Hello everyone, and welcome back to then again the podcast of the Northeast Georgia History Center. I am Leslie Jones, collections and Archives manager as well as curator. And today I have with us Dr. Philip Gerty, associate professor of history at the University of North Georgia. I practically mentioned Dr. Erdie. Every podcast or video I am in and at the History Center. And we will get to why in a minute. Dr. Erdie, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I always love doing these podcasts. They're so much fun.

Yeah, so I think we have like a really interesting history. I think I've known you from the very first day I started at Ung. To the very last.

Exactly.

So we did a bunch of things. We did History Club together, which was really fun.

Yes.

I started the file theta chapter. And you were the advisor for that.

Yeah, and that was right. That was brand new to the campus at that time.

Yeah. And then I did maybe twelve plus research conferences with you.

Exactly. Which is so cool.

Yeah, I really loved it was so fun.

I mean, it's like you're the model student.

Oh, thanks.

You're welcome.

I tried. And then you also were the intern advisor and still are for the History Center and for the interns at Ung. I was intern three times with one with Dr. Nicholas that used to work at Ung and twice with the History Center.

Right.

And you still help with interns today?

I do, yeah. Every semester. I'm still trying to build that program as well.

And finally, last but certainly not least, is you were my thesis advisor for my Wonder.

I was about to say, don't forget about your masters. That's right. Yes. I do want to apologize again for making you write that book when you only needed to write maybe an extended essay.

Well, I loved it. It was really fun and I loved the end result. So at the time it was very stressful, but now I'm really glad that you made me do it.

Yeah. And it's awesome. And in fact, I think you could turn it into a book.

I would love to do that when you know, I have the time. So I wanted to just start off by asking you what led you to study the Victorian occult?

That's a very interesting question because I think it was instead of one thing, so it wasn't sort of one incident or something. I think it was kind of cultural influences, especially pop culture influences, especially starting like quite young. And that doesn't mean I was out, I was a kid interested in this stuff. But it's more that if you go back to when I was a child during the do have this sort of popular culture, I don't know, infatuation with the supernatural, occult and things like that. I think if you looked, there was probably a lot of like, ouija boards sold during that period or something, right? You had something like The Exorcist, which came out when I was quite I was too young to even right? But I think what that meant was, you have this sort of interest in these things. And so I think I carried that with me. And then coming when I got a little older, you had sort of the satanic panics that happened in the 1980s, and I think that did intrigue me because I was in my teens at that time, and I think I was like, what is this about? Right? And I'd always been kind of scientifically minded. Not a surprise that's what we do as historians, right, apply scientific method. But that is kind of part of who I am. So I think I was just really curious as to, in this modern age, why we're worried about these things, right? Ghosts and spirits and things like that. And I think that drew my attention. And I think also, I was at that time very much proud of living. At the time I lived, I was very much into this kind of sound weird, but into the modern. Into modernity. So it seems so antimodern that that also was curious that it's like, well, here we are. We have all this technological innovations. We're living the best we've lived, and yet we're still scared of the ghost in the closet. And so that intrigued me. And then also, I think, just other things. Like, at one point, I remember one of my friends or somebody had Tarot cards, and I was, like, telling the future. What is that again? Right. Very intrigued by it. So it's all those things that kind of plant the seeds. And then for a long time, though, this wasn't considered, like, a valid discipline of study the supernatural and occult. It really wasn't. It's something I probably had somebody said, well, you know, you could go research this in the Victorian period or the 18th century or something like that. But it wasn't really something people did much until I mean, you had in the 70s, like Keith Thomas religion, decline of magic. But it's not until, really I mean, for me, it's not until, like, Owen Davies begins to write a lot in the 1990s stumbled upon that, realized there was now an interest in it from an academic point of view, and that led me to the path of it's almost validation. Yeah. How about you?

Well, I've always been into horror, supernaturally kind of things, and I honestly didn't know that you could study it, since most of the time, it is considered a joke.

Right.

So when I first met you and I was taking your Historiography class, and you had in your special folder the Victorian occult, and I was like, Excuse me, there's a class on that. And I just was interested from day one. I think it also helped when we did that project where we had to create, like, a progress over time kind of paper. And I was learning about the Vanderbilts, and then I learned about Victoria Woodhole.

