Spirit Sleuths by Gail Jarrow

Spirit Sleuths wraps ghosts, mediums, seances, scams, and Houdini in a fascinating true tale.

Spirit Sleuths: How Magicians and Detectives Exposed the Ghost Hoaxes by Gail Jarrow. Calkins Creek, 2024, 148 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 10-15

The lights are turned off. You can see nothing. A bell jingles, first on one side of the room, then the other, and finally near your head. . . . A glistening white hand appears a few feet away. You feel your hair being pulled. Something clammy touches your cheek. A chill runs down your spine.

Spooked yet? At the turn of the 20^th century, and for roughly 100 years before that, such sensations would have attended your typical visit to a spirit medium. “Spiritualism,” or the belief in communication from the dead, had its roots in upstate New York, where teenage sisters Margaret and Catherine Fox claimed to receive messages from the spirit world. Sensing an opportunity, their adult sister Leah spread the word that the Fox sisters could connect the bereaved with their lost loved ones—for a fee. A surprising number of Americans responded, and the séance was born: an intimate gathering of “sitters” around a table with a “medium” who summoned the dead from the afterlife. These specters announced themselves by knocking or levitating the table or whispering through the medium.

From the beginning, skeptics not only scoffed but dedicated themselves to uncovering the tricks of the mystic trade. A surprising number of Americans believed, as did Europeans, after the fad spread across the Atlantic. Including some who should have known better, like Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the relentlessly logical Sherlock Holmes. In a time of early deaths and terrible accidents it was understandable that grieving parents and spouses would seek comfort in clinging to their lost loved ones, but the brazenness of some of these spirit practitioners came to grate on Doyle’s friend Harry Houdini. While professing a willingness to be convinced, he dedicated more and more of his time to exposing frauds, even to advocating in Congress for a bill to outlaw such practices.

As Paul warned in Ephesians, there are spirits waging spiritual warfare, but no scriptural indication that the dead can speak to the living. Yet spiritualism exists today in the form of séances, tarot cards, Ouija boards—even a “Psychic School” in New York where the Fox sisters once plied their fraudulent trade. This journey through spiritualism’s history is fascinating as well as cautionary—and a reminder to Christians that only the Spirit can reveal Truth.

 Bottom Line: Ghosts, spirits, rapping, knocking, and Harry Houdini—what’s not to like?

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: Other nonfiction books by Gail Jarrow include Ambushed! about the Garfield assassination and Spooked! How a Radio Broadcast and the War of the Worlds Sparked the 1938 Invasion of America.
• Reflection/Review: Ghosts—real or make-believe?

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