Red-Haired Ash Reads

This book was a wonderful look at Victorian spiritualism, magic, and the supernatural. Douris explores the history of spiritualism, séances, automatic writing, cartomancy, spirit photography, and many other things. Douris also provides information on the history of supernaturals, superstitions, magic, and Halloween and Christmas celebrations. Not only is this book filled with a wonderful look at history, it also provides hands-on exercises to try your hand at Victorian spiritualism. 

This book was a wonderful introduction to Victorian spiritualism and the many facets that it entailed. I really loved that this provides brief histories of all the different aspects because this was all new to me and gave me a well rounded look at what Victorian spiritualism entailed. The hands-on activities were a wonderful bonus that were easy to follow and mostly historically accurate. Douris also was very up front in confronting the racism of the Victorian era which I think is extremely important in this current age to discuss. 

Overall, this was an absolutely fascinating and informative look at Victorian spiritualism. I learned so much from this book and will do more research on this topic in the future with the helpful recommended reading list. If you are a fan of ghost stories, séances, and spiritualism I highly recommend this book, especially if you want to learn some hands-on techniques. 

*ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

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