TABLE TALKING AND TABLE TURNING: Not Heaven, Neither is it Hell
A Brief Guide to Table Turning:
Materials:
- One small to medium sized wooden table
- Two or more friends (four-five people is optimum)
- One quiet room with dimmed lights
- One sense of adventure / open mind
Method:
- Sit around the table
- Place hands on the table fingers spread
- Ensure the room is quiet
- Concentrate your mind on the answers you seek from the ‘other world’
- Ask the spirits a question
- Wait
- The spirits should move or tilt the table
- The tilting and moving should address the questions asked.
(Félix Roubaud, Practical Instructions in Table-Moving)
Almost every explanation of spiritualism starts with the tale of the Fox sisters from Hydesville, New York. One March evening in 1848, two girls named Kate and Maggie Fox decided to try to figure out where the unexplained thumpings and knocks in their house were coming from.
They were caught by surprise when 11-year-old Kate asked if anyone was there, and to repeat the snaps of her fingers if they heard her. The being responded by mimicking her with raps on the furniture. They soon found the spirit, nicknamed “Mr. Splitfoot”, could respond to their questions with the number of raps they indicated. They even developed an alphabet code so the spirit could tap out full sentences.
They invited their neighbors to participate in the experience, who then told everyone in town, who told the newspapers, who told the cities, and soon everyone in New England, and then the country and the world, was obsessed with the Fox sister’s miraculous discovery.
The reason spiritualism is referred too as a phenomenon is how accessible it was. All you needed was someone to claim they could communicate with spirits like the Fox sisters, and a piece of furniture, most commonly a table. Even those in lowest class had a table, or at least knew someone who did. Table turning parties became the fad for both the rich and poor. Of course, they were not without criticism, and many non-believers pointed out the ridiculousness of spirits choosing to talk to someone through an object as domestic and mundane as a table. Despite its ridiculousness, tables became the first instrument people used to document and communicate with ghosts.
