NARRATOR : The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this new world always haunts the outskirts of his or her time. Our history is written in the lives of such individuals.
In the 1830s and 1840s, Americans experienced a number of phenomena that came to be known as spiritualism. These voices from the beyond, mesmerism, animal magnetism, and hypnotism fascinated a world still marveling and more than a bit dubious about scientific curiosities which were even more invisible—electricity, magnetism, radiation, chemistry, photography, astronomy. Why shouldn’t one also accept the claims of clairvoyants or mediums? Psychic investigators abounded—and so did charlatans. Curiosity tantalized most people, especially the Beechers.
atharine Beecher suffered at various times from nervous complaints. Seeking help at water cure spas, she found ideas there on health and psychic phenomena.

CATHARINE : I have a delicate and scrofulous constitution, and if overwrought I experience a semi-paralysis of the nerves of motion, attended by an extreme sensitiveness of the whole nervous system.
Dr. Buchanan and his theory of Neurology produced a strong impression in reference to future probable discoveries of the remedial agency of Animal Magnetism.

NARRATOR : Yet many passes with a bright silver sixpence had no effect on her. Likewise Sherwood’s Electro-Magnetic Machine, and a man who detected disease by magnetic fingertips.
Though she was not cured, certain remarkable powers of the clairvoyant she consulted intrigued Catharine, and she attempted a rational explanation. Although Catharine Beecher believed that animal magnetism might work by invisible nervous fluid like electricity, she did not believe in mediums. To her, Spiritualism was a lower-class phenomenon.

CATHARINE : I have as yet never seen anything claimed to be Spiritual Manifestations that could not be easily accounted for. And the progress of time is more and more exhibiting the folly and inconsistency of the popular delusion that brings back the spirits of departed friends to perform fantastic tricks, and to make known inane and contradictory revelations.

NARRATOR : At one time, Catharine lived in the same boarding house as Kate Fox and her companion Laura Edmonds. The Fox sisters had become famous for communicating with spirits.

CATHARINE : They cut up all sorts of capers to mystify me. They said they had seen a vision of Lyman kneeling before me offering me a rose as the emblem of my purity. I knew then that they were frauds.

NARRATOR : Even before Kate and Margaretta Fox had made public their spirit-rappings, the Beecher family kept up an interest in supernatural phenomena. Calvin Stowe had had childhood hallucinations of spirits, and once out-argued the Devil himself with a passage from Ephesians.
Harriet and Henry conducted some mesmerism experiments. After some practice, Henry could produce a semi-somnolent state in Harriet, in which her hands wandered at their own will.

HARRIET : Amid all the bodily effects my mind and powers of observation seemed uncommonly bright and active.
Eunice, don’t you remember you almost thought you had some hobgoblin magician for a husband last summer! How you did scud out of the room!

NARRATOR : Then she met Mrs. Bonneville, a professional mesmerist.

HARRIET : Henry, Mrs. Bonneville’s view of the subject is that the mesmeric fluid is a powerful remedial agent in the cure of nervous diseases particularly—such as all forms of convulsions, hysteria, epilepsy, paralysis, neuralgia in general and it is to the dissemination of light and knowledge on the subject that she considers herself devoted. They had patients in the city by the hundreds, and the pretty graceful creature spent time and strength enough to wear her health out in mesmeric manipulations to this intent.
Henry, I think you have an immense power in this way and the time may come when you can relieve pain by trying it. Even I have been able to help a suffering neighbor fall asleep by making soothing passes.

NARRATOR : When Harriet and Charles toured England, she found that Spiritualism had spread there. On her second trip, they attended seances at the home of Robert Dale Owen, who was then American consul at Naples. Harriet was unconverted, but interested.
Henry was of another opinion.

HENRY : I am a stout unbeliever in the spiritual origins of these phenomena. A belief in modern spiritualism seems to weaken the hold of the Bible upon conscience, the affections, and to substitute diluted sentimentalism and tedious platitudes instead of inspired truth.

NARRATOR : Calvin Stowe, Harriet’s husband, was not just a believer in spiritualism; he had from an early age seen creatures of various sorts, including Harriet herself. He claimed that unless the figure of Harriet spoke, he would ignore her, because he was not certain that it was she. The apparitions were most intense in his youth.

