This month’s issue of Discover Vintage America will help conjure up some good, old-fashioned ghouls and spirits with our lead editorial on the history of the ghost story.

Fascination with the para-normal has been around for as long as Halloween itself, and even earlier. Specifically, the spiritualism fad that swept America and Europe in the Victorian Era convinced us that the living could communicate with the dead.

In the U.S., the Spiritualist movement began in 1848 in a village in New York, when two sisters claimed that they had communicated with a ghost of a man murdered in their house many years before they moved there. Just a few years later, in 1852, an American medium named Maria Hayden visited London, conducting table seances in which she conveyed “messages” from the dead. And what séance would be complete without a little noise from an other-worldly realm? Hayden also made sure to rap her fist underneath the table for an extra eerie effect.

“Fascination with Spiritualism and psychic phenomena reached a high point in Great Britain in the late 19th century,” according to an article on victorianweb.org. “A rich diversity of people during that period shared the fascination, formed organizations to pursue the subject system-atically, and patronized a spiritualist press that served to publicize the activities of spiritualist circles around the country.”

Even Britain’s Queen Victoria was hooked on the fad, paying to have seances conducted for several decades during her long reign.

Soon, journals targeting the Spiritualist community were being published seemingly everywhere while at the same time, mediums were perfecting their craft by incorporating table tipping, automatic writing, and levi-tation, according to victorianweb.org.

Mummy dearest

Spiritualism wasn’t the only spooky fad that captured the hearts and imaginations of those living in the 19th century. Egyptomania – a fascination with all things related to ancient Egypt – especially mummies.

In the 19th century – decades before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922 – mummies weren’t viewed as artifacts to be revered and viewed in museums. No, for hundreds of years, in fact, mummies were viewed as possessing medicinal properties. Their flesh and bone often were ground up into powder and eaten to help people ingest the mummy’s powers.

Contact Corbin Crable at editor@discovervintage.com​