The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner

October 15, 2023

The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner

After her sister was murdered on Halloween, Lenna Wickes travels to Paris to study with Vaudeleine D'Allaire, a famous medium who specializes in conjuring the ghosts of murder victims to solve their cases. In London, the head of the London Seance Society (a men's club) had coincidentally also been murdered on Halloween. The vice president of the society asks the two women to travel to London to conduct a seance to solve the man's murder, but the two women also plan a seance to solve the murder of Lenna's sister. But the more Lenna and Vaudeleine dig around, the more they suspect that the society is a fraud.

This was part of my seasonal reading for Halloween. I started with the eARC but switched to the audiobook, which I much preferred. The London Seance Society is loosely based on The Ghost Club, which still exists in London today. It took a long time to get to the seance and the solution wasn't that interesting, and the narrative dragged. There is also some LGBTQ tossed in rather casually. This is mainly historical fiction and anyone reading this expecting ghosts and scary things will be disappointed. It's about as creepy as that Long Island Medium television show.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

19th century seance

In the Houses of Their Dead: the Lincolns, the Booths and the Spirits by Terry Alford

September 12, 2022

In the Houses of Their Dead: the Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits by Terry Alford

Two of the most famous families in the 19th century, the Lincolns and the Booths, were both fascinated by spiritualism. Although Abraham Lincoln saw John Wilkes Booth act on a number of occasions, the two men never met personally, although John Wilkes and his brother Edwin both came in contact with Lincoln's sons. Ironically, the two men had much in common: both adored their mothers but had difficult relationships with their fathers; they loved children; they got along well with other men but were uncomfortable with women; they enjoyed poetry and theater, particularly Shakespeare; neither had much formal education and were largely self-educated; and both were ambitious in their chosen professions. For a time, their families even consulted the same medium.

Mary Todd Lincoln had always been drawn to the spirit world and tended to surround herself with like-minded individuals. After the death of her son Willie, she spent most of her time with mediums, spirit photographers, and clairvoyants. Abraham was more skeptical but went along with Mary's visitors, since she could be very difficult to live with. Many who held government posts were firm believers, and Lincoln even helped several spiritualists obtain government jobs. John Wilkes' brother Edwin frequently consulted mediums to contact the spirit of his beloved first wife, Mary Devlin.

Lately I've had a lot of fantasy, sci fi, and dystopian books come in, so I needed something different as a kind of mental sorbet. I decided to try Terry Alford's study of the Lincoln and Booth families' fascination with spiritualism. This was exactly what I needed. I knew something about the practice of spiritualism (mostly that they were all charlatans) but I had no idea that the practice was so widespread. The author discusses how the practitioners carried out their effects and fooled so many people. Very readable and entertaining.

Seances in the 19th century were often a family affair