CALVIN : I have often thought I would communicate to some scientific physician a particular account of a most singular delusion under which I lived from my earliest infancy till the fifteenth or sixteenth year of my age, and the effects of which remain very distinctly now that I am past thirty.
From the hour of my birth I have been constitutionally feeble, as were my parents before me, and my nervous system easily excitable. With care, however, I have kept myself in tolerable health, and my life has been an industrious one.
As early as I can remember anything, I can remember observing a multitude of animated and active objects, which I could see with perfect distinctness, moving about me, and could sometimes, though seldom, hear them make a rustling noise, or other articulate sounds; but I could never touch them. They were in all respects independent of the sense of touch, and incapable of being obstructed in any way by the intervention of material objects. I could see them passing through the floors, and the ceilings, and the walls of the house, from one apartment to another, in all directions, without a door, or a keyhole, or crevice being open to admit them.
These appearances occasioned neither surprise nor alarm, except when they assumed some hideous and frightful form, or exhibited some menacing gesture, for I became acquainted with them as soon as with any of the objects of sense. They were as familiar to me as the forms of my parents and my brother. There was no time, or place, or circumstance, in which they did not occasionally make their appearance. They were more pleased with candlelight than the daylight. I kept up a lively conversation with them—not by language or by signs, for the attempt on my part to speak or move would at once break the charm and drive them away in a fret, but by a peculiar sort of spiritual intercommunion.
Sometimes they would take no notice of me, but carry on a brisk conversation among themselves, principally by looks and gestures, with now and then an audible word. Their most usual appearnce was with the human form and proportion, but under a shadowy outline that seemed just ready to melt into the invisible air, and sometimes liable to the most sudden and grotesque changes, and with a uniform darkly bluish color spotted with brown, or brownish white. There were many exceptions, particularly among my more welcome and familiar visitors.

NARRATOR : Besides these rational and generally harmless beings, there was another set of objects which never varied in their form or qualities, and were always mischievous and terrible. The fact of their appearance depended very much on the state of my health and feelings—when sick and depressed they were sure to obtrude their hateful presence upon me. These were a sort of heavy clouds floating about overhead, of a black color, spotted with brown, in the shape of a very flaring inverted tunnel without a nozzle, and from ten to thirty or forty feet in diameter. They floated from place to place in great numbers, and in all directions, with a strong and steady progress, but with a tremulous, quivering, internal motion that agitated them in every part.
Whenever they approached, the rational phantoms were thrown into great consternation, for if a cloud touched any part of one of the rational phantoms it immediately communicated its own color and tremulous motion to the part it touched, then proceeded to diffuse itself over every part of the body, and as fast as it did so the body was drawn into the cloud and became a part of its substance. It was indeed a fearful sight to see their contortions and agonizing efforts.
Every different apartment which I occupied had a different set of phantoms, and they always had a degree of correspondence to the circumstances in which they were seen.

CALVIN : I awoke one bright moonlit night, and found a large full-length human skeleton of an ashy-blue color in bed with me! I screamed out with fright, and soon summoned the family around me. I refused to tell them the cause of my alarm, but begged permission to occupy another bed, which was granted.
For the remainder of the night I slept but little; but I saw upon the window-stools companies of little fairies, about six inches high, in white robes, gamboling and dancing with incessant merriment. Two of them, a male and female, rather taller than the rest, were dignified with a crown and scepter. They took the kindest notice of me, smiled upon me with great benignity, and seemed to assure me of their protection. I was soothed and cheered by their presence, though after all there was a sort of sinister and selfish expression in their countenances which prevented my placing implicit confidence in them.
Up to this time I had never doubted the real existence of these phantoms, nor had I ever suspected that other people had not seen them as distinctly as myself. I now, however, began to discover with no little anxiety that my friends had little or no knowledge of the aerial beings among whom I have spent my whole life; that my allusions to them were not understood, and all complaints respecting them were laughed at.
During the whole of this period I took great pleasure in walking out alone, particularly in the evening. The most lonely fields, the woods, and the banks of the river, and other places most completely secluded, were my favorite resorts, for there I could enjoy the sight of innumerable aerial beings of all sorts, without interruption. Every object, even every shaking leaf, seemed to me to be animated by some living soul, whose nature in some degree corresponded to its habitation. Moonlight was particularly agreeable to me, but most of all I enjoyed a thick, foggy night. At times, during these walks, I would be excessively oppressed by an indefinite and deep feeling of melancholy. At such seasons I felt a morbid love for my friends that would almost burn up my soul, and yet, at the least provocation from them, I would fly into an uncontrollable passion and foam like a little fury.
I very early learned to read, and soon became immoderately attached to books. In the Bible I read the first chapters of Job, and parts of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation, with most intense delight, and with such frequency that I could repeat large portions from memory. I remember reading Morse’s History of New England,which I devoured with insatiable greediness, particularly those parts which related to Indian wars and witchcraft. But of all the books, there was none that went to my heart like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I read it and re-read it night and day, and I read with the unspeakable satisfaction of most devoutly believing that everything which Honest John related was a real verity, an actual occurrence.

