It was 8pm in New York, October 30, 2022, although I was not there, not physically anyway. In the UK and Ireland, it was midnight – already Halloween. My partner was in bed, though not asleep. We’d had a gentle dispute over the evening’s activities, she being adamant the dead were not to be messed with. I was in the sitting room of our Edinburgh tenement flat, door shut, hunched over my computer, waiting for the Zoom call to begin. I had agreed to accompany my friend, Francesca, to an online séance, hosted by the Spiritualist Church of New York City.
She was writing a book about the American poet, Hart Crane, who was lost at sea in 1932. Following his death (possibly a suicide; possibly misadventure) his mother, Grace, attempted to contact him with the help of a medium from this same institution. The idea, for Francesca, was to experience what Grace had experienced, and, perhaps, to try and contact them both. I was there out of curiosity, and for moral support.
I promised myself I wouldn’t laugh. To do so would have been disrespectful. The other members of the congregation – the Message Circle – were there sincerely. Many were bereaved, hoping to contact loved ones who’d moved across to the ‘other side’. I had no business belittling this experience. But the sombre affect I adopted was immediately tested. When the call started, we met the two mediums (media?), Janet, an older woman, and Eugene, a younger man. During roll call, Eugene’s phone went off. His ringtone was The X-Files theme tune.
At the outset, we introduced ourselves. There were participants from across America – the South, the Midwest, the Tri-State area. Francesca and I were the only ones from further afield – she from outside Dublin, me from Scotland. We began with a meditation. We were to picture a ball of light above our head, to feel it travel down through our skull, neck, shoulders, torso, arms and legs. We were enjoined to imagine ourselves in a circle, as if we were all together in the church in Manhattan. I visualised Eugene – an American I’d just met – on my right and Francesca – an old friend – on my left. She would later tell me her hands felt warm at this point – one of several eerie episodes to emerge from the experience.
We were to think of the person with whom we were hoping to make contact. I had come prepared for this, and thought of my godfather, who’d died earlier that year. He was a tall, well-connected Old Etonian who’d met my parents when they were all training to be social workers in east London; he’d later become a vicar with a collection of beautiful parish churches in Cornwall. As instructed, I held in my mind clear memories of him holding forth over the dinner table, pouring me a glass of the most luxurious wine I’ve ever tasted (a 1970 Chateau Mouton Rothschild with a label designed by Chagall) or else striding across Bodmin Moor in a green anorak. His death wasn’t sudden, but it was untimely, and I realised as I held him in my mind that I did want to contact him; I was hoping the séance would be fruitful. I was a sceptic praying for a spiritual experience; for a burning bush.
It might be a good point to outline my own religious background. The word ‘devout’ conjures images of fire and brimstone, a kind of fundamentalism that walks hand in hand with regressive politics. But my childhood was devout, or perhaps ‘very religious’, without being either of these things. It was a household that was at once deeply observant and socially liberal. In his 20s, my dad had spent two years training to be a Catholic priest in a seminary in Paris, and this was the denomination I was baptised into, although he moved us towards the Church of England when the Vatican reiterated its position that it would never ordain women. As a teenager, I was an altar server at York Minster, carrying a candle as the clergy processed. Later, at university, I lost my faith. I would have described myself as an atheist – although now ‘agnostic’ is the adjective that suits me better. I have been marked by religion, moulded by it for the better, but I no longer have any real sense of what I believe.
Janet explained the rules of the Circle. It was sacred; it was safe. We had to keep these requisites in our minds so as only to invite the worthy spirits; to keep out those with malicious intent. She instructed us to be bold. If a spirit came to us through one of the mediums, they would ask if we wished to receive the message and – if we did – we had to offer a firm ‘Yes!’.
The séance began. The first contact came quickly, through a swaying Eugene, to a young man in South Carolina. It was from an old woman, whom he suggested might be his godmother, encouraging him to change careers. Then it was Francesca’s turn. She would later tell me that she had expected the call, and that she was already moving to unmute her microphone when Eugene announced that he had a message for her. It was from a handsome young man who knew her from afar. Distant but somehow close. Eugene asked if that sounded familiar and she replied that she wasn’t sure. I could tell she was being circumspect, deliberately holding back to guard against confirmation bias. But I immediately thought of Hart Crane. Close in the sense that she knew his poetry and biography inside out; distant in the sense that he’d died long ago and far away.
