It is well-known that the Victorians were keen on science, engineering, and mad inventions. They had a morbid fascination with death, but they had a spiritual side, too. So it was only a matter of time before they became obsessed with spiritualism and the paranormal.
In doing so, they approached the unknown like any other scientific conundrum. They wrote up experiments, tried to attach philosophical treatises to their findings, and considered the illogical, the otherworldly, and the downright bizarre with inquiring and open minds.
Although, occasionally, they were also a bit nuts.
10 Maria Hayden
Maria Hayden was an American medium. In the mid-1800s, she became famous in England as the first medium to demonstrate the new art of rapping, shortly after the more famous Fox sisters had made such an “impression” (also known as a killing) back home.
It is probably fair to say that the media did not treat Hayden kindly. Several Victorian publications set out to ridicule her and her skills. This increased when it was revealed that her rapped-out messages only made sense when she was able to see the letters in front of her.[1]
When she was asked to turn her back, the messages were largely gibberish. This suggested the possibility that they were coming from Hayden herself and not from her spirit guide.
Hayden’s career as a medium seemed to end quite suddenly. She dropped out of the public eye completely and returned to America. There, she trained as a doctor and practiced for 15 years. It was said that she had “remarkable healing powers.” So good, in fact, that she was later offered a medical professorship at a US university.
9 Annie Horniman
Annie Horniman’s background was rather ordinary. Her family had come up with the idea of selling tea prepackaged rather than loose, which was less messy and much more lucrative.
Like all wealthy Victorian ladies, Horniman had a social project. She was instrumental in creating the arts scene in Manchester, working to bring the theater to the masses. She promoted the work of local dramatists, the benefits of which are still felt today as Manchester has the most thriving theater district outside of London.
But a lady has to have a hobby, too. Horniman was a believer in tarot cards and mysticism in general. She used card readings in all her business affairs, though not always successfully.
Along with Aleister Crowley and Bram Stoker, Horniman became a member of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn for the better understanding of the paranormal. She also believed that she could astrally project to other planets, which she visited as frequently as some people pop to the shops.
While on a tour of the universe in 1898, she encountered a “tall, dignified, and winged” man on Saturn. He was dressed in armor and told Horniman all about his “dying world.” However, the man was fearful of strangers. As a result, Horniman and her companion made themselves invisible so as not to alarm him.[2

 8 Annie Besant
Annie Besant was a singular woman. She boldly left her clergyman husband and two children because of her anti-religious views and became involved with a former clergyman, Charles Leadbeater, who was a member of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. Besant was much interested in spiritualism of all kinds, believing as she did that “matter exists in states other than those at present known to science.”
Besant wrote a book called Thought-Forms, which was not so much about the paranormal as it was about color. Today, Besant would have been diagnosed with synesthesia as her book explained emotion in a table of colors and shapes. The work gave a fascinating insight into the synesthete’s mind. Apparently, passion is purple.
Later, Besant became an advocate for Indian Home Rule. She eventually settled there and adopted a son whom she believed to be the new Messiah and a reincarnation of Buddha.[3]
7 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
In 1873, Helena Blavatsky arrived in New York from Russia. She was a philosopher, a student of the occult, and one of the founding members of the Theosophical Society. The aim of the society was to explore the divine powers she believed that humans possessed and thus save the world.
Blavatsky’s particular divine powers included visions, clairvoyance, and conversing with the dead. She claimed that she had disguised herself as a man to fight in the Battle of Mentana, where she was left for dead. But she supposedly used her powers to fight her way back to life. After that, she made a miraculous escape at sea after her ship was blown up.
However, her account lacked proof or credibility. She could not adequately explain why she, a Russian living in America, would want to involve herself in an Italian-French conflict in Rome. Soon, she let this story go.
Blavatsky’s biggest claim to fame was her book, The Secret Doctrine, which explained the birth of mankind from the four Root Races. The first (best) race was as white as the Moon, the second was gold, the third was red, and the fourth was brown which became “black with sin.”[4]