Right.

From that. And then what spiritualism was, and then I was hooked.

Right. Yeah. It's that kind of thing that once you kind of see that, it is a valid thing to investigate. And I don't know how it took so long. My guess is it really rises with cultural history. So before you have cultural history spread in a big way, you just don't have of people seeing this as something that people need to research.

Yeah. And that's something we've talked about a lot, is that people still have this misconception about the occult and the study of it, and there's all these ghost hunters out there. So it's kind of like a joke.

No, that's exactly right. Yeah. Unfortunately for us, we get kind of two reactions. One is the ghost hunting pop culture thing, where people are all of a sudden interested in whether we're out hunting ghosts. Right. No, we're interested in why people believe in ghosts. We're not interested in finding ghosts. But then you get it from kind of the other side where it's seen as something evil. So to even study it is somehow I don't know.

Right. Yeah. And I think every time I ever mention what my thesis is, I start off by saying I don't believe in it, but and then I continue with it. Because the history is what's fascinating to me.

Right, exactly. That's right. The history and the sort of, I guess the interdisciplinary reasons people believe in, why they believe in what they believe in. Right. That interests me as well.

Yeah. And your master's thesis was on sted, right?

It was, yeah. But it was him as an imperialist, so I had no idea when I was writing that thesis. I guess I may have had an idea, but it wasn't on my radar that he was so into spiritualism and spirit writing and the occult. That kind of came a little later, I think, once I was actually at UN.

You didn't even have the spiritualism part of it in your thesis.

No, because I looked at him as a journalist and then as somebody who was sort of using the media to support the spread of Empire. So it was mainly what happened in the Sudan with it's kind of it's kind of interesting that I didn't that is interesting.

Especially because you wrote about Borderland, his newspaper. Right. Which was the spiritualism.

It was, yeah. So my guess would be at the yeah. Again, going back to that point, I don't think if I went in and said, hey, I want to write WT status spiritualist, I'm not sure how that would have been.

I imagine received it would have been much harder to study the occult when you were getting your thesis than when I was getting my thesis.

Correct.

Did some of them not take you seriously, or maybe they told you, no, I don't think you should do that.

Yeah, I mean, I remember I did a research proposal. This was when I was at Indiana, and I took a sort of a graduate intro methods class. And at that time, I must have started to get a little interested in it. So that would have been 2000, 2001, something along those lines. So by that time, you do start having a field emerge. But I remember I wanted to do, for the 18th century sort of a belief in ghosts, and that was not looked on favorably.

Yeah, I bet. I mean, it still kind of isn't, but luckily I had you, because if I didn't, I'm not sure I would have been able to do what I wanted to research.

Yeah, it's weird like that, isn't it?

Yeah.

That's the beauty of cultural history we look at. Right. There are no topics that are off out right. That cannot be investigated.

So you like 18th century occult, too?

That was no, I think actually my advisor at the time was an 18th century historian. I felt the need to look at the 18th century when I really should have looked at the 19th century. I think the 18th century is neat because you do have a lot of patterns set in the 18th that then sort of explode in the 19th. And at the time, 18th century studies was really kind of taking off because the Victorian period had gotten all of the glory as far as its role in creating all these things we see today, industrialization and post media and all of that. And the 18th century scholars at that time were saying, no. Well, you're just following on what the 18th century did. So there was this I think I don't know, it was a preference that maybe I look at the 18th century.

I think that's why I like the Victorian period, like you were saying, is the rise of technology. All this stuff is going on. Modernity is starting.

Yes.

And they believed that ghosts were coming through, because if telegrams can work, then of course, ghosts can go through waves, too.

That's what's so neat about it. Yeah, that's why I prefer the Victorian period, because it's so much more and it's bigger and it's greater in that sense. So just taking into account technology and the intersection of science and technology, so all of a sudden, you wouldn't have had that in the 18th century as much. But by the 19th century, by that I mean using technology to somehow discover what happens after death.

And there were more prominent people in the 19th century doing occult practices. Charles Dickens. Queen Elizabeth. Queen Victoria.

Right.

Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln.

Right.

