movement — Paschal Beverly Randolph, a free Black mystic who carved his own radical spiritual path outside the white spotlight.

Séances may have looked like parlor games.

But underneath?

They were grief rituals.

They were feminist loopholes.

They were political fire wrapped in candlelight.

So grab your spirit board, your favorite candle (extra points if it smells like haunted lilacs), and something lacy to dramatically toss over your head — because Séance Girl Summer is officially in session.

Let’s rewind to the early to mid-1800s—because while séances were gaining steam, the rest of the world wasn’t exactly on pause.

Globally, things were on and poppin.

In East Asia, the Taiping Rebellion erupted in 1850 — an event that shook the Qing Empire (what we now call China) to its core. It was a Christian-inspired civil war led by a man who quite literally believed he was the younger brother of Jesus.

(Which… I was today years old when I learned was a thing. But okay.)

His movement — part religious awakening, part rebellion against the ruling Qing Dynasty — ignited one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. The death toll? Somewhere around 20 million people.

You did not mishear me. Twenty. Million.

And yet, I’d bet most of us were never taught about it.

Meanwhile, the Crimean War kicked off in 1853, pitting Russia against an alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and, surprisingly, the Kingdom of Sardinia. Which, sidenote, I thought Sardinia was a made-up fantasy word but apparently it is very much a real place.

Over in Persia, what we now call Iran, a teenage shah had just taken power in 1848, facing internal rebellions and getting tugged between British and Russian interests like the world’s most stressed-out chess piece.

In South America and the Caribbean, the 1800s were an era of aftermath and resistance.

Countries like Brazil and Cuba still clung to slavery, even as rebellions and independence movements surged across the region.

In Haiti, the post-revolution years were marked by internal struggle and international sabotage.

Meanwhile, white colonial powers were in full panic mode — because Haiti proved what they feared most: that the people they once enslaved could rise up, win their freedom, and run a country without them.

And in Britain? From industrial ambition to prim fashion, Queen Victoria’s court was basically the TGIF lineup of the 1850s—rigid moral lessons, seemingly charming family dynamics, and just enough drama to keep people tuning in. Prince Albert was still alive, busy rebranding the monarchy with science expos, moral seriousness, and a whole lotta family-friendly PR. It wouldn’t be until after his death in 1861 that Victoria’s legendary mourning wardrobe would go full black-on-black, reshaping Victorian grief culture as both fashion and social code.

Meanwhile, in the United States, things were tense.

Native nations were being violently displaced thanks to Manifest Destiny. Meanwhile, white Americans were doing mental gymnastics trying to hold together a country built on contradiction: land of the free, built by the enslaved.

Slavery was still very legal in the South, and the tension was everywhere. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made the entire country complicit in returning escaped enslaved people to captivity, even if they reached so-called “free” states. Abolitionist newspapers, uprisings, and the Underground Railroad were building momentum. But remember, white supremacy isn’t just a belief. At this time, it was the social, economic, and legal system of the South. Whiteness meant power. Full stop.

Add to this a swirl of grief and death. The U.S. population was growing fast — especially among white settlers — but so was the death rate. Medical knowledge was limited, cities were overcrowded, and basic hygiene? Questionable at best.

Cholera, tuberculosis, measles, typhoid, and whooping cough weren’t rare — they were regular guests. And childbirth? It was basically a high-risk gamble for both momma and baby.

Like, infant mortality was staggering. Nearly one in five babies didn’t make it to their first birthday. That’s not just sad — that’s world-shattering. These weren’t distant statistics; these were daily heartbreaks.

I think people forget sometimes how miraculous it is that vaccines exist — that we can prevent death in so many cases. Clean water is a given for many of us. If you have a cough or diarrhea, it doesn’t mean a funeral. But in the 1800s? It absolutely could.

Grief wasn’t just personal — it was cultural. Mourning had rules, rituals, and even a look. People wore black for months, sometimes years. They wove hair from the dead into jewelry and posed for photographs with the bodies — not as morbid curiosities, but as sacred keepsakes.

Death was public. Grief was ritual. And in the middle of all that loss, people were desperate for something more. For signs. For messages from the other side. For proof that love didn’t just vanish. That the soul lingered. That someone — anyone — was still listening.

Because wanting to believe in more — in meaning, in connection, in something beyond the grave — is one of the most human things we do.

And that’s when the spirits started whispering.

