A Parlour Craze That Helped Launch Spiritualism

Table tipping became a genuine popular craze in the early 1850s, spreading rapidly through American and then European households as an easy, communal way to seek contact with the spirit world: a small group would sit around a table with fingertips resting lightly on its surface, and after a period of quiet concentration the table would begin to rock, tilt onto two legs, or even appear to slide across the floor, its movements then used to answer questions, one tip for yes and two for no, or to spell out messages letter by letter as the table tilted toward each one in turn.

The practice required no special medium and no darkened room, which made it far more accessible than the platform performances of professional spiritualist mediums, and its sheer popularity through the early 1850s did a great deal to spread spiritualist belief into ordinary middle-class households across the Atlantic world, functioning as a kind of gateway practice into the wider spiritualist movement that had begun with the Fox sisters' rappings a few years earlier. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic reported the craze with a mixture of fascination and mockery, and it drew comment from serious scientists precisely because it was so widely and casually practiced by people with no claim to special mediumistic gifts.