Margin Notes: When Americans sought comfort in Spiritualism

An inside look at my approach and processes, and some of the challenges faced

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Release date: November 4, 2025

Hi, and welcome to the Margin Notes on When Americans Sought Comfort in Spiritualism, including the stories of Fannie Conant and William Mumler. Margin Notes is a special feature for paid subscribers here at The Lost & Found Story Box. Thanks so much for your support!

Today, I’ll be sharing a little about where I found this lost & found story, my over all approach to the story, some of the challenges I faced in piecing it together, and a bit of historical context that didn’t make it into the finished story.

But first, I have a confession to make: I have an unnatural fear of the supernatural.

I trace this particular fear to a sleepover in our neighbor’s boathouse the summer I turned seven. I was the youngest of the neighborhood girls, and probably hadn’t actually been invited to the sleepover as much as just tagged along with my sister, but there I was. At some point during the evening, someone started telling ghost stories, and then, keeping with the theme, the oldest sister of the family that owned the houseboat brought out a Ouija board. The plan, as I recall, was to call forth the spirit of JFK. I remember joined hands, whispers, strange noises. Then the lights went out, the door flew open and the brother of the Ouija board girl raced into the pitch-black boathouse screaming.

I may have lost consciousness.

I know for fact I refused to even paddle a canoe past that boathouse ever again.

In the intervening half century, I’ve been pretty successful in avoiding anything even related to the supernatural world, the exception being some incredible mind-blowing conversations with a favorite cousin who just happens to be a world-famous medium. Go figure.

So, when I was working on my editorial calendar earlier this year, I knew I wanted to find a supernatural story to share in spooky, Halloween dominated October, but one I could both research and retell without freaking out.

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How to approach the supernatural

Back in 2012, Ric Burns and PBS put out a series, Death and the Civil War, which included references to something called a “good death,” and how with so many people dying, Americans on both sides of the war had to make adjustments to deal with loved ones dying on battlefields and hospitals alone and far from home. One of the ways they’d dealt with that trauma was through spiritualism. So that’s where I started: “spiritualism” in 1861-1865.

I initially saw two possible approaches to telling this story — the story of how Spiritualism helped some people deal with death during and after the Civil War:

• a fairly broad overview of the movement itself with equally broad historical context

• a closer look at some of the key players that could give readers an idea of the larger scope of Spiritualism.

The 30,000-foot version had already been done, and doesn’t really fit the style, tone or reader expectations of this newsletter. So finding those key players that could represent the bigger picture of Spiritualism became my goal.

Easy peasy, right?

Spiritualism wasn’t just one thing in the mid 1800s. It was seances and revivals, Tarot cards and visions, tapping, spirit writing and tables and candlesticks mysteriously moving across a room. It was tied up with traditional religion and in opposition to it at the same time.

And the Spiritualist themselves were just as diverse, which is why I eventually decided to tell the story through Fannie Conant and William Mumler. Between then, I thought they represented close to the full spectrum of spiritualists at the time, not just in the forms of Spiritualism they became known for, but also in their approaches — one trended toward altruism and the other toward opportunity, though I doubt either would claim those labels for themselves.

The other reason Fannie and William were easy choices to write about was the availability of material around both of them.

Fannie’s work with Banner of Light meant she was widely known, at least in the Spiritualism community, and often appeared in the news. There was also an entire book written about her life and mediumship, “Biography of Mrs. J. H. Conant, the World’s Medium of the Nineteenth Century,” which included incredible details and moments which I recognized would be a huge add to the story.

For his part, William was also a well-known player in the Spiritualist movement and the press, even if his publicity was not always flattering. And his trial was widely covered and enthusiastically followed — updates from inside the courthouse were published in newspapers across the country, the gallery seats were filled day in and day out, and the addition of P. T. Barnum as a witness only raised William’s visibility and commercial appeal. The fact that the case was dismissed didn’t hurt William’s reputation either.

Another fun thing about Fannie and Williams was that they had a common connection in the person of Mary Lincoln.

The former first lady had sat for a spirit photography session with William and also reportedly met privately with Fannie several times, both before and after her husband’s 1865 assassination. And, if that weren’t enough, Fannie had been visited on multiple occasions by the spirit of Willie Lincoln, Mary’s son who’d died when he was 11, and she, too, had had a spirit photo taken by William.

With all those connections, how could I make any other choice!

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Pro Tip for finding sources

One of my favorite ways of locating a wide range of sources is to check out bibliographies, footnotes, end notes and references in everything I read. And I mean everything - Wikipedia, old books I come across at Google Books, the Internet Archives, Project Gutenberg or HathiTrust, magazine and journal articles, newsletters, websites even just a passing mention inside text. You name it, if someone else references a source — no matter how old or outdated it might be — I check it out.

And then I check out the sources they referenced.

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Two stories that didn’t get told

In every shared lost & found story there are engaging bits and bobs that don’t get told, and this story is no exception.