Summoned to the Séance by Emily Vincent

Book Review

Sarah Deeming

Séances. A way of speaking with the dead through a medium and their spirit guide or an elaborate hoax preying on the grief of mourners? Whatever your point of view, séances and theatrics that go with them provide fertile ground for horror stories, and this collection brings together a wide selection of tales exploring séances and speaking with the dead. Some are humorous, while others are deadly (pun intended) serious, others are short and punchy, and others are longer, drawing out the tension as the story builds.

The introduction goes through the rise in popularity of séances and spiritualism after the First World War, when Britain was reeling with the shock of losing all their men, although they had existed before. The first story is from 1858, while the last was published in 1940, so we have quite a narrow timeframe from which the stories were selected. I was keen to read this collection as I had just read a non-fiction book on the history of witchcraft, which explored séances and how the witchcraft laws had changed so people hosting these sessions would be charged with fraud rather than witchcraft. I wanted to see if this view that séances were a hoax was prevalent in contemporary literature, and I was surprised at how prevalent it was.

The anthology is grouped by theme: fraudulent mediums, threatening spiritual experiences with grim predictions for the future, comforting experiences, and then we finish with real peril. There are also stories by some exceptionally famous authors, such as Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; it was brilliant to read something from these well-known writers beyond what they were famous for. We started strong with Well-Authenticated Rappings by Charles Dickens, which definitely pokes fun at mediums and their interpretations of their feelings. Dickens continues a theme he started in A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge compares Marley’s ghost to his undigested dinner, with the unnamed narrator interpreting hangovers and stomach aches after rich food as messages from a spirit. It is light-hearted and playful and sets us up for the rest of the collection.

My favourite has to be The Séance at Radley Manor: A Warning by Katherine Drake. It is the longest story in the collection and is split into chapters, building from three young people embarking on a cheerful trip to their aunt’s manor for Christmas to a full-on possession. It covers a different element from the other stories in the anthology by having a parson as a central character, warning the other party members that séances can invite the devil in. I don’t want to go into too much detail, so I won’t spoil the story for you, but it is an excellent warning regarding treating séances as entertainment.

Another story that stood out for me is Emma Frances Dawson’s “Are the Dead Dead?”. Here, the author explores a romantic relationship between the living and the dead, and what elevates it from the others is how the author uses music to communicate. It feels like a circular story where past actions from those who are now ghosts affect the future of the living. I appreciated how well-crafted it was. I have read a few collections from the British Library; they have always been amazing, and Summoned to the Séance is no different. It gave me a balanced feel for how people felt about séances during the 19^th century and after World War 1 and 2, when spiritualism was peaking. It brought me stories from new authors as well as established authors doing something a little different. There was even a poem about Mr Sludge, a medium who was also a fraud, and this poem was referenced later in Love and Mr Lewisham by H. G. Wells, showing how popular Mr Sludge “The Medium” by Robert Browning was. I devoured this collection and have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who loves short stories, horror, and séances.