the.com/spiritualist
Believes the dead have great Wi-Fi and terrible timing.
means A person who believes the dead can communicate with the living, often through mediums, séances, or other means of contact beyond the ordinary senses.
from From Latin 'spiritus' meaning breath or soul, the word gained its specific séance-table sense in the 19th century, when the Spiritualist movement swept through America and Britain — rapping tables, planchettes, and mediums claiming to channel the departed. The suffix '-ist' marks a believer or practitioner, same as it does for 'scientist' or 'idealist,' which gives the word its oddly clinical air for something built entirely on faith in the unseen.
- peak era
- 1850s to 1920s, grief-fueled and candlelit
- famous debunker
- Houdini exposed mediums as fellow magicians
- core belief
- consciousness outlives the body, apparently loves tapping tables
- ironic twist
- many founders later confessed the raps were faked