The Spirits Meet the Sceptics

Abstract This article looks at a significant but little-studied episode in the Victorian occult revival: the inquiry of the London Dialectical Society ( LDS ) into Spiritualism. This inquiry was an attempt to resolve something that has still not been resolved and is perhaps irresolvable: whether phenomena seemingly caused by spirits have an objective reality. At best, it was naïve to think that this task could be accomplished. At worst, it was arrogant to think that it could be accomplished by a group of a self-selected individuals, most of whom had no special capabilities for it. This article looks at what the inquiry reveals about the assumptions of the people involved, and how it was received by wider public opinion. The episode perhaps tells us more about Victorian intellectual culture and the confidence of contemporary middle- to upper-class social networks than it does about the existence of spirits of the dead.