6 Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier De Terre-Neuve Du ThymAlexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier de Terre-Neuve du Thym, whom we will call Berbiguier, was born in France in 1765. It is probably fair to say that he was “troubled.”
In 1821, he published his autobiography in three volumes. It detailed his struggles with dark forces, which had earned him the title “The Scourge of Hobgoblins.” According to Berbiguier, he had destroyed as many of these creatures as possible but had discovered that killing them makes them angry.
Berbiguier refused to be examined for possible mental health disorders, believing all doctors to be ambassadors of the hobgoblin world. He increased his efforts to wipe out the plague of hobgoblins, filling his room with plants supposedly lethal to them as well as some empty bottles in which to trap them.[5]
Berbiguier published his volumes, all 274 chapters of them, which included pictures of the hobgoblins as drawn by him.
5 William Stead
William Stead’s main claim to fame was that he had been aboard the Titanic when it sank. Still, he was an interesting man in other ways. He had been a pioneer of what is now called investigative journalism, writing an expose on child prostitution that ultimately led to the age of consent for girls being raised from 13 to 16.
In 1892, Stead began to report on a different kind of story. He had been getting messages from “the other side.” In fact, he believed that he was receiving messages from a departed fellow journalist. He even employed a team of office staff to record the messages and pass them on to relevant loved ones.
Whether Stead was really getting messages from the dead, we will never know. However, it seems that Stead may have had something of a seer in him because he wrote a short story in 1886 about a ship that sank in the Atlantic.
In the story, the loss of life was so great because the lifeboats could only carry a third of the souls on the ship, leaving many to perish. He also included a warning: Although the story was fictional, it was entirely plausible.
William Stead was not one of the lucky ones who made it onto the boats when the Titanic sank.[6]


4 William Wynn Westcott
William Wynn Westcott was a doctor, Freemason, and occultist. He also worked as a coroner. He was even briefly considered a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.
In 1887, Westcott claimed that he was given some mysterious documents by a man who promptly died. It was written in a secret code to which Westcott just happened to hold the key.
When decoded, the documents contained the instructions for an initiation ceremony, following which Westcott was “given permission” to found the Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn.
Westcott’s society took off, and several more temples were built. He was promoted to Praemonstrator of the Kabbalah. However, it seems that Westcott had upset some higher power. He left some of his papers in the back of a taxi one day, and his spare time activities came to the notice of his employers, who took a dim view of coroners being praemonstrators.[7]
Forced to choose between the secular and the divine, Westcott chose the one that allowed him to pay his bills and resigned from the society.
3 Dr. Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail
Dr. Rivail was a teacher, doctor, translator, and lawyer. Then he became Allan Kardec, “teacher of souls.” Kardec developed his own brand of spiritualism, which he called “Spiritism.”
After seeing a display of “table turning” in which the “spirit” causes a table to spin, he became convinced that the spirit was trying to communicate. However, three years earlier, Michael Faraday had explained the phenomenon of ideomotor response, in which muscles can move independently of deliberate thought and thus move tables.
Even so, Kardac wrote The Spirits Book, a guide to communicating with the other side. He believed that our bodies are just temporary containers for the spirit. In addition, the spirits of the departed are always with us, being reborn at different points along the ladder of spiritual rank.[8]


2 Daniel Dunglas HomeDaniel Dunglas Home believed himself to be exceptional. On developing an interest in spiritualism as a teenager, he decided not to follow the crowd. He held his seances in brightly lit rooms. Rather than the audience holding each other’s hands, he asked them to hold his hands to prove that he was not manipulating objects himself.
At first, his seances were fairly pedestrian—with messages from the dead and ghostly music emanating from nowhere. Then, around 1857, they began to get more interesting. He made spectral hands appear from the ether. Napoleon III’s wife was even said to have recognized the distinctive hand of her dead father because of a deformed finger.
By 1868, he was able to levitate—not just a few feet off the ground but through an open window three stories up. (Or rather, he went into another room by himself and was later seen outside the window, presumably due to levitation. Then he floated back in.)
Though all of this may seem inexplicable and impressive, Harry Houdini maintained that Home was merely a magician and that Houdini could replicate all of Home’s tricks. Nevertheless, Home was a celebrity of his time and had many wealthy admirers.
There was a certain amount of unpleasantness when a rich widow claimed that Home had swindled her. He responded that she had given him money for his “spiritualistic services” and only demanded a refund when she realized that he would not be performing services of a different kind. A trial ensued, and he was forced to reimburse her.[9]
1 Philippe Nizier-Anthelme VachodPhilippe Nizier-Anthelme Vachod (or his less formal name, Master Philippe de Lyon) was born in France in 1849. Apparently, he was marked for greatness from the moment of his birth. His mother was said to have experienced no labor pains and delivered him singing with joy. As if that weren’t enough, a raging storm was quieted and a shooting star appeared at the exact moment of his birth.
So, how did this greatness manifest itself?
Well, in 1874, while living in Lyon, Philippe worked in a pharmacy and was able to cure the sick without the aid of drugs. Then he studied medicine. But his fellow students were unimpressed by his healing powers, which they felt made a mockery of their profession, and his license was revoked.[10]
He became the personal clairvoyant to Tsar Nicholas II and was said to have predicted the birth of the tsarevitch as well as the forthcoming revolution. Philippe even managed to raise a child from the dead.
However, he was unable to repeat the trick when his own child died. When asked to explain this, Philippe said that he had allowed her to die to save the world from an unspecified and unprovable cosmic calamity.