Or at least, when it finally became socially acceptable for some people to hear them.

Because religion at this time was shifting too. The Second Great Awakening—a Christian revival movement—had swept across the country in the early 1800s, bringing with it a wave of emotional preaching, tent revivals, and spiritual experimentation. Religion became more personal, emotional, and chaotic—creating cracks where new ideas could sneak in.

And into one of those cracks walked two teenage girls.

In 1848, in Hydesville, New York, Maggie and Kate Fox claimed to hear ghostly “rappings” in their home. Tap once for yes, twice for no—and just like that, they were talking to spirits. Whether it started as a prank or performance, it exploded into a national sensation. People were obsessed. The Fox Sisters toured. They demonstrated their spirit communication to packed crowds. They were teenage celebrities in corsets and petticoats, rattling tables and beliefs.

And their fame opened a door for other white women. Because séances? The word was new, but the practice wasn’t. “Séance” comes from the French word for “session” or “sitting,” and only started being used in English to mean spirit communication in the mid-1800s.

But the act itself — speaking to the dead — had deep roots. It had existed in African spiritual traditions, Indigenous ceremonies, and across countless cultures long before Maggie and Kate ever tapped on a wall. What the Fox Sisters brought was not invention, but access. Their whiteness and middle-class image made it respectable.

Suddenly, middle- and upper-class white women — who couldn’t vote, couldn’t preach, and often couldn’t speak publicly at all — had a loophole: they weren’t speaking for themselves. The spirits were.

And their séances weren’t just spiritual events. They were productions. They had signature styles. Some floated furniture. Some spat ectoplasm. Others had spirit guides with names like ‘White Feather’ or ‘Brother Johannes from Atlantis’ — questionable, yes, but highly marketable. It was a whole vibe: think early influencer culture, but make it ghostly.

And that, my friend, was a vibe shift.

Spiritualism caught fire. It was radical. Not just because it was spooky, but because it was political. These seances became stages. A grieving mother could speak. A disabled woman could lead. A teenage girl could become a spiritual celebrity.

And that brings us to our séance girl squad — Cora, Achsa, and Victoria. They didn’t know each other, but spiritually? They were in the same group chat. These weren’t just random ladies with a Ouija board — they were full-on public figures.

Spiritualism gave these women a voice, a stage, and a community at a time when society told them to sit down and hush.

So yes, the Fox Sisters lit the match—but Cora, Achsa, Victoria and similar folks are the ones who built the bonfire.

And in a world full of war, death, and grief, people were more than ready to gather around the flame.

Imagine a bunch of corseted, well dressed socialites sitting in darkened parlors, nervously holding hands, hoping a dead aunt would knock once for yes and twice for no. There were skeptics, true believers, bored husbands, and grieving mothers — all in the same room, all desperate for something beyond the ordinary. It wasn’t just communion with the dead. It was drama. Theater. Therapy. Sometimes? It was legit the best show in town.

And every performance needs a star. Enter Cora, a teenage spirit channeler, trance queen, and absolute spiritualist icon.

Cora Lodencia Veronica Scott was born in 1840 in upstate New York — she came from a family that was already spiritually inclined: her mother was a committed believer in mesmerism and alternative healing, and her father was a Universalist — meaning hell wasn’t in their household theology, but séances? Absolutely.

By the time she was 15, Cora was giving public trance lectures — while other girls her age were being prepped for marriage or trying not to die in childbirth. She couldn’t own property independently, or divorce without public shame, but she was standing in packed halls channeling ghostly philosophers like it was just another Wednesday.

And I don’t mean she was muttering nonsense while candles flickered in a parlor. Cora would go into full trance and deliver hours-long orations on topics like liberty, abolition, morality, and metaphysics — all with zero prep, in front of large, mixed-gender audiences. And people came to hear her. Not because she was a young woman — but because the spirits wanted to speak through her. That loophole? It made space for women’s voices in ways religion, laws and politics never did.

Her supporters swore she was the real deal. Her critics said it was all a sham. But either way, Cora L. V. Scott was making news, making money, and making space for women to be public thinkers.

She married four times, and divorced at least twice. That’s almost unheard of for the time. A divorced woman in the 1800s was seen as either immoral or pitiful — and Cora was neither. She took new husbands, new names, and stayed booked and busy on the lecture circuit.

She had at least one daughter, who she raised right in the world of spirit guides and séances — and sure enough, the kid grew up and kept the spirit train rolling.