NARRATOR : The most famous spiritualist of the times was Andrew Jackson Davis, a medium and clairvoyant revealing teachings that were anti-Calvinist with a gently radical ethic and anemic optimism. Orestes Brownson, the Catholic writer, found Spiritualism’s origin in Calvinism itself, and warned of its dangers in a long novel called The Spirit-Rapper.
Harriet Beecher Stowe took part, along with Calvin and Catharine in at least four séances conducted by Kate Fox Jencken. The Hookers had introduced them.
By 1870, Harriet began writing a series of articles on Spiritualism for Henry’s paper, the Christian Union. She admitted that charlatanry survived because of the willingness to be deceived of those who wanted to talk to their departed loved ones. She also did a historical survey of early Christian beliefs, establishing a genuine Christian spiritualism. Calvin Stowe simultaneously contributed articles on mysticism.

CALVIN : The sanctified soul has communion with God, it knows God’s heart. The Bible is mysticism, and the whole Christian system is a mystical system.

HARRIET : The sphere of the newborn immortal will be mercifully regulated according to his/her spiritual progress. A gentle God may lead us from regions not unlike our earth, and as it were, shading off into our mortal life—upward and outward—as we can bear it.
We sincerely believe that it has sometimes been God’s will to vouchsafe to faithful souls some glimpses of the spiritual world, and by the loved voice or presence of the departed, seen in night visions or by vivid impressions of them, to relieve some crisis of agony—to give lightness, peace and joy.

NARRATOR : Another of Calvin’s articles argued that there was an ontological reality that was the power of evil. Charles Beecher also felt that declining belief in diabolism was dangerous.
William Beecher, so inept at his career, claimed to be the family’s most successful animal magnetizer. He had worked with a cataleptic child, so that the child could identify tastes and smells of objects in William’s mouth. With further mesmerism, the boy was cured of his spinal injury and his fits. William became convinced that he could cure toothache, headache, and assorted pains.

WILLIAM : I don’t know how to probe into its source, but as a remedial agent, mesmerism is to accomplish much good. I am not, however, a full believer in all which is affirmed of clairvoyants—what I see and know, I believe.

NARRATOR : Once they had met, Isabella Beecher Hooker became involved, some say enthralled, with Victoria Woodhull. At three years old, Victoria had been transported to the spirit world. She was taught by Demosthenes, who told her of her coming greatness. She had the power to heal, and apparently brought her son Byron back to life.
Isabella began to speak openly of her own experiences.

ISABELLA : We are not only becoming purified ourselves but lo we are already ministering spirits to others—entering by a subtle power of sympathy into their heart of hearts and giving them comfort, guidance even, almost without a word. I remember when the reality, the delicious sense of all this came to me, as a verification of old time teachings. You are too young yet to realize what I mean and I should be sorry if you could—but someday you will enter into it all and call to mind what I have written and said so many times.