​https://listverse.com/2019/03/31/10-victorian-explorers-into-the-paranormal/?fbclid=IwAR0H0J7fWAESxu3au1LWIEWG_DPGf9bxyC0FwsIqVqF_XzEb3987Zjw2Gq0

Thanksgiving is a time for families to gather together and be thankful for a multitude of things. Tables filled with food and centerpieces are a must each year. But, what about ghost stories?
Yes, ghost stories are usually tied with Halloween. There used to be traditions surrounding telling ghost stories around the holidays. What about Thanksgiving? A quick Google search for, “Thanksgiving ghost stories” doesn’t come up very plentiful.
Sometimes, the supernatural can shed light on the darkest of mysteries. In 1832, over 57 Irish immigrant workers disappeared near Malvern, Pennsylvania. They were almost erased from history.
Here’s how a Thanksgiving ghost story solved an old local mystery!
Grandpa’s TaleEvery Thanksgiving, twin brothers Bill and Frank Watson used to hear a ghost story from their grandfather. A former railroad worker, their grandpa would retell this spooky story of a place known as Duffy’s Cut, located in Pennsylvania.
In 1909, a man was walking home from a tavern. There, he saw blue and green ghosts dancing in the mist on one September night. The Pennsylvania Railroad kept a record of this incident too!
The man said, “I saw with my own eyes, the ghosts of the Irishmen who died with the cholera a month ago, a-dancing around the big trench where they were buried; it’s true, mister, it was awful. Why, they looked as if they were a kind of green and blue fire and they were a-hopping and bobbing on their graves… I had heard the Irishmen were haunting the place because they were buried without the benefit of clergy.”
After their grandpa died, the Watson twins inherited his old railroad papers. Turns out, their grandpa was the assistant to Martin Clement, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. From there, they were shocked to find so many correspondances with the blue and green ghosts in the area. According to Frank, one of the correspondances said, “X marks the spot.” Basically, the twins believed that perhaps there was a mass burial ground created when the landfill was made. This area was also the site of the original railroad bridge.
Digging for the Truth
Smoking pipe fragments excavated at Duffy’s Cut, Pennsylvania. Some of the pipes clearly made in Ireland. Museum location given. Duffy’s Cut was a massive project to basically fill in a ravine so that the railroad could come through. Think of it like leveling a hill. Philip Duffy was in charge of the project. Many of the workers came from Ireland, were poor, only spoke Gaelic and came from a Catholic background. By 1930, Duffy was housing Irish immigrants in his rental home.
So, in 2005, the twins decided to start digging around the area. They were searching for clues. There, they found remnants of a shanty as well as forks. Then, they found a pipe with an Irish flag on it. The brothers realized that they needed more help in order to find more information.
They brought in a geophysicist named Tim Bechtel. His work included earth scans, which is a critical tool to see what’s underground without digging or drilling. As Bechtel started to work on the area by shooting electrical currents through the ground. He soon realized that there were strange areas where the current would stop.
Solving a Murder
Early rail road track or strapping c. 1832, covered wooden stringers (lower). Railroad construction tool (upper). Found at Duff’s Cut near Amtrak Tracks, sort of near Malvern, PA. Location is for the display in Immaculata University. After researching, Bechtel pinpointed key areas to start digging. This turned into a massive excavation project. In March 2009, one of Bechtel’s students made a horrifying discovery; a piece of human bone.
