Book Review: When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Women Their Voice

In Europe, 1848 was the year of revolutions, where people in more than 50 countries were engaged in socioeconomic conflicts. In the United States, the revolt may have started slowly, with a mysterious knocking sound in rural western New York, and lasted longer. Out of weird rapping noises—that supposedly allowed the dead to speak—came the Spiritualist movement. And it was mostly controlled by women.

Ilise S. Carter, author of When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Women Their Voice, takes a historic look into the movement and what it begat.

Spiritualism’s central idea is that the human spirit lived on after the mortal remains died and that spirits could communicate with us through mediums. In an era of high mortality rates and the horror of the Civil War, the movement flourished. With its popularity on the stage circuit in the late 19^th century, however, fraudulent actors tarnished the movement’s reputation. That led to the defining doctrine, the Principles of Spiritualism. About 100 Spiritualist churches and camps still exist in the United States.

Carter’s book covers spiritualism’s connections to reform, including anti-slavery, women’s rights, and suffrage. She includes stories of known spiritualists (Maggie & Kate Fox, patent medicine maker Lydia Pinkham, Mae West), believers (First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), and critics (Harry Houdini), as well as trivia about Disney’s Haunted Mansion and the Ouija board.

Thanks to Sourcebooks for the ARC.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American WomenTheir Voice
by Ilise S. Carter
Sourcebooks 2025

Book review: The First Witches: Women of Power in the Classical World

With a background in ancient history and literature, author Alexis Hannah Prescott explores how Greek and Roman gods and folklore transcend time and place. 

The western world so admired the classical arts, culture, and history that centuries later schoolboys applying to the newly founded Harvard College in the 1630s had to be well versed in Latin grammar. And once enrolled, they studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 

Curiously, students were reading classical texts imbued with the power of witches and witchcraft, which is incompatible to the Bible’s warnings. The Bible mentions forbidden practices such as divination, consulting with mediums or familiar spirits, interpreting omens, casting spells, and necromancy, though without much detail. The problem with witchcraft is in trying to manipulate spiritual forces instead of asking God for help. And the punishment for contacting demonic spirits is not being able to inherit the kingdom of God. 

In case you’re not a classical scholar, Prescott provides synopses of major works—like Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Lucan’s Erichtho—to explain the archetypes of Greco-Roman witches. As they transform from the strong, attractive but vindictive Greek witch to the bitter, haggard Roman one, Prescott mentions how dramatic social and political changes affected witches (and women’s) roles in society and in literature. 

The author also makes the point that witch hunts in Britain and the 13 Colonies were not based on the King James Bible (1611). Being able to read and have access to the Bible was mostly limited to the upper classes and to clerics. King James himself was extraordinarily concerned about witchcraft—believing witches caused the tumultuous seas that delayed his bride Anne of Denmark’s arrival in England—so much so that he wrote Daemonologie (1597). 

At the Salem witch trials in 1692, judges and some of the jury attended Harvard. They studied Greco-Roman literature featuring attractive, alluring Greek witches with deadly streaks of hostility, and Roman hag witches who torture, maim, and sabotage men. Classical witchcraft, mixed with regional folktales and backed by the Bible, was real in the dark woods and villages of Massachusetts Bay. A cursing beggar woman, a healthy cow that suddenly drops dead, sleep paralysis while dreaming of your neighbor, or shapeshifters in the shadows—what else could it be except witchcraft?

Prescott covers the witch’s metamorphosis from classical antiquity to the modern day, using literary characters we may be more familiar with, like Snow White’s wicked stepmother, Dr. Frankenstein, and Shakespeare’s weird sisters in Macbeth. Since the 1960s, she notes, Wicca and other trends have changed the classical witch dynamic. 

Or maybe it’s the women taking back their power.

Thanks to Pen & Sword History for the ARC.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The First Witches: Women of Power in the Classical World

By Alexis Hannah Prescott

Pen & Sword History, 2025

Book review: Vampires: A Handbook of History & Lore of the Undead

It’s ironic that 15th-century Vlad the Impaler became mixed up with the folklore of a bloodsucking vampire. Vlad III of Wallachia, son of Vlad II Dracul, was known for his military exploits. And while he did own a castle in Transylvania (present-day Romania), Prince Vlad wasn’t the intimate type who would suck the lifeblood of his victims. Instead, he preferred impaling his enemies on wooden stakes, watching them writhe in agony until death overtook them.

Bram Stoker may have used Vlad’s home, his Dracula title, and his age—centuries old—in the 1897 gothic horror novel, but not the man’s character. In Stoker's book, Count Dracula displayed aristocratic demeanor and charm, despite living in a crumbling castle.

In Vampires: A Handbook of History & Lore of the Undead by Agnes Hollyhock, we learn the Count was a revenant, a reanimated corpse who haunted the living. While we may be accustomed to the stylings of Dracula through such characters as Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows, Lestat de Lioncourt from The Vampire Chronicles, or Edward Cullen from Twilight, different kinds of vampires show up in mythology, folklore, fiction, and even the Bible. 

