Spiritualism, the belief that the living can commune with the dead, turned into a lucrative hustle for many charlatans. The top 10 fake spiritualists on this list proved that anyone with a little showmanship could cash in, whether on a traveling stage or in a modest parlor. Below we walk you through each notorious fraud, complete with the dramatic moments when their deceptions finally fell apart.

Unmasking the Illusions: The Top 10 Fake Spiritualists

10 An American In Paris

How could a woman in the late 1800s afford a round‑the‑world adventure? She did it by masquerading as a spiritualist, convincing crowds that she could summon the dead. Mrs. Mary Williams, a wildly popular American medium, decided in 1894 to take her act to Europe, penciling stops in Berlin, The Hague and St. Petersburg, with Paris as her opening night.

French authorities, suspecting a swindle, set a trap. During her inaugural Paris séance, a participant seized what was thought to be the summoned spirit—only to discover a doll. The crowd’s candles were lit, the illusion shattered, and the truth exposed.

Williams was also found wearing men’s clothing to pull off the stunt of impersonating a Swedish spirit. She attempted to flee, was forced to refund every patron, and warned that any repeat would land her in jail. She escaped to England, never to return to the French stage.

9 Naughty Parrot

Many spiritualists employed hidden helpers to produce eerie sounds, but a Spanish medium took the gimmick to a new level with a trained parrot. In Osuna, the medium spent countless hours teaching the bird a repertoire of phrases, using it as the voice of a long‑dead nun during séances.

When the parrot was cued, it would speak from behind heavy drapes, adding a feathered layer of authenticity to the proceedings. The bird’s uncanny timing convinced many that a genuine spirit was communicating.

During a 1913 session, the parrot had enough and fluttered out onto the séance table, causing chaos. The startled audience turned on the medium, leaving her severely injured and her feathered accomplice the unlikely star of the scandal.

8 Spirits Reading The Mail

We all know the classic trick: a sealed note, a mysterious whisper, and a “spirit” that reads the hidden message. Dr. Walter E. Reid ran a very similar con in Grand Rapids, Michigan, starting in 1890. He advertised that anyone could write a question, seal it in an envelope, and send it to him with a dollar for a spirit’s answer.

Clients could add extra security by sealing the envelope with wax or stitching it shut, paying a few extra dollars for the added “protection.” Reid promised that even the most tightly sealed letters would be opened by a spirit and answered faithfully.

Unfortunately for Reid, who also headed the Michigan Spiritualists’ Association, the postmaster grew suspicious. He was charged with mail fraud, and the scam collapsed under the weight of legal scrutiny.

7 The Flower Medium Of Berlin

Frau Rothe’s séances were famous for the sudden appearance of fresh flowers and fruit, which she claimed were gifts from the other side. The novelty made her a sensation in Berlin, drawing crowds eager to witness the botanical miracles.

In 1903, however, the truth blossomed: police infiltrated her circle with a female detective and later a male officer. During a session, they caught Rothe in the act, seizing her while she pretended to be in a trance.

A search of her garments revealed bouquets and fruit hidden in her petticoats. Rothe argued that the spirits had placed them there, but investigators traced the items to a local florist. After a six‑day trial, she was sentenced to 18 months for fraud.

6 A Medium Of Many Clothes

Mrs. Elsie Reynolds staged her séances at the Grand Pacific Hotel in California. Anticipating a potential expose in 1906, she hired a guard to watch over the cabinet where she claimed spirits would manifest.

When Selma Savoy arrived, seeking contact with her deceased sister, Reynolds slipped into a spirit guise. Savoy, however, lunged forward and grabbed the “sister.” A frantic struggle erupted, with Reynolds and her guard fleeing into an adjoining room where police were waiting.

The officers discovered that Reynolds concealed numerous white, filmy costumes beneath her dress, each representing a different spirit. The charade was exposed, and she faced legal action for fraud, with police gathering complaints for court proceedings.

5 Wardrobe Problem

London’s 1920 spiritualist scene was bustling, and Mr. Chambers capitalized on the craze with a series of séances. Unbeknownst to his audience, he relied on a clever costume trick: a muslin shroud and boots hidden beneath a fake “spirit” form.

During an earlier session, an observant gentleman felt the muslin fabric and noted the booted feet, yet he kept quiet, waiting for a better moment. In the final séance, a sitter switched on a flashlight, illuminating the entire ruse.

