ABSTRACT
Over the last few decades, scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have uncovered a rich interplay between the phantasmal and the technological. As we now know, for many modern spiritualists, psychical researchers, and the writers who depicted their pursuits, mediumistic contacts were of a piece with the communication technology innovations of the day. Kate and Margaret Fox set off the transatlantic séance trend when they heard the ‘rappings’ of a spirit in their New York home, and it has become scholarly lore that these remote, tapping communications were instantly compared to those of the recently invented electric telegraph. 1 For believers in spirit photography, the camera could capture images of ghosts that were otherwise invisible to the human eye. 2 Typists paralleled spirit mediums, and indeed some women took ‘dictations’ in both the office and the séance. 3