There were just so many people that were doing it and then influencing others to do it.

Right. Yeah. I think for a period of time, it's not as much superstition as science, which is neat.

Isn't that part of that, the crisis of faith that they were having in.

Britain that helped push almost I mean, it depends how you want to look at it, but I think that yes, it's almost like it reinvigorates faith, because for a long time, I think faith and science didn't necessarily go together.

Right.

But there's this period in the Victorian kind of time where it does it's almost, like, optimistic, in a way, that humanity is on the verge of being able to solve using technology, something that humans have never been able to solve. What happens after we die? Right. Or things along those lines. And you could throw into that sort of the expanding empire and explorers going into all these places that are mysterious, unexplored. Are there monsters? Like, to us? No. But at that time, it would be kind of neat to think, wow, they could uncover something that we've never discovered before. Yeah.

I think it's always absolutely fascinating. And most people don't understand. Most of the occult had religion in it with spiritualism. They said a prayer before every single one of them.

Yes.

There was that one that I read, remember, that did Communion?

Yes.

The ghost told her to do it.

That's right. Exactly.

Just fascinating. And I think a lot of people just automatically get afraid of it because of the push that churches made them believe that it was scary. Just like the Ouija board.

Right, exactly. I think into, even to the 19th century, there's still some people are thinking in terms of laws that are set that humans are not supposed to violate or somehow manipulate. But that's not everybody. I mean, there are a lot of societies that we looked at that incorporate Christian ideas. So the hermeneutic order of the golden dawn, right? It takes all these influences from around the world and kind of combines them of which Christianity plays a role. So, yeah, I think that's kind of neat. That's one area I'd like to research sometime is more how these ideas are brought together. Right.

I'm really interested about theosophy.

That's what I was going to they.

Completely ignored Christianity and went to Buddhism.

Right.

And it was so popular, a lot of people moved from spiritualism to theosophy with a blink of an eye.

Right, yeah, that's exactly right. And those things, I mean, much to what the chagrin of the spiritualists and the other way around, but I think that would be neat to look at.

Me, too. Helena Blavatsky is just an amazing woman to look at.

Oh, fascinating.

And all her books. She wrote so many books on it, too.

Yeah. And like you said, very popular. Even after she's sort of exposed, doing some things which are not so on the level. Right. Almost conning people. That didn't necessarily cause the movement to falter. I mean, even when she passes, it continues Annie basal and goes on and on, even today. You have theosophy around, right?

Yeah. And there's still spiritualism churches. Yes, it's absolutely fascinating to me. I know there's one in California, there's one in Indiana. There's just a couple in America. But there's still a lot in.

I mean, even going back to what I was sort of saying about when I was younger, I think there was probably that kind of comes back. Seances, they almost come in fashion again in some.

You know, today with the exorcist, while I am upset about the Exorcist and how they convey the Ouija board and now everybody's terrified of it, it also brought occult history into the I guess.

Yes. That's why I find Ouija boards are always so fascinating. Right. That was something I did when I was in my teens, was intrigued. I could go to, like, Toys R US and buy this portal to the Netherworld, supposedly. Right.

And it did originate in America, right?

Yes, it did. Well, yes. I believe the sort of one we know of is sort of what? Egyptian magic boards. And there were all variations of them.

I know I like specifically British spiritualism and occult because of how kind of I guess I would say elitist they were about the occult there.

Yes.

It was so different from America, which is really interesting, too, in my research, how different British and French and Italian spiritualism could be. It was all different in different countries.

Yeah, that's true. That's right. And I think it's a I mean, you know better than I do, solidly middle class, at least, what shows up in newspapers and periodicals and what gets attention. It would be neat to look at, at some point, laboring classes, but I'm not sure what's there.

It always feels weird when you say.

I know more than you do about it.

I thought you were the expert.

Well, you've researched this very well.

I have. Because of the novel you made me.

Exactly. Exactly.

I'm curious. Does the Tarot differ in different countries, too? Because I know that's, like, your area.

There are different ones and different ways of using it.

Really?

Yeah. Even within Britain? In the United States? Yeah. Different decks, different just complete variation, especially as time has gone on, it's just fascinating.

