- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
- Location
- central NC
(Public Domain)
Before the spirit trumpet, conversations with spirits were limited to nonverbal forms of communication like rapping on the floor. The spirit trumpet supposedly allowed the dead to speak directly with the living. The spiritualist medium Jonathan Koons popularized the spirit trumpet in the mid to late 19th century. It seems his son Nahum likely invented it.
According to Koons, the spirits could speak by possessing the vocal cords of the person speaking into the trumpet. Too soft-spoken to really project in a spirit room, the dead required all the sound-amplifying help they could get. The first spirit trumpets were homemade, either out of metal or cardboard, and resembled simple narrow cones. But as the trumpets gained popularity, they became fancier, leading to steel trumpets and some that even sported glow-in-the-dark rings at the end.
William Jackson Crawford, a 19th century psychic researcher, wrote about how Victorian séances always followed a prescribed itinerary. Everyone sat in a circle, prayed, and usually sang a hymn—all in absolute darkness. Then the summoned spirit would rap on the floor to announce its presence. The table would then levitate and, on occasion, spin around or turn sideways. The medium would then bring out the spirit trumpets. They would float in the air and come crashing down when the spirits departed.
Harry Houdini (1874 - 1926 ), the famous magician, is pictured below speaking into a spirit trumpet. He attempted to debunk mediums and their tools.
(Public Domain)