Mysterious rapping, eerie music, otherworldly voices — witnesses ascribed these strange phenomena and others to the historic séances of Margery “Mina” Crandon, one of America’s most celebrated spiritualist mediums.
On Nov. 14, 1849, Kate and Margaret addressed a sizable audience at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester. This is now marked as the first demonstration of spiritualism before a paying public.
Mrs. Fox had moved into the the tiny Hydesville, New York cottage with the rest of her clan on Dec. 11, 1847.
According to Mitch Horowitz, author of the critically acclaimed Occult America,the origins of the device known today as the Ouija Board can be traced back to the late 19th Century — although not reliably further back than that. Horowitz cites a March 28, 1886 article appearing in the Sunday supplement of the New York Daily Tribune entitled “A Mysterious Talking Board and Table over Which Northern Ohio is Agitated.” The article included an illustration and description of an early talking board very similar to today’s version.
On March 31, 1848 — a watershed date in American séance history — Kate and Margaret, just 12 and 15 years old, conducted the first American séance.
Professor Black Herman died on April 17, 1934, while on tour in Louisville, Kentucky. In an obituary, The New York Age, a leading African American newspaper, described him as one of Harlem’s most colorful characters — a magician, seer, herb specialist and fortune teller; a man who, among his followers, “had risen to the standing of god whom they expect to rise out of his grave.”
Six years after the appearance of that article a patent for a “Ouija or Egyptian luck-board” was filed by Baltimore attorney Elijah H. Bond, who in turn assigned the rights to Charles W. Kennard and William H.A. Maupin. This early talking board (the patent was filed on May 28, 1898) was the first with the Ouija name.
Leonora Piper (then Simonds) was born on June 27, 1857 and raised in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Mysterious rapping, eerie music, otherworldly voices — witnesses ascribed these strange phenomena and others to the historic séances of Margery “Mina” Crandon, one of America’s most celebrated spiritualist mediums.
Mysterious rapping, eerie music, otherworldly voices — witnesses ascribed these strange phenomena and others to the historic séances of Margery “Mina” Crandon, one of America’s most celebrated spiritualist mediums.