People still are using it. Like I told you, you could go.

Get one at know, isn't it? And yeah, I wonder. I know it doesn't come from obviously come from Britain. So it's like France. France is very influential. Italy, it's a Renaissance period, certainly the 19th century. But that does lead to lots of variations.

But it wasn't popular till the 20th century.

Right, yeah. That's generally not until you really have the rider weight deck that's mass produced and mass sold. But that's an area because, again, I stop at the Victorian, and I know where it comes from there. And how it's sold, I'm not sure. Like circulation numbers and things like that. I would love to find that out. But I wonder when it picks up again. Sixty s. Seventy s. Because, like you said, at some point it becomes something that's commonplace. I know. In the 1980s, at least, it's commonplace in bookstores. Like, you go to the mall, got a Walden Books, right. This old bookstore that yeah, right. And you could get them there, and they would have more than just one. They would have a variety of something. Which is weird. Right. Because that's at the same time, you have this sort of satanic panic happen. But still they're circulating.

Right. And the Ouija board they don't want to touch because bad things can come out of it. But they use tarot. Everyone uses tarot.

Yeah.

And there's no association. The same with that.

Yeah. That is interesting. I wonder why that is. Again, another neat thing to research. For some reason, they don't seem as threatening.

Seems like knowing your fate is okay, but talking to a dead person is not.

Yeah, right. I wonder if it doesn't have to do with you're just dealing cards, but with a Ouija, something is again, this is probably more your area, but something has to kind of take the person over to move the planet.

As we know, the spiritualism was never scary. It wasn't about evil demon spirits coming out. It was always talking to your loved ones.

Right.

Really? I mean, like you said, I'm only in 19th century, so I don't know the specifics. But I think that the Exorcist did start a fright about that.

Yeah.

Because before that, I don't remember seeing any evil spirits coming out of a board before.

No. Maybe that's the jump from these little communities to pop culture at large. Yeah. Again right. It would be neat to look at.

Maybe we should go out of our comfort zone and maybe study some 20th.

Century yeah, I'm starting to dig the 20th century lately.

Yeah.

Because I know there's that famous Saturday Evening Post picture that had the Ouija, the couple doing.

Oh, I remember that.

So you have the 20s. It's popular. And then I've not researched, but I've sort of read heard that it then decreases in popularity, only to reemerge late. Fifty s. Sixty s. Seventy s. We.

Had talked about how it rised during World War I down and then rised again during World War II.

Right. As you have this sort of yeah. Again, tragedy on a level that's not easy to comprehend. And a lot of people died, a lot of loved ones, in those wars.

I think that's also why in the 19th century, it got so popular, too, was because of how many people were dying at that time.

Right, exactly.

A lot of wars going on there.

Exactly. The 19th century, this sort of age of epidemic. I mean, you and I, we know from our own research, just the whole family can be wiped out by scarlet fever or something.

Right.

I think traditional beliefs can carry someone to a certain point. But I think it's these other beliefs that we research that people try to reach for more. So if a Ouija board offers hope, then why not? There's something to lose.

I know we always talk about spiritualism and we talk about Tarot, we talk about all those things, but what's maybe something that we don't normally talk about in the occult that you're interested in?

That's a very good question. Something that we don't I'm increasingly interested in more than just, like, middle class ideas and beliefs, because, like you said, the spiritualist movement has that base theosophy middle, upper, the occult societies. So the Hermetic Order of the Golden.

Dawn, those are definitely upper class.

Yeah, that's all. And I would like I think Carl Bell probably goes into this. He's the scholar that does urban world in the occult and supernatural. And I think I would like to look at maybe working classes a bit and see what happens there. Yeah.

Because we've talked about how the lower class didn't get the opportunities to go see a seance or do Tarot or whatever because they couldn't afford it.

Correct.

So that would be really interesting to figure out what they did, because there isn't that much documented correct. About what they did. Did they create their own sounds on what they thought it was like?

That's right. How did they kind of do those things? Because, you know, there must have been like in anywhere else, there's going to be some sort of demand, there's going to be an interest in it. We need to look at how that does work.

And that's specifically for British, because we know in American spiritualism, they were lower class. The Fox sisters were low class that created spiritualism.