As for her politics? She was radical, y’all. Cora spoke openly about abolition, women’s rights, and spiritual freedom — not always in ways that modern audiences would agree with, but still: she used the séance stage to say things most women weren’t even allowed to whisper.

One of her most controversial spirits? A dead Greek philosopher who, through her, gave lectures on universal suffrage and the moral obligation to resist oppression.

And people paid good money to hear it.

Her fame grew, and she became one of the most recognized spiritualists in the country. But she wasn’t just there for the ghost clout. Cora saw spiritualism as a social revolution. If spirits could speak beyond death, why couldn’t women speak in life? Why couldn’t they lead? Why couldn’t they demand change?

She eventually co-founded the National Spiritualist Association and helped set the tone for what spiritualism would look like post-Civil War: structured, political, and female-led.

So yeah, maybe she talked to spirits. Or maybe she just found the only microphone 19th-century America would let a teenage girl hold — and used it to say something true.

But Cora wasn’t the only one turning grief into a platform. A few states away — and a few years earlier — another woman was finding her voice in the unlikeliest of places: a sickbed.

Let’s set the scene: Vermont, 1850s. Snow, syrup, and a whole lot of Protestant restraint.

And then, in walks Achsa Sprague — or more accurately, lies in.

Because for years, young Achsa was bedridden with what we’d now recognize as a chronic illness — maybe rheumatic fever, maybe tuberculosis, maybe something autoimmune. No one really knew.

Her family cared for her. But outside that home, most people gave up. Her doctors and friends expected her to die. The community quietly filed her away as a woman whose story was unremarkable — and already over.

But it wasn’t.

Because then, something happened.

Achsa claimed she was healed — not by medicine, but by the power of prayer, will, and spirits. And once she got back on her feet, she didn’t waste a moment. She spoke, she wrote, she traveled — and people paid attention.

Achsa didn’t pretend those bedridden years never happened. She carried them with her — the pain, the isolation, the slow, stubborn fight to return to herself.

She lived with a disability, but she wasn’t defined by it.

Instead, she used it — not as a crutch, but as proof. Proof that resilience and purpose could coexist.

She began channeling what she called “angel voices,” and became one of the most powerful trance speakers in the Spiritualist movement.

But Achsa? Our girlie wasn’t just “communing with spirits.” She was preaching abolition, demanding women’s rights, and calling for prison reform. Like many spiritualists, she saw the spirit world as just — which made it a great platform for critiquing how unjust the material world was. If the spirits believed in freedom and equality, maybe society should, too?

Achsa wasn’t speaking from polite salons or progressive churches. She hit the road alone, navigating chronic illness, staying with strangers, and delivering trance lectures to crowds on topics considered too scandalous for “respectable” society. Her spiritualism wasn’t a detour from activism — it was activism. She carried political fire across state lines and turned grief, pain, and belief into a radical platform for change.

She kept detailed diaries, which historians now pore over like spiritualist gospel. In them, she wrote about feeling called by divine forces to speak truth, especially on slavery and women’s autonomy. She never married, never had kids, and never apologized for her ambition.

One of her most powerful stances was on marriage. Achsa believed that forcing women into marriage for survival was a kind of slavery, and that spiritualism offered women a way out. Because when you have spirits on your side, who needs a husband?

But it wasn’t all roses and halo light. Achsa’s fame came with pushback. Critics dismissed her as emotional, hysterical, or just plain faking it. She was accused of blasphemy, vanity, and witchcraft-lite. And yet, she kept going — because her platform wasn’t just for herself. It was for the spirits. For justice. For every girl told to stay small, and be quiet.

So if Cora spoke through spirits, and Achsa spoke for them — the next woman spoke over everyone else.

Meet Victoria Woodhull.

By the 1870s, the Civil War is over. Women still had no vote, no property rights, and barely any voice. They also couldn’t legally divorce without dragging a full-blown legal circus behind them. But Victoria? She kicked down the door with a message channeled straight from the beyond — and said: “I’m running for president. Spirits talk to me. And sex without love is tyranny.”

SCANDALEOUS!

But let’s rewind. Victoria was born in 1838 in Ohio. She came from a large family living in poverty, and was the daughter of a man widely known as a conartist and religious fanatic. She didn’t exactly have a great start. But Victoria and her sister Tennie had one advantage: they could talk to ghosts. Or so they claimed.

