Mrs. Hayden and D.D. Home

(I just added this photo because it was a  little creepy. It is supposedly an antique picture of a specter and I just copied it from a video on youtube. Here is the link if you want to see that video.)

In my last post, I spoke with the beginnings of Spiritualism and the supposed "fathers" of spiritualism in Europe. Today, I am shifting the focus to when spiritualism came strictly to England. I am going to, once again, use Arthur Conan Doyle's book entitled The History of Spiritualism for this post.

Mrs. Hayden (Maria Hayden - Doyle doesn't use her first name) was a spiritualist from the United States. She was rather famous and respected back in the US. Doyle says she even "graduated as a doctor of medicine and practice for fifteen years" (pg. 148). Her skills were often used for patients , asking the spirits for their guidance and help. Her arrival in England in 1952 could be considered  controversial, the press often doubting her skills. She went through London, performing séances and helping potential clients. Mrs. Hayden then left England in 1853, having left some kind of an impression behind (positive or negative). Doyle says that "Mrs. Hayden had thus planted the first seeds in London" (pg. 167).

 

 

The next person I want to talk about is Daniel Douglas Home or D.D. Home in Doyle's book. When I was looking online for some information on Home, I got a bunch of hits about him being the first psychic. Doyle doesn't use the word "psychic" to describe Home, but he truly seems to support that Home was a real spiritualist. Home was considered to have visions of things to come from a young age. He was also well known to have levitated at his clients' homes. Like Mrs. Hayden, Home was ruthlessly attacked by the press, but he always said his skills were truthful and he never tried to take advantage of others. From the various accounts that Doyle presents in his book, Home's clients seemed to believe in his skills.