Speaking with the Dead in Early America

Speaking with the Dead in Early America by Erik R. Seeman

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When I was a history major at UC Davis, I didn't like social history classes. I preferred the big stuff- wars, dynasties, the big changes in society, rather than the micro-details of how people lived their lives. It seems that as I get older, I find far more value in the micro details of how people live their lives. It allows me to appreciate the ordinary in different ways as well as to see the connections between today and the past.

This is a fascinating book, but not one for the general reader. The author - Erik R. Seeman - traces the evolution of Protestant American interaction with the dead from shortly after the Reformation to the mid-nineteenth century rise of Spiritualism.

The book begins with the post-Reformation period. A central tenet of Reformation Protestantism was the abolition of the doctrine of Purgatory, which placed departed souls safely and permanently in Heaven or Hell, with no restless place in between. In the interest of distinguishing the new Reformed faith from hated Catholicism, the Reformers emphasized that it was improper to maintain any communication with the dead or imagine that the dead took any interest in the living. Graves were moved away from churchyards and corpses were conceived of simply food for worms.

Seeman notes that during the Puritan period, elegies would be given that often contained the rhetorical tropes of apostrophe and prosopopoeia. Prosopopoeia is the figure whereby the speaker claims to be addressing the subject of the speech, such as where an elegist speaks to the listeners on behalf of the deceased person. Obviously, this was understood as an imaginative device and not a real address. Apostrophe is the figure whereby the speaker addresses the crowd in the imagined words of the deceased. Neither of these represents true communication with the dead, such as the hated Catholic prayer to saints but they do point to a tradition that might give social sanction to interactions with the dead.

In that regard, Seeman also addresses the phenomenon of the “talking gravestones,” which were gravestones that seemed to address walkers-by on behalf of the deceased. Again, these talking gravestones seem to point to a pent-up demand for communication with departed loved ones.

Seeman also points out the acceptance of ghost apparitions in Puritan times. Although the official Puritan position was that ghosts could not be returns from the dead, and so must be, most likely, demonic apparitions, this attitude began to change in order to refute the materialism of Thomas Hobbes and “Sadducists.” To that end, Pastor-Scientists and Thanatologists, such as Cotton Mathers, became interested in ghostly apparitions in order to provide an apologetic argument against materialism.

Seeman points out that there were many ghost apparitions that played an important role in the Salem Witch-Hunt. I had heard of “spiritual evidence,” but I didn't appreciate that this evidence was that of ghosts playing their duly appointed role of accusing criminals of their crimes.

Seeman discusses the “graveyard poetry” of the eighteenth century and the Gothic Novels of the early nineteenth century in which the effort to remain in some kind of communication with deceased loved ones became more deeply felt. It was here that I began to wonder about the origin of horror from this frustrated, pent-up need to maintain a relationship with those who had died. One thing about this book is that I was overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of the death of children, sisters and brothers. It is hardly surprising that there was this need, which incorporated ghost stories and gave rise to horror stories.

One of the more interesting asides is that women were the largest consumers of Gothic fiction. I wonder if the reasons for this are similar to the reasons why women are the chief consumers of the “murder true story” genre today? Something to consider.

The next step in the evolution of the Protestant interaction with the dead was the keeping of death objects, locks of hair, painting, samplers, etc. We are sometimes weirded out by the photos of dead children that were taken in the nineteenth century, but those were part of this phase. Eventually, this gave rise to the Protestant “Cult of the Dead” whereby Protestants began to ask the dead to guard them.

This evolution may account for the Protestant new religions. Seeman has a wonderful section on Swedenborg, the Shaking Amish, and the Mormons. Each of those new religions conceived of a new way for the living to maintain contact with the dead. For the Swedenborgians and Amish, it was speaking with the dead; for the Mormons, it was the baptism of the dead.

Of course, I was waiting for the big finish with Seance Spiritualism, but the book treated that subject only lightly. It does have some discussion of that subject up to the mid-nineteenth century. We can see why Spiritualism was so heavily influenced by women.

This is a dense book. It got me to wondering about the Catholic experience during this same period. Did Catholics participate in Gothic fiction and talking gravestones? More important is the evolution of Protestantism from what the author disputes is a “religion of absence” - absence of the spiritual from the material - to a religion that mimicked for some the traditions of Catholicism.