NARRATOR : By this time, with Victoria Woodhull’s encouragement, Isabella had come to believe that she had been appointed as the savior of the world, a messiah whose mission was to inaugurate a world government with herself as viceregent of Christ. This maternal government would bring in the millennium. Isabella’s notebooks detailed the workings of this government, including provisional selections of cabinet members. The everyday world interpenetrated communings with the late Horace Bushnell or preparations for testing of women apostles.
In some ways Isabella Beecher Hooker was mad—although her feeling of responsibility for her brothers and sisters, of personal greatness, of moral government were common Beecher ideals. About this time John and Isabella Hooker were almost bankrupt, and John was demoralized. This was also the period when Isabella supported Victoria Woodhull against her brother Henry in the Tilton scandal.
Spiritualism gave Isabella a vocabulary and some useful concepts. At thirteen, she had had a brief vision of her mother. A second vision came in Paris, during the European trip she and John took to avoid the Tilton trial. Again it was her mother, this time as the Angel of Annunciation.
When they returned home, Isabella consecrated an upstairs room to her mother. Aided by her dead son Thomas, Isabella arranged scarves and ornamental grasses. Josef Haydn came with Thomas, and Joan of Arc. Harriet Martineau appeared, the deceased Lyman Beecher here renounced his Calvinism, and Horace Bushnell begged forgiveness for his attacks on the women’s movement.
Soon after Catharine Beecher died in 1878, she began to appear in Isabella’s sanctum. She was still pushy and demanding Isabella’s voice, although another spirit was already speaking through her. For this Isabella rebuked her—and Catharine was repentant, begging Isabella for guidance.
All the while that Isabella was inhabiting this fantasy world of spirits, her husband John and son Ned tried to support her. When she predicted an attempt to kill their son-in-law Eugene Burton, John dutifully called in some Hartford plainclothes police, and was embarrassed and outraged with her when he had had to invent an ingenious story to cover up the truth. Isabella reminded him of his own family’s history of insanity.
Son Ned proved more gullible, however, when she confided in him the great secret that he had been immaculately conceived and was to be a great healer. One minor success with mesmeric passes confirmed his belief.
Meanwhile, Isabella learned from her Angel of the Annunciation, her mother, that she was the twin sister of Jesus Christ. At first she resisted the idea, but then called herself the Comforter. Then she saw Christ in the sanctum room.
Was Isabella Beecher Hooker insane? At this time, Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, ouija boards, séances, and other forms of spirit communication were quite popular. Clairvoyants and mediums were common, and many intellectuals dabbled in the occult.
In Isabella’s case, she experienced spirit-rappings, usually in her parasol. Automatic writing put her in touch with her mother, and also trance-speaking. Isabella was publicly known as a trance-speaker, and she had soem proficiency at it, accompanying the voice with gestures and facial expressions. William Beecher’s wife Kate spoke through her. But Thomas Beecher did not believe his first wife Livy was speaking through Isabella.
The truth is, Isabella’s powers were supported by a community of belief. Some of her revelations were simply ancient myths brought to life, while others, such as pyramidology, were recent. She developed a personal mythology out of it too, with a coat of many colors, and the sanctum. Sisters Catharine and Harriet both supported the idea of women as religious teachers. And Harriet even suggested the revival of a female prophetic tradition. Isabella took this one step further, when she proposed to John Stuart Mill the idea that women were not only equal to men, they were superior.

ISABELLA : Of late I have been impressed more and more with the closer likeness to the divine nature which woman seems to bear, in that she is more sensibly, if not more truly, a creator than man is. What father can say, ‘‘Thou art my child,’’ as a mother can? —and through what channels does he count the life-beat of his child as his own?
And to my mind there is more sense of power in this sense of motherhood than in all things else; that power we all reach after by virtue of our divine ancestry. To create is to live; to express our own beings through another and another is everlasting youth; and to mold, guide, and control this offshoot of our being, itself an independent power—this is the glory of existence, its very most supreme delight.
To my conception a mother is the only being in this world who thus approximates the divine nature. So eeble in comparison is the father’s relation to her child, so lost in her higher and divine relation, that it is within the experience of many a mother, whether recognized by herself or not, that from the moment of blessed annunciation to heavenly birth, she, like the Virgin of old, has known no father to her child save the Holy Ghost.

NARRATOR : One reason for Isabella’s powerful imagination may have been heredity. Her brother James Beecher had always felt that there was something different about the three children of Lyman Beecher’s second marriage—Isabella, Thomas, and himself.

JAMES : The difference between the preachings of Isabella and Harriet is in the family inheritance. I think sister Belle would have done far better to come here this winter than to be browsing around Brooklyn and Elmira where she will only make a nuisance of herself. She might have my pulpit every Sunday and I am very sure would attract quite an audience. She could explain her spiritual mysteries to Mr. Dibbles and her higher life and woman’s rights to Mr. Nelson Kelly.
I am sure that there runs a streak of insanity in our mother’s three children—or rather a monomania, assuming diverse forms. I recognize it in Tom and myself. The only advantage I have is in being absolutely conscious of the fact. Tom is partially so. Belle is absolutely unconscious and is therefore the craziest of the three. However she is almost sixty. If she got well, she couldn’t do much good, and if she grows worse, she cannot do much harm—and a very few years will clear us all out, and in a dozen years or so if anybody should ask who were those Beechers anyhow, there will be nobody able to answer the question.

