In this enthralling study of the ethereal, the scientific, and the strange, Beth A. Robertson investigates the gendered world of the seance, a place where self-proclaimed “psychic researchers” laid claim to objectivity and where spiritual mediums and the spirits they channeled resisted their methods.

In the 1920s and ’30s, people gathered in darkened rooms to explore the paranormal through seances. They were motivated by grief, spiritual devotion, or a desire to be entertained. Beth A. Robertson resurrects the story of a small transnational group and their quest for objective knowledge of the supernatural, casting new light on how science, metaphysics, and the senses collided to inform gendered norms in this era.

Robertson draws back the curtain to reveal a world inhabited by researchers, spirits, and spiritual mediums. Representing themselves as masters of the senses, untainted by the effeminized subjectivity of the body, psychical researchers in Canada, the UK, and the US believed that they could use machines and empirical methods to transform the seance into a laboratory of the spirits and a transnational empirical project. However, mediums and ghostly subjects could and did challenge their claims to scientific expertise and authority.

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While there has been a considerable academic interest in Victorian Spiritualism and séance room phenomena, the 1918–1939 period has been less well served. Beth Robertson’s Science of the Seance helps to redress that imbalance ... [S]he provides a useful introduction to some of the work exploring the boundary between this world and the next in the period.

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It’s a rare treat when I get to indulge my interest in the paranormal through such a well-researched and argued work as Beth A. Robertson’s Science of the Seance … it will appeal not only to those studying the paranormal, but also to scholars of technology, gender, and sexuality, and those who are interested in the origins of new sciences and the construction of knowledge ... It takes its subject matter seriously (which shouldn’t be underestimated), and makes far-reaching conclusions that cross disciplinary boundaries. It draws together a number of seemingly disparate threads into a concise framework that, for me, transformed how I thought about paranormal research. I look forward to more work like this.

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In this provocative book, Robertson contends that the study of mediumship impacted both empirical methods and gender studies … A major contribution of this work is its description of how women, both as participants and researchers, debunked the stereotype that had linked femininity with “intellectual ineptitude.” Robertson’s work can serve as a model for further inquiries on the contributions psychical research can make to scholarship, methodology, and philosophy.