Allen Kardec, the 19th Century founder of “Spiritism” and a man who changed the course of Latin American religious movements, died on March 31, 1869.
Guest Post: How Kardec Influenced Afro-Latin Spiritual Systems
Cora Lodencia Veronica Scott (April 21, 1840 – January 3, 1923) was one of the best-known Spiritualist mediums of the last half of the 19th century. Most of her work was done as a trance lecturer, though she also wrote some books whose composition was attributed to spirit guides rather than her own personality. Married four times, Cora adopted the last name of her husband at each marriage, and at various times carried the surnames Hatch, Daniels, Tappan, and Richmond.
William H. Mumler (1832–1884) was an American spirit photographer who worked in New York and Boston. His first spirit photograph was apparently an accident—a self-portrait which, when developed, also revealed the “spirit” of his deceased cousin. Mumler then left his job as an engraver to pursue spirit photography full-time, taking advantage of the large number of people who had lost relatives in the American Civil War. His two most famous images are the photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband Abraham Lincoln and the portrait of Master Herrod, a medium, with three spirit guides.
Eusapia Palladino (alternative spelling: Paladino; 21 January 1854 – 16 May 1918) was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. She claimed extraordinary powers such as the ability to levitate tables, communicate with the dead through her spirit guide John King, and to produce other supernatural phenomena.
Her Warsaw séances at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel Pharaoh, which Bolesław Prus began writing in 1894.
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, FRS (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz‘s proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures (“The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors“), Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the “coherer“. In 1898 he was awarded the “syntonic” (or tuning) patent by the United States Patent Office. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920.
Lodge was also noted for his Spiritualist beliefs and research into life after death, a topic on which he wrote many books, including the best-selling Raymond; or, Life and Death (1916), describing what he believed to be detailed messages through a medium from his deceased adult son who was killed in World War I.
Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced Hume; 20 March 1833 – 21 June 1886) was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will. His biographer Peter Lamont opines that he was one of the most famous men of his era. Home conducted hundreds of séances, which were attended by many eminent Victorians.
Don Pedrito Jaramillo was a famous South Texas Mexican folk healer. Don Pedro moved to Texas and settled in the small village of Los Olmos, near modern day Falfurrias, Texas, around 1881. It was thought he was born in 1829, and he died on July 3, 1907.
Achsa W. Sprague, a19th Century “Trance Speaker,” was an early abolitionist and women’s rights pioneer. She died on July 6, 1862.