NARRATOR : Late in his life, James went off the deep end in his isolation, preaching to the woods folk of Ulster County. He eventually died by suicide a few years later.
Isabella saw no difference between herself and other Beechers. When brother Charles came to visit, this is how she saw things.

ISABELLA : Uncle Charles who left here Friday after a few days visit at the Stowes with his dear sweet wife, told me he was looking daily for the coming of Christ—and though cautioning me kindly against Spiritualism as of the devil probably, I found in all our conversation that our views were very similar as to the interpretations of the Bible and life generally.
And when he told me he was sure there was a conspiracy against Henry—he being utterly innocent, which was of the devil surely, my confidence in his judgment of Spiritualism was weakened—especially as he acknowledged the phenomena to be largely true.

NARRATOR : Soon after this, Charles wrote his Spiritual Manifestations, in part to warn Isabella and others of the pitfalls of Spiritualism. Charles had changed from being a skeptic to thinking of spirit-rappings as demonic displays. The Report on Spiritual Manifestations to the Congregational Church described his findings of the phenomena of various sorts called collectively Spiritualism. It caused quite a stir. Charles attempted to reconcile biblical with modern Spiritualism. Surprisingly, he finds that Spiritualism is materialism in disguise.

CHARLES : Rejecting the Bible as Authority, claiming for all people inspiration in common with Christ and the Apostles, and of the same mind regarding sin as immaturity of development, eschewing all received ideas of a fall of angels and people from original holiness, of total depravity, atonement, regeneration, pardon, etc.—the system is, in its last analysis, though but half-developed, a polytheistic pantheism, disguising under the name of Spirit a subtle but genuine materialism.

NARRATOR : Charles considered Spiritualism a competitor to Christianity, a debased form of religion.

CHARLES : Spiritualism has become a household religion, which is rapidly extending throughout Christendom. Vague rumors have gone abroad that God is dead, but can the soul coldly discuss the possibilities of such spiritual orphanage? The battle between God and Satan is now over the principles of good government. Soon the sixth seal will be opened, and we will see a very great and grand crisis of catastrophism.
Millions of low and deceptive spirits are already putting about the damnable lie that the millennium had already begun—when that claim is made, that the resurrection is now actually taking place in the materialization of the day—Spiritualists ought to be on their guard, and since they admit Christ and the apostles to be the strongest, purest, and most reliable mediums that have existed, they should carefully study their predictions respecting this great crisis.

NARRATOR : On the whole, Thomas Beecher gave his brother’s book a favorable review. At the Elmira Opera House, where he preached because his church was too small, Thomas said—

THOMAS : I have studied these phenomena for twenty years until the whole habit of my mind has been changed in this regard. Instead of being surprised to hear that there are spiritual manifestations abounding throughout the land, I am daily more and more surprised and grateful that as yet I have been able to keep them out of my own house and out of my own body. There is very little doubt in my mind that the clamor and confusion and strife of opinion of these days are to be attributed largely to spiritual influences.
There is nothing in it to supersede the Bible. The value of Spiritualism, if it has any, is to convert atheists back to supernaturalism. In truth, Spiritualist teachings are nothing but pious truisms—goody slush! Charles Beecher’s book at least raised the subject above the flavorous froth of popular thought.

NARRATOR : Isabella and John Hooker never wavered in their belief, however. Harriet, though still cautious, asked Isabella about the fate of her son Frederick.

HARRIET : I wish dear sister you would do me one other favor. Copy and send to me the supposed communication from my poor Fred—also poor Annie. Mr. Stowe wants to see them and I want to see them again. I committed Fred to my Savior, who knows all—who lives to save and goeth after that which is lost until he find it.

NARRATOR : And Frances Beecher sought Isabella’s help when her husband James appeared hopelessly insane. But despite Isabella’s efforts, Frances left unconvinced.
Even Edward Beecher, who had early classed Spiritualism among the ancient errors, sat in his old age with the Hookers with a number of mediums. When Mrs. Beecher was found to have cancer, Edward engaged a clairvoyant, perhaps Voice Adams, a young woman whom they later adopted.
In her later years, Isabella’s messianic complex eased, though she still expected young apostles to come to her.

ISABELLA : Whatever my part in this revelation, the bald statements of ultra Calvinism and modified Calvinism in all their hideousness must give way to a conception of the true heart of God.
Christian Science is a long overdue development; nearly all the women I meet are more or less interested in some form of spiritual healing. It disturbs me, though, that Mrs. Eddy does not acknowledge the Spiritualists that she learned from.