The Ghost-Hunter Comes to Seattle
Notorious spiritualist Anna Eva Fay visits the New Seattle Theater to perform a scientific séance, bringing tales of talking heads and astral projection.
Anna Eva Fay, a conspicuous figure for a number of years, appears tonight in the New Seattle theater in what she is pleased to term a scientific séance of theosophy and spiritualism. Miss Fay is on a curious mission, and a reporter thought it of enough interest to relate a marvelous story. She believes in the astral body—a mental counterpart that can move while the physical body remains as if dead. She claims to have projected her own mental self from London to Paris to be photographed while her physical body was back in London. Regarding her upcoming work, she plans to travel to India to find a 'talking head' supposedly kept in a monastery, which she believes she can make speak. When asked how one becomes a theosophist, she replied, 'Seek and ye shall receive; there can be no knowledge without faith.'
“You simply will it so, and so it is. It is not hard to separate the physical from the psychic body. You do it when you sleep.”
Spiritualism and the occult were massive cultural phenomenons in the late 19th century, often blending with early science-fiction fascinations. Today, we view these performances as theater, but at the time, they sparked genuine public debate about the limits of perception and the intersection of science and belief.
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