That's fascinating. Yeah. That would be fun to look at.

Yeah.

And then, of course, I'm always on the hunt for the next greatest monster because we have these monsters that we know about that people knew vampires and things like that. But you know how history is. Things can be forgotten to there. I'm sure there was a time when people forgot about the Spring Hill Jack character. Right. And then some scholar finds out, oh, look, if I look in all these places, this thing emerges. So I think that would be kind of neat to try to get back to try to find some more Victorian monsters.

Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, I don't think there's any most of the origins of monsters are in America. You don't really see many in Europe right.

Where you have these kind of folk ideas which are really local. So there's folk traditions that are super local. It would be neat to find out if some of those local traditions maybe spread beyond the ones that we already know.

Yeah. I think I would like to look more into the occupied territories of Britain with spiritualism. You know how we had talked about the empire.

Yeah.

I had wanted to do a bunch of research on Hong Kong and Australia and stuff like that, but it was going to be way too much research for a master's thesis.

That would be really cool. Yeah, you should do that.

I would love to. I think it'd be really interesting to see how Hong Kong's influence with British spiritualism and what they created out of it, and if they still do it today.

Right. And you know that we know from Theosophy you have these branches that open up throughout sort of the empire. So if it's happening with Theosophy, it's got to be happening with spiritualism. So Australia, right, canada, india would always be fun to look at, like Hong Kong. There's got to be I mean, you know, one place to start might just be looking at the periodicals, if there's a way to see if the periodicals mention these places and chapters or societies or something.

And I did talk a little bit about India in one of my chapters and how the men were more popular in India than they were in Britain.

That was a fascinating thing you kind of uncovered there.

Yeah, I thought it was so interesting, especially when, say, a spiritualist got caught in Britain, they would just go to India and then they were popular.

Yeah. So they got exposed as, like a con person or something. They would just go that in itself is really right. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't understand why they were accepted there. And they would even be in the newspapers, like Medium and daybreak. I saw so many articles about these men that would be caught and they would just fly to India. Well, not fly. They would go to India, jump ship, and they would be popular again. And even in the newspapers, they would write how well they were doing over there. It's like, didn't you forget that they were caught?

Right, yeah. Why would the community accept them with open arms there and not because I'm assuming they would still be in these sort of communities.

Yeah. In India, there were so many people that got caught in Britain that just got to keep doing it.

That's fascinating. That would be a neat thing to look at. Also, just once somebody does get caught, what happens?

Yeah, I looked a little bit into it. There were two or three different people. Oh, gosh, my thesis was so long ago, I can't remember their name.

It happens.

Dr. Mack, I think he was exposed. He even went to jail for the Witchcraft Act.

Yes. The Vagrancy act or Witchcraft act violating.

Yes, he went to jail for a period and fraud. Came out, did it again, and went to jail again, came out, did it again. And then he got so high he would do stuff in the upper class areas, like around Kensington.

Oh, very fascinating.

They knew he was caught two times.

But they still kept hiring. That's a neat thing to look at, even. What was his famous DD? Home, is it?

Yes. Daniel Douglas home. Yeah.

I always want to say Hume, but.

I know, because it's spelled H U.

But you don't actually say it that way. Right.

Yeah.

He was exposed. Now, he was the one that was supposedly above it, but when you peel away the popular history, I think he was exposed and felt no consequences.

I remember he was the one that didn't have an official residence, that he would go to different houses, do the seances, and then live there.

Yes.

Mooch off the family and then go to another place. And he just kept doing that for 20 plus years.

Yes. And that you don't see enough about. You would think somebody would be wise to this.

So in 19th century, was there like a I know we talk about spiritualism. They were like, famous spiritualists at the time. Were there anybody that was famous in Tarot, like that was an expert in Tarot?

Oh, no. It's very limited at that time.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, you're looking at golden dawn in those real as far as I know, in England. It's not like a big popular culture thing.

It's very like it is here. That's interesting, too.

Right. I mean, even after you have waite, Coleman deck man. I don't think it's later on, I'm sure, but at the time no, I don't think mean, if we look at it, there's only as far as I've been able to find just kind of a handful of books in the Victorian Edwardian period, reading Tarot and stuff. Or it might be included in just fortune telling books as a whole. Right. Divination books might include a chapter on it or something.

