The Archive
What used to be premium-only is going public in weekly stages. Past posts are being updated regularly, so check in.
The Unseen Hand: A History and Working Theory of the PK Touch
September 24, 2026
I don't believe the dead have hands. I've never had a reason to. But I've stood in a dim room and watched a grown man...
The Medium Who Was Never Caught: D.D. Home and the Limits of Séance Room Skepticism
February 12, 2026
Every Victorian medium of note got caught eventually. Eusapia Palladino was caught with a freed foot mid-levitation. The Davenport Brothers were exposed by a magician...
The Séance That Sold Itself: How Newspaper Debunking Campaigns Accidentally Built Spiritualism’s Audience
December 28, 2025
Every performer fears the word "exposed." I used to fear it too, until I started reading what Victorian newspapers actually printed about mediums, and realized...
Anna Eva Fay and the Business of Being Believed
August 25, 2025
Anna Eva Fay walked into a laboratory in London in 1874 and walked out with the endorsement of one of the most respected scientists in...
Three Raps in Hydesville: How the Fox Sisters Accidentally Built Modern Spiritualism
July 16, 2025
Every performer who works a séance room owes a debt to two girls who never meant to start anything. Margaret Fox was fourteen. Kate Fox...
Before the Crystal Ball: A History of Reflective and Scrying Instruments in Mentalism
March 23, 2025
Every mentalist who has worked a black mirror routine has felt it, that small pause before the sitter looks down and actually sees something. It's...
The Performer’s Guide to Pendulum Divination: History, Science, and the Art of the Swing Revisited
February 26, 2025
A woman in the third row stopped breathing. I know because I was watching for it. The pendulum, a vintage brass bob on a twelve-inch...
Talking Tables: The Séance Phenomenon That Predates the Ouija Board
December 9, 2024
Before the little wooden planchette ever slid across a board spelling out names of the dead, there was a table. A whole table, sometimes seating...
The Cabinet Before Houdini: How Séance Room Furniture Became Escapology’s First Stage
October 30, 2024
Every escape artist owes a debt to a piece of furniture nobody remembers by name. Not a trunk, not a milk can, not the water...
The Moving Hand: Automatic Writing as a Performance Tool, From Spiritualist Parlors to the Contemporary Seance
August 17, 2024
Nobody hands you their hand and asks you to write with it. That's the wall automatic writing breaks through, and it's why the effect still...
The Book Test at 100: How Mentalism’s Most Abused Method Became Its Most Sophisticated
May 27, 2024
The Method They Warned You Off Somewhere in nearly every beginner's mentalism course, there's a paragraph warning you off the book test. Too fiddly, they...
The Performer’s Guide to Pendulum Divination: History, Science, and the Art of the Swing
April 1, 2024
No card trick does this. A small weight hangs from a chain between your fingers. Cold brass, maybe, or polished crystal. Dead still. Then, without...