By age 11, Victoria said she was in direct contact with Demosthenes, a long-dead Greek philosopher, which is honestly what an iconic pick for a childhood imaginary friend.

The sisters started out as traveling spirit channelers and healers, moving through a spiritualist circuit that gave them something most women couldn’t even imagine: mobility and money.

Victoria married and had a son named Byron, who likely had a significant intellectual disability and required lifelong care. During her divorce — a scandal in itself — she fought to keep custody of him. And she won. That alone was revolutionary. At a time when courts almost never granted mothers full custody, especially those as controversial as Victoria, she was already breaking rules just by surviving.

By the time she hit New York, Victoria had ambition in her bones. She and Tennie charmed Cornelius Vanderbilt — yes, that Vanderbilt — with their psychic readings and main character energy. Rumor says one sister gave him stock tips, and the other gave him… let’s call it exclusive content. Either way, they secured the bag — and parlayed it into their next big venture.

In 1870, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to own a Wall Street brokerage firm. Not a footnote. Not a partner. The first. And with that money, she founded her own newspaper: Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. It published radical ideas: free love, women’s suffrage, socialism, and yes, spiritualism.

But she didn’t stop there. In 1872, Victoria announced she was running for President of the United States, well before women even had the right to vote. Her party? The Equal Rights Party. Her platform? Women’s rights, labor reform, and spiritual guidance from the beyond. Her running mate? Frederick Douglass. Although, plot twist: he never actually confirmed that.

Now, if you’re thinking, “This is incredible. Why don’t we talk about her more?” Well, probably because of what came next.

Victoria was living her best life — and in doing so, blew up one of the biggest scandals of her day. A well-known preacher-man was secretly sleeping with his friend’s wife, and word got out. This same man had previously denounced Victoria for her “free love” stance, so she did what any self-respecting truth-teller would do: she exposed him. His hypocrisy. His moral double-dealing. It was delicious. And you would think, this is justice.

Wrong.

Victoria was thrown in jail — not for lying, but for publishing facts about a powerful man’s private behavior.

His punishment?

…there wasn’t one.

This was the double standard in real time: men could sin, but women couldn’t talk about it. And the suffragist movement — already laser-focused on white women’s respectability — split down the middle. Was Victoria their hero, or a scandalous liability?

Unfortunately, she lost her bid for the presidency, spending Election Day in jail. So… no Madam President. Not in 1872. And, not surprisingly, not in 2024.

Oh, and the preacherman? Don’t worry. He kept the pulpit, and really faced no consequences.

Tsk, tsk tsk.

America, America. Some things never seem to change.

Victoria’s reputation never fully recovered. People who once praised her radicalism now called her vulgar, unladylike, too much. Eventually, she and Tennie peaced out — leaving the U.S. behind, marrying into wealth in England, and living out their lives in relative comfort. Maybe not exactly “happily ever after”… but definitely rich and unbothered.

That’s where Paschal Beverly Randolph enters the chat — not a séance girlie, but well worth the mention.

Born free in 1825 New York City, Paschal was mixed race — Black, white, and possibly Indigenous — and orphaned young. The world he inherited was racist, unwelcoming, and indifferent. But Paschal didn’t just survive it — he redefined what was possible within it.

With little formal education, he taught himself medicine, languages, and mysticism. He became a sailor and traveled the world, absorbing spiritual traditions from Egypt, Turkey, France, and the Caribbean. Everywhere he went, he watched, questioned, and learned — blending global mysticism with a radical, liberation-focused vision all his own.

And then? He wrote it all down.

By the mid-1800s, Paschal had become a doctor, trance speaker, writer, and occultist. He spoke at spiritualist conventions, advocated for abolition, and published essays that mixed science, philosophy, and the paranormal. But what made him truly radical — and controversial — was his belief that spiritual power and sexual energy were linked.

Pascal wrote openly about sex magic, which I was unaware was a thing. And Pascal did this decades before Aleister Crowley would crib the idea. He believed that sexual union, when grounded in love and intention, was a sacred act. A cosmic force. A way to access higher consciousness. And not just for men — for everyone.

Let me say that again: In the 1850s, a Black man was telling people that sex could be sacred, that spiritual power didn’t belong to white Christian elites, and that Black liberation was a spiritual as well as political act.

The man was fearless.