Hollyhock covers vampires around the world and across the ages, their strengths and weaknesses, connections to certain diseases, and, most fascinating to me, why the idea of vampirism grew during the Medieval ages. 

Luckily, the author provides techniques for banishing the undead—you know, just in case. After all, there are rumors about Vlad the Impaler's demise, including his beheading, but no one knows for certain where his body is buried.

rating: ★★★★

Vampires: A Handbook of History & Lore of the Undead

by Agnes Hollyhock
Wellfleet Press

Book review: Cult Following: The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations―and Take Over Our Lives

J.W. Ocker’s compass leads him to oddities the world over, so writing about cults is definitely within his milieu. This time, it’s not a travelogue and thankfully not an immersive experience, since it’s difficult to extract people from cults. Then we’d miss out on Ocker’s way with words, like heading a chapter “A Fetish for Feet and Fraud,” or his important clues to avoid joining such a sect.

What’s scary is cult followers are seeking acceptance and purpose in their lives, and they’re not so different from you and me. Ocker neatly uses what they seek as section heads: truth, protection, purpose, salvation, and/or betterment. He also explains the attributes of the leaders, who tend to be charismatic but have deep flaws, and why people follow them. What struck me most was how many cults believe in aliens and being saved from apocalypses.

You’ve heard of the Branch Davidians, the Manson Family, and Heaven’s Gate in the media. It’s like we’re compelled to tune in to these horror stories. Ocker explains how 30 cults formed, their beliefs, and their outcomes. He also mentions well-known people who were adherents and survived as well as those doing prison time. Some of these cults are still active and new ones are always assembling.

A fascinating read. 

rating: ★★★★

Cult Following: The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations―and Take Over Our Lives
by J.W. Ocker
Quirk Books 

Book review: Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain

Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain by Ed Simon is a cultural extravaganza, covering theatrical works, music, art, and literature with a dash of history, science, and technology. It would make an interesting multimedia presentation if the book were packaged with Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill Sonata” and Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues,” scenes from Marlowe and Goethe plays, and art by Goya and Delacroix. After all, not all these works are familiar to the average reader.

Some early stories from the Bible and Apocrypha don’t fulfill the devil’s contract. For instance, Jesus wandered 40 days in the wilderness and rejected the devil’s tests. Simon Magus—a sorcerer who bewitched the people of Samaria—listened to Philip the Evangelist preach, believed, and was baptized. But when Simon saw the apostles laying on of hands, he wanted to buy that power, but was denied. Author Ed Simon uses these stories to set up the next stage.

During the Inquisitions and subsequent witch trials, interrogators steeped in demonology coerced victims under torture to claim relationships with the devil. That contract needed a name. So, in the late 16th century, German alchemist and sorcerer Johann Faust went from folk legend to the archetype of one who sold his soul to the devil. His supposed deed influenced writers, artists, musicians, and more. In fact, Simon even gets into a groove where his phraseology changes, skipping over verbs, waxing lyrical.

And then he comes crashing down. By chapter 10, Simon inserts his 21st century ideals onto 17th century life in the New World when writing about the 1692 Salem witch trials. He also, like many high school English teachers, gets caught up in Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible, which rewrites actual history into a story of an affair that never happened.

Simon then trounces the Puritans and their Calvinist religion hard, with their theft of native lands, slavery, misogyny, and belief in predestination. Here, he believes that the Faustian bargain is written in the town charters, not between, say, the devil and an accused witch.

Curiously, though, by the third generation—around the time of the witch trials—many Massachusetts Bay people were moving away from Calvinism, forcing religious leaders to compromise with the Halfway Covenant and other religious principles. Plus, the dying off of the older generations—like Judge William Stoughton—also made way for more liberal ideas and beliefs, leading to another revolt of “no taxation without representation.”

But Simon doesn’t acknowledge that progress and holds Salem—not Boston, New York City, or Los Angeles—accountable for turning the United States into a Faustian Republic. Then he closes his diatribe with another religious metaphor, the Apocalypse.

Devil’s Contract begins with a journey through the Arts, then takes a wild hairpin turn. Halfway through, it’s as if Simon had a dark epiphany that changed the direction of his writing. It’s unsettling. And maybe that’s the point.

rating: ★★★

Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain
by Ed Simon
Melville House Publishing

Book review: Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

In Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials, Marion Gibson argues that witch trials from the late Medieval period to today were motivated not by the Bible but by demonology.

While the Bible does say “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (KJV, Exodus 22:18), it doesn't offer much detail. Demonologies, however, mostly focused on women—the weaker sex—succumbing to the forked-tongue lies of Satan’s minions. Misogyny was rampant, especially in male-dominated arenas like religion and government. Over the last 700 years, the most common trait of a witch was being female (though not all the accused were).