Janet Monge soon joined the forensics team as a key person to help separate animal bones from human bones. Since the discovery, seven human skeletons have been found around Duffy’s Cut. The skulls had cracks in them that indicate that they died from a blow to the head, either from a bullet or an axe. It’s hard to conclude whether cholera was the culprit at the time of death. But it’s clear that cholera didn’t kill the men they’ve found so far.
Remembering the Forgotten
Enclosure near the Amtrak (formerly PRR) tracks near Malvern, PA, built as a memorial to Irish workers who died during a Cholera epidemic at “Duffy’s Cut” – mile 59. Enclosure apparently built with stones used in the 1832 construction, but it itself was built about 1909. When the cholera outbreak happened, many of the workers from Duffy’s Cut tried to run. But when they were looking for shelter, people were turning them away because they were fearful of getting infected.
Feeling lost, the men went back to Duffy’s Cut and the shanty where they were all living. According to the story, they were taken care of by the Sisters of Charity and a local blacksmith. As the men died, they were put in a mass grave, and the blacksmith burned the shanty to the ground.
Clement had been doing hard inquiries into the actual death toll of the cholera outbreak, and he was the one who found out about the 57 men who died. The newspapers clearly underreported those numbers. Perhaps they were silenced by the railroad company?
A Sad Ending
Grave marker at West Laurel Hill Cemetery to memorialize lives of Irish railroad workers lost at Duffy’s Cut in 1832. One of the skeletons was identified as 18-year old John Ruddy from County Donegal. He sailed from County Derry to the United States in 1832 in hopes of finding work. All of his countrymen he worked alongside with would die within two months of arrival, which is exceptionally tragic.
Today, the Watsons want to find every last body so that they can be identified and laid to rest. It’s likely that these men would secretly buried in a mass grave as a cover up so that the railroad company could continue recruiting new workers. The Watsons sorted through their grandfather’s papers in great detail. It turns out that many of these men were not recorded as having cholera, or ever really working for the railroad.
Ghosts Showing the Way
Now, you’re probably wondering; are the blue and green ghosts real? It’s hard to say, since the eyewitness testimony came from well over a century ago. I think there are a few possible theories to this, if the ghost story is true.
Maybe the 57 Irishmen were hanging out around their mass grave in hopes that someone would see them and finally lay them to rest.
Is it possible that the Irishmen didn’t really die from cholera and they were trying to communicate with whoever would notice them. If that is the case, my big question is why were they murdered? Maybe perhaps they died from an accident instead? There’s also the possibility that someone was killing them to prevent the spread of cholera to other people. It’s hard to tell.
Or, the eyewitness who saw the ghosts knew the truth of the men’s fates and was trying to give authorities a hint so that they would go digging and find the mass grave.
Sources
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/24/pennsylvania.graves.mystery/index.html
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/irelands-forgotten-sons-recovered-two-centuries-later-9194680/
https://alexmatsuo.com/how-this-freaky-thanksgiving-ghost-story-revealed-a-historic-murder/?fbclid=IwAR06j0UB08nvcs9N72Frx5VHUfEubS6f_PpHugaR8Uw_S0oBgx-nL72P530​

