The Whole Haunted World #18

The Craziest Necromancer EVER

Spring Greetings!

April’s been a weird and tough month, totally aside from what’s going on in the world at large (let’s just say that for the first time I’m glad I’ve never worked for a company that gave the employees 401Ks). I picked up a small illness, not enough to cause me to lose any work time but enough that I was voiceless for a few days; I’ve had multiple events on my days off, leaving me even more exhausted; one of my cats escaped and got herself stuck halfway up a telephone pole, leading to two days of extra stress before a friend offered the use of a 16-foot extension ladder and we got her back down and inside; and a barrage of other, smaller vexations.

There is some potentially good news writing-wise, though: I have a dream non-fiction book project going to an acquisitions meeting this week. For those of you who don’t speak publishing, that means an editor at a publishing company read and loved my book proposal, worked with me a bit to polish it up, and will present it to the rest of the company at their regular meeting this week. If the other editors and executives agree, we’ll soon be signing the deal and I’ll be able to announce what I’ll be working on for the next year. I don’t mind telling you that the last time I had a (different) book go to an acquisitions meeting, it didn’t make it alive…but I’m hopeful this time. It’s a subject dear to my heart, and one that I know will fascinate most of you, too!

I hope your spring thus far has been more peaceful than mine.

GEORGIANA HOUGHTON

Those of you who may have heard me on some interview or other, or read my book Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances, may know about my affection for the 19th-century Spiritualist medium Georgiana Houghton. Whenever I’m asked if I believe any of the famous mediums from that time weren’t total fakes, I always bring up Houghton, who produced absolutely glorious works of abstract art that she painted while in a trance state and supposedly communicating with great artists of the past.

Houghton is also intriguing because she worked for spirit photography Frederick Hudson and she even wrote (in 1882) a book about her experiences with spirit photography, so surely she had some idea of the trickery Hudson used…but she always seemed completely earnest in her Spiritualist beliefs.