{"id":73075,"date":"2025-10-30T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/10\/30\/after-world-war-i-seances-boomed-and-dead-soldiers-wrote-home\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:45:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:45:44","slug":"after-world-war-i-seances-boomed-and-dead-soldiers-wrote-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/opinion\/commentary\/2025\/10\/30\/after-world-war-i-seances-boomed-and-dead-soldiers-wrote-home\/","title":{"rendered":"After World War I, s\u00e9ances boomed \u2013 and dead soldiers \u2018wrote\u2019 home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/after-the-first-world-war-seances-boomed-and-dead-soldiers-wrote-home-266508\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/after-the-first-world-war-seances-boomed-and-dead-soldiers-wrote-home-266508\"><i>here<\/i><\/a><i>. <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/us\"><i>The Conversation<\/i><\/a><i> is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In March 1915, a young British man named Raymond Lodge was deployed to Ypres, France, to fight on the front lines of the first world war. By September, he was dead, aged just 26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few weeks later, however, Raymond got in touch with his family. \u201cTELL FATHER I HAVE MET SOME FRIENDS OF HIS\u201d, came the message hastily scrawled in all caps by the <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/topics\/spirituality-12333\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/topics\/spirituality-12333\">spiritualist<\/a> medium Mrs. Osborne Leonard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Raymond\u2019s father was Sir Oliver Lodge, a prominent physicist whose work helped to develop radio communications. Sir Oliver was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, an organisation which, among other things, investigated ghosts. The \u201cfriends\u201d Raymond had apparently met beyond the grave included F.W.H. Myers, a founding member of the society, who had died in 1901.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sir Oliver, previously fairly sceptical, was soon drawn into lengthy s\u00e9ances with Mrs. Leonard, poring over messages allegedly from Raymond about death and the afterlife. He compiled them into a book entitled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/15793\/9781330337820\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/15793\/9781330337820\">Raymond, or Life and Death<\/a>,\u201d which was published in 1916. It proved so popular that it ran to many editions, <a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/p\/books\/a-supernatural-war-magic-divination-and-faith-during-the-first-world-war-owen-davies\/3725837?ean=9780198862659&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/p\/books\/a-supernatural-war-magic-divination-and-faith-during-the-first-world-war-owen-davies\/3725837?ean=9780198862659&amp;next=t&amp;next=t\">with soldiers on the front being sent copies by their loved ones<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spiritualism began in the late 1840s as a pseudo-Christian practice that believed communication with the dead was entirely possible. While it dwindled in popularity at the turn of the century, it was reinvigorated to new levels in the aftermath of the first world war. The popularity of Lodge\u2019s book, moreover, led to dozens of copycat publications, where other soldiers \u201cwrote\u201d of their experiences of the utopian spiritualist afterlife to their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/claudesbook00bambgoog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/claudesbook00bambgoog\">Claude\u2019s Book<\/a>\u201d (1919) is one such example, \u201ctranscribed\u201d from s\u00e9ances with young Claude by his mother, L. Kelway-Bamber. Kelway-Bamber, having been so heartened by Sir Oliver\u2019s sittings, had hired Mrs. Leonard herself to get in touch with her son. Spiritualist mediums were in high demand once more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Beyond the cynicism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s easy to dismiss these s\u00e9ances, even to scoff at them as nothing more than charlatans exploiting public grief, especially from the point of view of modern scepticism. When I was researching my new book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/15793\/9781399418706\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/15793\/9781399418706\">Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting and Why We Keep Looking<\/a>,\u201d this was my initial reaction to reading about these bizarre encounters with the spirits of the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But as a sociological phenomenon, borne of mass grief, I think it\u2019s more complicated than that. We may laugh at fraudulent mediums quivering melodramatically as they channel the so-called spirits of the dead, but to discuss spiritualism\u2019s cultural significance requires a more nuanced and sensitive approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the end of the first world war, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/help-with-your-research\/research-guides\/deaths-first-and-second-world-wars\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/help-with-your-research\/research-guides\/deaths-first-and-second-world-wars\/\">nearly 9 million soldiers had been killed<\/a>. General mortality rates were already high <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/peoplepopulationandcommunity\/birthsdeathsandmarriages\/lifeexpectancies\/articles\/mortalityinenglandandwales\/pastandprojectedtrendsinaveragelifespan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/peoplepopulationandcommunity\/birthsdeathsandmarriages\/lifeexpectancies\/articles\/mortalityinenglandandwales\/pastandprojectedtrendsinaveragelifespan\">prior to the war<\/a>, and people were no strangers to sudden, unexpected bereavement. But never before had death affected so many people at once, and taken so many young men in the prime of their life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we look at spiritualism in the aftermath of the first world war, not to identify fraud and shun its believers as being gullible, we can build up an incredibly detailed picture of why so many clung to s\u00e9ance tables in the hope of contacting their loved ones again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Everyone\u2019s loss of their son, brother or husband was uniquely painful, and yet these deaths lost their significance when half the families on the street had also lost their young men. Yet, suddenly, everyone knew Raymond Lodge\u2019s name. He stood out among the legions of dead Tommies, because of the s\u00e9ances Sir Oliver held with Mrs. Leonard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This, I think, is why so many grieving families took up spiritualism and wrote their own books \u2014 not to piggyback on Raymond\u2019s popularity, but to make their sons, brothers and husbands seem special, too. Moreover, many didn\u2019t know exactly what had happened to soldiers; being able to \u201cspeak\u201d to them from beyond the grave made it seem like they were happy and at peace, enjoying themselves in the afterlife, and not in pieces in a muddy ditch thousands of miles from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mary Lodge, Raymond\u2019s mother, sums up the problem with a brief sentence her husband includes in the book: \u201cWe can face Christmas now.\u201d We can accuse Mrs. Leonard of exploiting grief, but we can\u2019t deny that it eased the suffering of many, regardless of the ethical and moral dilemmas posed by spiritualism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The history of ghost-hunting and s\u00e9ances is rife with fraud, and scepticism is often required to read around anecdotes to uncover what was really happening, but it\u2019s also a vital resource to help us understand grief and fear of death at certain points in human history. By examining the motivation behind ghost-hunting from a more sympathetic perspective, we can learn a great deal about what it means to be alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Alice Vernon is a lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature at Aberystwyth University.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/266508\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced\" alt=\"The Conversation\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" style=\"border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In March 1915, Raymond Lodge was deployed to France. By September, he was dead. A few weeks later, however, he got in touch with his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":109644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":77,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[77,101,91,12,25,14,19,69],"tags":[],"coauthors":[7246],"class_list":["post-73075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-daily-news-roundup","category-military-history","category-news","category-newsletters","category-opinion","category-veterans","category-your-marine-corps"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"RRRTZEEOWFGWHP2HOTVYFCDGUU","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/commentary\/2025\/10\/30\/after-world-war-i-seances-boomed-and-dead-soldiers-wrote-home\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>After World War I, s\u00e9ances boomed \u2013 and dead soldiers \u2018wrote\u2019 home - Marine Corps Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In March 1915, Raymond Lodge was deployed to France. 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