36. Seances, Ghost Photography and the Art of Mourning in the Victorian Age with Clark Canez

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Dumb Nerds

It’s October! That means Halloween season is finally upon us and what better way to get spooky then with our returning guest, Clark Canez (Ep 5 Greek Mythology) to talk about Victorian Spiritualism! Clark and Cassi have a blast talking about how the invention of seances by New York sisters led to such a seance craze that the sisters visited Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd in the White House to conduct a seance for them! We discuss how the loss of Queen Victoria’s husband put the Queen into a lifelong mourning that greatly changed the ritual of mourning, funerals and death superstitions. During this time photography was invented and it didn’t take long for this death obsessed culture to use photography to try and capture ghosts. (And some people made a very good living creating fake ghost photos!) This is a super fun, eery episode that will get you into the Halloween spirit. You may also find yourself wishing you lived in the Victorian Age!