A look at Thomas Edison’s Spirit Telegraph, an apparatus to contact the spirit world that he claimed to be working on, but which never surfaced.
In 1920, famed inventor Thomas Edison gave a series of interviews bragging about a device he was testing, a spirit telegraph, which spiritualists could use to give their seances a more scientific bent. Though he despised Ouija boards, table tipping, and other trappings of spiritualism, Edison believed that his new invention could determine whether the human personality persisted after death, once and for all. The only problem? The invention never materialized.
Highlights include:
• Creepy uses for the phonograph
• The “little people” or “life units” that make up our bodies
• Electrocuting an elephant in Coney Island
• The chapter of Edison’s diary that his family had removed
• Edison’s ghost
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Sources consulted RE: Thomas Edison’s Spirit Telegraph
Websites RE: Thomas Edison’s Spirit Telegraph
- THOMAS EDISON & THE REALMS BEYOND (SHORT DOCUMENTARY]: https://vimeo.com/126302369
- The lost chapter of Edison’s book: http://itcvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Edison-Lost-Diary-Chapter.pdf
Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious … By James A. Herrick
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dial-a-ghost-on-thomas-edisons-least-successful-invention-the-spirit-phone
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-greatest-turn-of-the-century-inventors-really-wanted-to-talk-to-ghosts/221925/
https://hauntedpalaceblog.wordpress.com/tag/edisons-diary/
https://hauntedpalaceblog.wordpress.com/tag/edisons-diary/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edisonhttps://archive.is/7cmBb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison%27s_Black_Maria
https://science.howstuffworks.com/10-inventions-thomas-edison10.htm
https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/27212/Edison-invention-calls-dead
https://lisaandherworld-lisah.blogspot.com/2019/02/edisons-forgotten-invention-phone-that.html
https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/mina-miller-edison.htm
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/how-thomas-edison-used-a-fake-electric-chair-execution-1829652181
- http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edison-the-lost-chapter/
Listen to the Ouija board series:
- Ouija Boards Part 1 – Planchette and Automatic Writing
- Helen Peters and Ouida / Invention (Ouija Boards Part 2)
- William Fuld (Ouija Boards Part 3)
- 19th Century Ouija Board Stories / Early Ouijamania (Ouija Boards Part 4)
- Victorian Egyptomania (Ouija Boards Part 5)
- Ouija after World War I (Ouija Boards Part 6)
- 1920s Ouijamania (Ouija Boards Part 7)
- More 1920s Ouija Board Stories (Ouija Boards Part 8)
- Kill Daddy: The Turley Ouija Board Murder (Ouija Boards Part 9)
Don’t miss our past episodes:
- The Renwick Ruin:
- Playing the Ghost in 19th Century Australia
- Investigating the Hawthorne Hotel:
- Quinta da Regaleira Symbolism: The Occult Mysteries of a Portugese Palace and Garden