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“I have talked to a good many lads killed in the war,” he said. In a 1920 visit to New York, Lodge told a reporter that he was still in touch with Raymond, as well as other fallen soldiers. He reported that soldiers who’d lost an arm in battle found it magically restored, although those who were “blown to pieces” took a bit longer to become whole.

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He told them he’d reconnected with his late grandfather plus a brother and sister who died in infancy, and made many new friends. He repeatedly assured his parents that he was happy. In his messages, Raymond offered a comforting version of the great beyond, complete with flowers, trees, dogs, cats and birds. Still other mediums went into trances and allowed the dead to speak directly through them. When the medium arrived at the letter the spirit had in mind, the table would tilt, turn, levitate or make some other inexplicable move. In table tilting, participants typically sat around a séance table while the medium recited the alphabet. In automatic writing, the spirit supposedly guided the medium’s hand to write out messages.

Lodge and his wife met with a variety of mediums, who practiced such techniques as automatic writing and table tilting to communicate with the dead. Lodge’s 1916 book, Raymond, or Life and Death, describes numerous purported contacts with his late son.

and also wrote books describing their psychic experiences. Doyle also lost his younger brother to the flu in 1919, while his wife’s brother had been killed in Belgium in 1914.Īfter the war, both men lectured widely in the U.S. Doyle’s son Kingsley had been wounded in France in 1916 and died of pneumonia in 1918, likely brought on by the influenza pandemic. Lodge’s son Raymond had been struck down by a shell fragment while fighting in Belgium in 1915. Lodge was a respected physicist known for his work with radio waves.īoth men had a longtime interest in the supernatural, and both had lost sons in the war. Doyle was, of course, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The two most prominent proponents of spiritualism were British: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. WATCH: The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier Than World War II Famous names gave spiritualism credence A February 1920 headline in the New York Sun said it all: “Riddle of the Life Hereafter Draws World’s Attention.” Not surprisingly, spiritualism, which promised a window into the afterlife, saw a sudden resurgence in the United States, Great Britain, France and elsewhere. In both cases, most victims were young-between 20 and 40, in the case of the flu-and left behind parents, spouses, sweethearts and children. And if that wasn’t sufficiently staggering, the influenza had taken at least 50 million lives. World War I, which ended in November 1918, had racked up a worldwide death toll of 20 million soldiers and civilians, according to one estimate. The flu pandemic wasn’t alone in spurring this search for meaning. They struggled with more eternal concerns, such as what happens to us after we die and whether it’s possible to communicate with dead loved ones. Their questions weren’t limited to what caused the pandemic or might prevent the next one.

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