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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E-mail us at buriedsecretspodcast@gmail.com. 

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

• Article in American Medicine

• Scientific American article

• 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:
  • The Smallpox Hospital, aka Renwick Ruin, on Roosevelt Island, NYC – Part 1
  • The Renwick Ruin and Charity Hospital, Roosevelt Island, NYC – Part 2
• Playing the Ghost in 19th Century Australia 
• Investigating the Hawthorne Hotel: 
  • Investigating the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Part 1
  • Investigating the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Part 2
  • Investigating the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Part 3, and the Salem Marine Society
• Quinta da Regaleira Symbolism: The Occult Mysteries of a Portugese Palace and Garden