As Gibson discusses, German churchman and demonologist Heinrich Kramer (c. 1430-1505) failed in his first attempt to destroy the “witches” of Innsbruck, Austria. But afterward, he wrote the exceptionally popular Malleus Maleficarum in 1487, also known as The Hammer of Witches. By 1600, about 45 demonology titles were published in Western Europe, including one by King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England). These books were widely circulated among churchmen, rulers, the upper classes, and scholars—including Judge William Stoughton and ministers Cotton Mather and Samuel Parris, all of whom influenced the Salem witch trials in 1692.

For the Salem story, Gibson focuses on “Tatabe,” Parris’ Indian servant who had a prominent but short-lived role early in the Salem witch trials. Under duress, Tituba (falsely) confessed to practicing witchcraft but was not executed, while the ones who claimed their innocence at trial were. Instead of the power of Tituba’s testimony and its many parallels to British witchcraft beliefs, Gibson concentrates on the hypothetical Arawak birth story from Elaine Breslaw’s Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem. Highlighting those parallels would have helped to debunk the voodoo myths surrounding Tituba, often told by misguided writers and tour guides who haven’t delved into the original records.

Thirteen Trials includes cases from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, covering a wide variety of situations, cultures, and time periods. It’s a fascinating read, with each history connected to the underlying premise of misogyny and violence against women.

Today, in Salem and elsewhere, “people who have redefined witchcraft and embraced the identity of ‘witch’” embody the medieval demonologists’ worst nightmares (ch. 13).

rating: ★★★★

Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials
by Marion Gibson
Scribner Book Company

Book review: The Evolution of Religions: A History of Related Traditions

Comparative religion books are often written by religious scholars or historians. But this one has a twist: It’s written by a scientist—an evolutionary biologist and systematist to be exact. 

There’s beauty in having a scientist write such a book. Lance Grande remains neutral, or agnostic if you will, to the different religions. His purpose is to analyze how organized religions came into being, how they change and evolve over time, and how they create new groups and subgroups—or become extinct.

Organized religions developed from early supernaturalism into Asian cyclicism, Old World polytheism, linear monotheism, traditional and reformation Christianity, gnosticism and Biblical demiurgism, and Islam. Grande focuses on each group’s origin and development, doctrines, rituals/practices, and supernatural beings/deities from prehistoric times to today. 

From that evolutionary perspective, Grande discovers the history of related traditions (as in the title). He shows how, for example, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are historically and ideologically intertwined, but also how they diversified—by using historical and scriptural records. The amazingly detailed charts help us visualize the relationships between religions and the subgroups that grew out of them, while the sidebars, images, and glossary provide additional context.

It’s an imperfect science due to changing archaeological interpretations and new discoveries, variables in oral traditions and written transcriptions, and the physical destruction or recovery of scriptures. That's why Grande created the framework and then invited others to fill in the missing pieces and build upon his work.

The Evolution of Religions is a big book, but it’s written methodically so you’ll understand the broad concepts behind many organized religions around the world.

rating: ★★★★★

The Evolution of Religions: A History of Related Traditions
by Lance Grande
Columbia University Press

Book review: World Religions in Seven Sentences

Why do people seek to learn about other religions? Knowing what others believe and how it affects their worldview is helpful as friends, colleagues, neighbors, travelers, and seekers. For instance, we may wonder: Why do Muslims fast for a month? What does karma mean to Hindus and Buddhists? Why do Jews, Muslims, and Christians fight over Israel and the West Bank? Do Atheists believe God is dead?

Douglas Groothuis, a professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary since 1993, encapsulates seven world religions into seven short phrases, then explains what they mean in his book, World Religions in Seven Sentences. These lines are not always self-explanatory (compared to, say, Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am”). For example, the phrases range from obscure (Hinduism’s “You are that”) to easily memorized (Islam’s “There is one God, and Muhammad is his prophet”).

Groothuis excels at providing lists: the Four Covenants of the Jews; Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths; the Six Tenets of Islam. He also explains how both Hindus and Buddhists believe in karma, though Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha rejected major parts of Hinduism in order to seek enlightenment.

As he says in the introduction, Groothuis provides his “evaluations of each faith” through his conviction that “truth is [only] found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.” That’s seemingly why the book begins with Atheism (not that “God is dead” but “there is no God and has never been”). As more Americans become unaffiliated to a particular religion, the author warns that “a world without God is ripe … [for] the most ruthless political oppression.”

He saves Islam for last. As the second-most popular religion in the world, Islam has similarities to the two other Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity. It recognizes the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and its Qur’an talks of Jesus as a prophet of Allah. However, Muslim teachings deny Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and place in the Trinity (the Godhead). Groothuis claims Jesus and Mohammad are two of the most influential people in the world. However, he shows Jesus as a humble healer, while Mohammad is a destroyer and leader; “Allah is merciful” but the Christian “God is love.”

World Religions in Seven Sentences provides a brief overview of different religions, but its Christian viewpoint introduces too much bias for non-Christian readers.

rating: ★★★

World Religions in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic
by Douglas Groothuis
IVP Academic