He even founded his own order: which is Latin words I do not know how to pronounce, but it was also called the Rosicrucian Brotherhood of Eulis, and it was one of America’s first magical lodges. Through it, he taught sacred sexuality, racial equality, and metaphysical philosophy — all wrapped in a bold blend of science, spirit, and unapologetic rebellion. This was Black occult science, not your grandma’s parlor séance.

But of course, his legacy got erased. Racism, respectability politics, and whitewashed versions of spiritualist history pushed Paschal to the margins. People wanted their spirit speakers to be white women in lace, not a mixed-race doctor talking about sex and liberation. He didn’t fit the narrative, so they wrote him out of it.

He used spiritualism to show that it wasn’t just for the respectable white folks in hoop skirts. It also belonged to the rebels. The wanderers. The people who believed that spirit — like freedom — should be for everyone.

The idea of women summoning spirits in their parlors wasn’t just spooky fun — it was about voice. About access. And about power.

In the mid-1800s, women couldn’t vote, own property, or even keep custody of their kids. Once married, they basically disappeared under the law. Public speaking? Considered inappropriate. Patriarchy held the microphone.

But séances? Those were allowed — as long as women claimed the words weren’t their own.

“I’m not preaching abolition — Thomas Paine is.”

“I’m not defending women’s rights — your dead grandma is.”

It was a loophole. And women ran with it.

Spiritualist women used that platform to push for abolition, suffrage, temperance, education, and labor rights. They made mourning strategic. Emotion political.

But that visibility was not without backlash. These women were called frauds. Hysterics. Temptresses. Because nothing rattles the patriarchy like a woman in the dark channeling something powerful.

But it is interesting when you think about it. The men who claimed divine authority? Those were prophets.

But women? Suspect.

But still, these women persisted.

And here’s the thing: while white women were gaining platforms in the name of grief, Black, Latine, and Indigenous communities were punished for the same practices. Ancestor veneration, trance, ritual dance, drumming — these were all criminalized or demonized, and looked down upon by quote unquote respectable society. Their lifeways were called savage while white women’s séances were labeled charming curiosities.

Remember the Fox sisters? They didn’t invent talking to the dead — they just made it marketable. Because they were young, white, and just middle-class enough to be seen as harmless.

And that’s the controversy.

Spiritualism’s roots run deep — a tangled braid of global folk traditions: diasporic, Indigenous, Asian, Latine, and European, woven together by grief, ritual, and resistance.

But the 19th-century movement that went mainstream? It was whitewashed. Sanitized. It centered middle-class white women while erasing the global spiritual practices it echoed.

That’s why Paschal Beverly Randolph matters. He didn’t just participate — he transformed spiritualism. He was mixed-race. A mystic in his own ]right, that spoke of sacred sexuality as liberation, healing as revolution, and spirit work as a tool for Black empowerment. He built his own orders. Created his own systems. But history tried to leave him out, because he was too Black, too radical, too uncontrollable.

White women could speak in the séance room, as long as they followed the rules. Paschal had to build his own house — and they still told him it wasn’t his.

Because who gets to speak has always been political.

And in the séance? The oppression just got spooky.

Cora, Achsa, and Victoria weren’t just speaking to ghosts — they were using grief to challenge systems. Speaking truths wrapped in flickering candles and trance states. Their messages weren’t just about angels and heaven, but about slavery, education, suffering, and reform.

They used ghost stories to tell our stories.

Stories about who matters.

Who counts.

Who gets to live free.

By the early 1900s, most of our Séance Squad had crossed over themselves.

Cora died in 1923, still holding séances, still preaching, and still drawing crowds. She lived long enough to see women win the right to vote — but honestly, she’d never waited for permission to speak. Her voice, and the ones she channeled, refused to be ignored.

Achsa passed at just 35. But in that short life, she proved something radical: being disabled, being female, or holding unconventional beliefs didn’t make you powerless — not if you believed the voices, whether within or beyond, had something worth saying.

Victoria Woodhull’s legacy is layered. She was a champion of women’s rights and the first woman to run for U.S. president — but she also supported eugenics and opposed abortion. Her beliefs were shaped by her lived experience, including raising a disabled son in a world that offered no support and little understanding. She was groundbreaking and contradictory, like so many of us.

And Paschal Beverly Randolph? Died in 1875 under suspicious circumstances — either by his own hand or a jealous male friend’s. The official story never sat right. But what’s undeniable is that the white spiritual and occult communities he helped inspire quietly took his teachings — on trance, sexuality, mysticism, and equality — and buried his name.