​It's not uncommon to hear investigators on ghost hunts report that their equipment has mysteriously ... Read more at https://www.higgypop.com/news/can-ghosts-drain-batteries/

​​7 Weird Paranormal Experiences That Almost Everyone Has Had And What They Really 
Mean By Brianna Wiest, May 22nd 2018
​
Almost everyone in the world has had at least one experience that they couldn’t explain. It could be a coincidence that seemed too particular to be happenstance. It could be a moment that had no realistic, or even rational, explanation.
What you will notice about these seemingly unexplainable instances is that a strong emotion is almost always evoked. In that lies the key to understanding what paranormal experiences are, and how they function in our lives.
Most supernatural phenomena can be chalked up to something called anthropomorphism. This is the way human beings attribute random, chaotic events to invisible, supernatural order. It helps to make sense of things – and to try to better control them – in an often unpredictable and random world.

This is reinforced by two psychological phenomenons: confirmation bias and anchoring effect. This is the way in which our brains pick out information that supports what we want to believe, and then grows to prefer that which we’ve already been exposed to. Through these two functions, we begin to insulate our lives to reaffirm ourselves.
The “paranormal experience” doesn’t matter as much as what it made the person think and feel. Their response to it is a projection of what they need to know.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, we can use these types of experiences to better understand ourselves, and even potentially expand the limits of our imaginations. Here are 7 of the most common ones, and what they might really mean about your life:
1.The experience: speaking to a psychic who predicted a life event down to an eerily specific detail. What it really means: Psychic readings tend to be just vague enough that it can apply to almost anyone. Self-fulfilling prophecy comes into effect, especially when we like what predictions were made. It’s common for people to cherry pick the aspects of a reading that affirm what they already want for their lives, and then made a deeper subconscious attempt to manifesting that.
What it could mean: Everything is energy. Time is an illusion of consciousness. It could very well be possible that some super intuitive people are able to pick up on events in an individual’s current timeline, or events that are happening concurrent to the reading, in another dimension. Some people also believe in fate, or “soul contracts,” which is that some aspects of human life were pre-agreed to, and the intuitive person can just feel what those are.
2.The experience: A tarot card reading that revealed the honest truth about a situation before you even knew it. What it really means: Tarot can be a very powerful process because it is more or less like a new age inkblot test. What you see in the cards says everything about your situation, far more than what they could actually represent.
What it could mean: Some people believe in divination, or the way that celestial beings interject into human life in order to impart wisdom or forewarning. Cards are a means of delivering a message through random means.

3.The experience: Seeing a token from a deceased friend or relative, like a certain type of flower that keeps showing up, or a feather that lands on your hand. What it really means: The brain is constantly picking up on and filtering through different stimuli available in your peripheral vision. That means that if you associate your deceased mother with lilacs, you’re going to be unconsciously seeking out lilacs and then drawing your attention to them, making the frequency of their presence in your life seem higher than normal.
What it could mean: A disembodied energy is drawing your attention to stimuli by making something innocuous (like a feather) come across your path. It is a harmless way to communicate their presence and to let you know that they are still with you.
4.The experience: Waking up in the middle of the night, not being able to move, and seeing or hearing disembodied spirits talking or interacting with you .What it really means: Sleep paralysis is a heavily studied medical phenomenon, in which the brain puts the body to sleep, but the mind stays awake. Hallucinations occur, often in the form of a demon or dark figure “pushing down on you” or holding you in place, which is likely a projection of the feeling that is being paralyzed.
What it could mean: This is also a way in which people report having out of body experiences, in which they meet and communicate with beings who have important messages for them, or get to experience a dimension parallel to this one.
5.The experience: A friend calling as soon as you think of them, as though you were communicating telepathically. What it really means: It’s likely that you’re falsely associating having thought of them with being contacted by them. There are likely dozens of times you’ve thought of them without anything happening further. It’s just another case of confirmation bias, most likely.
What it could mean: Given that everything is fundamentally and essentially connected, it’s not impossible to wonder if we have the potential to communicate through nonverbal means (groups of animals do this when they flock together). It’s not that outlandish that humans could, too.
6.The experience: A visitation from a ghostly figure, especially if it is repeated or randomly in the middle of the night .What it really means: It’s most probable that there’s some other kind of stimuli in your life that’s spooking you, and that fear response is heightening your sensitivity to small sounds, smells or flashes that are normally present, but this time, you’re piecing them together to create an idea of something else being present in your home. It’s more important to consider what’s happening in your life at the time, and why it would seem necessary for you to believe that there is an invisible force in your home terrorizing you (for example, consider what invisible emotion or idea is scaring you in reality).

What it could mean: You could be seeing glimpses of disembodied energy, whether you believe that is a particular soul, or just a pocket of energy that doesn’t have anywhere to go (especially if it’s been built up, like a poltergeist).
7.The experience: Receiving signs that you’re meant to be with a certain person, to the point that it appears undeniable that you’re soulmates. What it really means: The only sign that you are “meant to be with someone” is that you are with that person. When we are uncertain and scared when a relationship isn’t working out (or might not work out) we look to external, supernatural “signs” to give us a sense of control and certainty that does not inherently exist.
What it could mean: When two people are right for each other, many things synchronize. You have the same taste in music, interests, you’re in the same geographic location, you just “click.” It can be easy to feel as though all of these things mean some external force is telling you that you’re supposed to be together when in reality, you’re probably going to be together because all of these things are aligned

Thanks to Fred Wise of Crooked Creek Civil War Museum!