This week’s historical dumpster fire
Spirit Slate Writing
A weekly dose of macabre history, gently pressed into your hands like a haunted educational pamphlet.
Before everyone had a Ouija board tucked into a closet somewhere, Spiritualists had a much simpler way to receive messages from the dead:
A school slate and a tiny piece of chalk.
During a seance, a medium would show the sitter a clean slate.
The slate might be placed beneath the table, held against another slate, or positioned somewhere the medium supposedly could not write on it.
Then everyone waited.
Sometimes scratching sounds could be heard.
When the slate was revealed again, a message had appeared.
Your mother loves you.
Your husband forgives you.
Uncle Henry remains disappointed.
Your husband forgives you.
Uncle Henry remains disappointed.
Death, apparently, does not cure passive aggression.
One of the most famous slate-writing mediums was Henry Slade, whose seances attracted both devoted believers and investigators.
In 1887, the Seybert Commission studied his performances and reported decidedly earthly explanations, including switched slates, messages prepared in advance, and manipulations performed beneath the table.
At one seance, investigators even reported seeing Slade’s foot involved in the festivities.
Imagine paying to communicate with eternity only to discover the spirit realm is mostly Gerald doing calligraphy with his toes.
For believers, slate writing offered something extraordinary: physical words supposedly delivered directly from someone they had lost.
For skeptics, it offered something else:
A very good reason to look under the table.
Please note: none of this was written by robots aka AI. It came from the dark folds of Lacey’s very human mind.
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