How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm

Spiritualism is the belief that an unseen world of departed souls exists alongside our own and that, under the right circumstances, can be detected and even communicated with. Its no coincidence that spiritualism’s peak spanned from the 1840s to the 1920s, alongside the rise of a flurry of new communications technologies – including the telephone, telegraph, radio and photography – that connected people across previously unthinkable gaps in time and space.

In this video from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the curators Ruth Hibbard and Lydia Caston use objects from the museum’s collection to explore how, in the UK, spiritualism took root not only in the minds of the bereaved and superstitious, but also in many who considered themselves serious-minded empiricists. With cameos from such famed British names as Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and even Queen Victoria herself, the short makes for an intriguing dive into the nexus of religion, technology and entertainment in the Victorian era.