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The Conversation
The Conversation
Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature, Aberystwyth University

After the first world war, séances boomed – and dead soldiers ‘wrote’ home

the first world war France Ypres
A typical séance in the 1920s. The Graphic, CC BY-SA

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.

A few weeks later, however, Raymond got in touch with his family. “TELL FATHER I HAVE MET SOME FRIENDS OF HIS”, came the message hastily scrawled in all caps by the spiritualist medium Mrs Osborne Leonard.

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