This week’s historical dumpster fire
The Spirit Cabinet
This week in Victorian entertainment: putting mediums in cupboards.
A weekly dose of macabre history, gently pressed into your hands like a haunted educational pamphlet.
During the 1800s, mediums were constantly being accused of secretly causing the strange noises and movements happening during seances.
Fair.
So some performers came up with a very convincing solution:
Tie us up and lock us inside furniture.
The Davenport Brothers became famous for an act involving a large wooden cabinet. Audience members could inspect the cabinet, tie the brothers securely to chairs inside it, and place bells, horns, guitars, and other instruments nearby.
The doors were closed.
Almost immediately, the cabinet would erupt.
Bells rang. Instruments played. Objects flew around.
Then the doors opened and the brothers appeared to still be tied exactly where everyone had left them.
To believers, it was proof that spirits were responsible.
To skeptics, it was proof that the Davenports were extremely good at ropes.
The brothers toured internationally with the act, helping turn spirit cabinets into one of the great spectacles of Victorian Spiritualism.
Because apparently simply asking Grandma if she was enjoying the afterlife was not enough.
She also needed to play the trumpet.
Was it supernatural?
That depended entirely on whom you asked.
Was it an astonishing amount of effort just to make a tambourine move in the dark?
Absolutely.
Victorians did not have Netflix.
They had two restrained men in a cupboard and hope.
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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