Until the 1990s.

That’s when scholars and occultists started piecing together the truth: Randolph wasn’t a footnote. He was a foundation.

But even if their names faded, the echoes these spiritualists left behind were loud.

Because spiritualism itself didn’t die — it evolved.

After the Civil War, spiritualism didn’t vanish — it got organized. Groups like the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC), co-founded by our very own Cora, tried to clean up the image of spirit communicators. They made it churchy. Respectable. But in doing so, a lot of the radical roots — the feminism, the abolitionism, the politics — got scrubbed out of the story.

But like any good ghost story — it never really went away.

You can see its fingerprints all over New Age spirituality, modern mediumship, and even in pop culture’s obsession with ghosts, astrology, and mysticism. The modern “witchy” aesthetic? That is full of spiritualist DNA. Then you have your Tarot readers on YouTube. Crystal TikTok. Candle-lit altars on Instagram. These are the grandchildren of the parlor spirit channelers and séance queens.

The language has changed — but the hunger for connection, the use of ritual as voice, as power, remains.

And yes — grief is still a form of resistance.

We light candles for the dead at vigils. We chant names. We paint faces on walls and refuse to let them be forgotten. From Black Lives Matter memorials to Día de los Muertos altars to whispered ancestor prayers across diasporic kitchens — mourning is still protest. Ritual is still power.

That’s the legacy.

Our séance squad wasn’t perfect. They were messy, brave, privileged, radical, flawed. Some used their voices to uplift others. Some didn’t. But none of them were supposed to have power — and they found some anyway.

So what do we do with all this?

We remember.

We tell the stories of those who spoke — and those who weren’t allowed to.

We tell the stories not just of the women who gained a voice — but of the people who were never allowed one.

We talk about grief, power, and resistance — not as separate things, but as threads braided through the human experience.

We keep asking questions — about the past, about ourselves, about what deserves to be heard.

And who’s controlling the story.

And what they gain by telling it this way.

Because here’s the secret no one tells you:

The spirits never stopped talking.

But control isn’t just about who gets to speak —

It’s about who we’re taught to listen to.

And who benefits when we don’t ask why.

Before we go, I wanted to share that this topic hit different today.

My dog recently passed. She was a senior, and I knew the time was coming — but still.

I keep catching myself wishing I could just reach across — just to tell her one last time that she was a good girl. You know? To say thank you for being you.

Now, don’t get me wrong, she peed on everything I loved. And when she would sleep at my feet she snored so loud you would think she was paying the bills here.

But now the quiet feels… too loud.

And it reminds me that spiritualism was always about that ache — the longing, the reaching.

Whether you’re trying to hear from a lost loved one, or a snoring old puppers who loved you like it was her job — it’s the same need.

To be heard.

To be held.

To believe the love doesn’t disappear.

So if you’ve ever whispered a name into the dark — you’re not alone. The séance might look different now. But the ache? That’s timeless.

Let’s recap our Séance Girl Summer squad one more time — and seriously, what a squad it was. Like, these women were legit squad goals.

We have:

Cora — the teen ghost channeler who turned trances into TED Talks before microphones were even a thing.

Achsa — the abolitionist who made her pain and disability a platform, preaching liberation straight from the spirit world.

Victoria — the spirit channeler who ran for president and made the press absolutely lose it.

And

Randolph — the radical who walked the shadows, blending mysticism with Black liberation and sacred sexuality long before it was safe — or even thinkable — to do so.

They didn’t all agree. They didn’t meet. They weren’t perfect. But they dared.

They dared to speak when women and people of color weren’t supposed to.

They dared to grieve publicly when silence was expected.

And they used their platforms — literal and spiritual — to challenge power, preach justice, and demand more from a world that gave them so little.

History isn’t just a list of names and dates. It’s about people who felt deeply. Who broke rules. Who asked hard questions. And who, in their own strange, seance-y way, left behind echoes we still feel today.

Because mourning, resistance, and hope? They’re still with us.

Whether it’s candles at a vigil, a TikTok spell jar, or someone whispering their grandmother’s name into the wind — we are still trying to speak to the past.

And we are still trying to be heard.

Thank you so much for joining me for this very spirited episode of Bygone Echoes. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please like, share, and leave a review — it helps the show and helps us grow our own squad of curious, spooky history nerds.

Until next time….

Be kind, be curious, and be ready to make history.