But there's no that's true.

No celebrities that I know of. Again, I could be wrong. I just haven't run into it yet.

Well, maybe it's just not in British. You know how it took a while for the British to accept that area of the occult. Right. It's so weird how America did everything first, and then Britain would go, Nah, we're too good for that. And then years later they would go, well, maybe, but we're going to tweak it to our own thing because we're better than you.

It's very British.

Yes, very British.

Slow, long developing. Yes.

I think something else I wanted to talk to you about was the newspapers, because I know you're very into the newspapers of the 19th century and how there were so many starting to happen because of print. Right.

Correct. That's right. So that happens. I mean, really industrialization transforms the newspaper industry and media as a whole, whether you're talking about periodicals or books. So it doesn't cost as much to print a lot more. So, I mean, you first see that in daily newspapers that aren't occult newspapers, just things like Daily Telegraph and Times of London get printed like never before. But. Then eventually it hits the occult presses as well. So all of a sudden, I mean, just an explosion in the number in types of newspapers. I've not counted it up, but you know, from there's at least data, at.

Least in the Victorian period and then in the Eduardian, there's even more.

Yes. And that's the type of thing that when I first encountered it, it kind of gave me goosebumps because it validates what I assumed to be true, which was that even though it's like the occult and supernatural, it's not hidden away, it's opposite. There's a lot of I mean, we're thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So subscribing to these, the circulations are good, so it's a genuine interest in these things and it's not just a general interest. These are pretty specific. You've seen these periodicals, there's hermetic ones, there's theosophy periodicals, there's spiritualist periodicals and those are really circulating out there at the same time. So yeah, I like newspapers, I think they're a gauge of interest right. Because it goes to what that article I always want to finish on the business of the occult? Because I think that's not just you and I supposing something. But if you have a publisher who's making a living off of selling these things, then that's a real hard piece of evidence that it is existing and circulating and people are interested in buying it. Right. Somebody's going to pay for something. That's the ultimate test of their interest, to me at least.

And that still was upper class for a while and then it got to middle class when more papers developed. Right, but then the lower class still couldn't afford it or if they could, the location where they could go pick up the newspaper was in the West Side, which meant they couldn't get to the paper to buy one.

Correct. That's why I'm interested in that, because a lot of them like you're right, some of these publishers wouldn't ship them. You'd have to go to the publishing house.

Yeah, they'd go, we sell at this street and this building and this one the issue is out now, go get it.

Right, yeah. And they tend to be in the West End, a lot of these, or they'll be in the publishing areas or things like that. Yeah, that's exactly right. I guess it's tough because if somebody does, you don't know how much a paper circulates necessarily. So if somebody from the working classes did I'm just curious how many people would see it, how it would circulate.

And stuff, or if they'd even want.

It since they right.

They couldn't participate in any of the occult stuff.

Correct.

Did they even want it if they could have it?

Correct. And what culturally did those what was carried by the middle class perspective that ends up in all of these things? Because it is it's not just who's buying it, but who's producing it, who's writing it, what their perspective is, what their assumptions are, things like that.

It was also really gossipy.

Oh, yeah.

You say Mrs. Guppy was at this place and did this seance, and it was great. Why does a lower class person want to know or care? This fashionable thing, agnes Guppy at a house doing a private like, they just.

Don'T it doesn't it's not relevant to their daily lives.

And again, like in America, they were everywhere, all lower class. They were reading the papers, and the British newspapers would go over there and they could read them.

That's fascinating. Yeah. I have no idea.

Yeah. Medium and daybreak and the spiritualist. The British newspapers would go over to America, and an average Joe could go get huh.

So I wonder they would just be print they'd have rights to print it and distribute it in the US.

Yeah. I just always love talking to you. I'm glad you finally came here. He's at the History Center today. Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to.

Thank you again for being here. I love doing these. They're such wonderful conversations. Definitely.

Yeah.

All right. Thanks for having me.

Then again is a production of the Northeast Georgia History Center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Gilles. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May Ioster Education Center. Please join us next week for another episode of Then Again.