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Calling the Spirits investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer's Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism--when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born. Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by "spirit rappings"; Daniel Dunglas Home, the "greatest medium of all time"; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. The book also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics, and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond), and photographs. Hugely entertaining, it begs the question: is anybody there . . . ?
Lisa Morton
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, Bram Stoker Award(R)-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association's Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror as "consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening." She has published four novels, 200 short stories, and three books on the history of Halloween. Her latest releases include Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated The Art of the Zombie Movie; recent short stories appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, and Classic Monsters Unleashed. Lisa lives in Los Angeles and online at www.lisamorton.com.
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