Everyone saw Chambers stripped of his coat and waistcoat, his boots removed, trousers rolled up, and a white cloth hanging from his waist. The illusion collapsed, and he was forced to sign a public confession of guilt, which appeared in newspapers across the city.

4 Grabbed In The Spirit Form

F.W. Courtney billed himself as a “full‑form materializer,” claiming he could summon entire spirits to appear onstage. Originally from California, he set up shop in Detroit, conducting nightly séances for about a month.

In 1893, during a session where he purported to bring forth a deceased wife, participant William Cox decided to take matters into his own hands. He leapt from his chair and seized the “spirit,” only to discover Courtney himself. Pandemonium broke out as lights were switched on, revealing Courtney in his underpants, scrambling to escape.

Desperate, Courtney shouted a name, prompting a woman to rush in with a revolver, which she soon dropped. Courtney negotiated a quick exit: he would pack up and leave Detroit, returning all the money, on the condition that the police be kept out of the affair. He obeyed, fleeing with his costumes, wigs, and makeup, while other spiritualists threatened him for ever returning.

3 Kissing Spirits

To outshine rivals, some mediums invented bizarre gimmicks. One Detroit performer in 1885 used a long‑handled paddle wrapped in flannel, delivering gentle kisses to sitters’ cheeks while the lights were out, claiming the contact came from a spirit.

When the lights flickered back, a skeptical man grabbed the paddle, exposing the ruse. A struggle ensued, but the medium quickly slipped his hands back into the loops on his chair, escaping detection.

The audience erupted. A nearby policeman arrested the charlatan on fraud charges. Only one woman in the crowd defended the act, saying, “I know enough about kissing to know the difference between a bathing swab and a genuine salute. I was kissed.” Her comment was drowned out by laughter.

2 Spirit Land Photographs

S.W. Fallis of Chicago claimed he could produce photographs that showed the departed as they appeared in “spirit land.” He marketed these images as priceless windows into the afterlife, charging clients handsomely for each portrait.

In 1905, Mrs. Louisa Reed commissioned Fallis to see what her deceased child looked like in the other world. He delivered a beautiful picture of a five‑year‑old child, which she promptly took to another photographer for enlargement.

The second photographer recognized the image as a duplicate, revealing that Fallis had been re‑using the same photograph for multiple clients. The deception was exposed, and his reputation crumbled.

1 Never Shake Hands With The Living

In 1877 Portland, Maine, a medium insisted on a strict rule: no physical contact with the living. She set up a screen in a corner of the room, claiming spirits would emerge from behind it to interact with the audience.

To reassure skeptics, she invited the sitters to pin her skirts to the floor before the lights were dimmed. Once darkness fell, the séance began, and the supposed spirits moved about.

One bold participant asked the spirit to shake his hand. The “spirit” obliged, and the man grasped a hand—only to discover it was the medium herself, who had slipped out of her pinned skirts. The lights snapped back, exposing the fraud for all to see.

The Victorian era was a strange time which was not nearly as restrained and prudish as reputation holds. It was a time when everyone was exploring the world around them, and sometimes, that meant looking at the world they couldn’t see, either. It saw the birth of Spiritualism, the popularity of seances and fortune‑telling, and the creation of secret societies. Occasionally, communing with the Devil or astral projection to other planets was on the schedule. Among these wonders emerged the 10 mystic spiritualists who left an indelible mark on occult history.

10. Mystic Spiritualists: A Victorian Journey

10. Annie Horniman

Annie Horniman had a huge influence on British theater; that is absolutely not up for debate. Originally from Dublin, she was largely responsible for creating the theater scene in Manchester, with the goal of bringing performing arts of all kinds to all people, regardless of income or social standing. She did so with her family fortune—hers was the first to sell prepackaged tea.

Annie was a huge believer in tarot and used the cards for guidance in all of her business decisions. It must have worked, because other English cities still model their theaters on her program designs. However, her 1894 venture in the Avenue Theatre in London was a complete financial nightmare.

Annie also believed that she could astrally project herself, and she frequently stopped by Saturn for a visit and a chat with the locals. A lapsed member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Horniman was sent on a series of astral projections in 1898. She believed that she was visiting all the planets. Note that astronomy was hugely popular at the time. New technology was allowing people to see more and more more of space, and books like The War of the Worlds were being published.

Horniman and her astral projection colleague, Frederick Leigh Gardner, kept incredibly detailed notes about all the planets that they visited, recording everything from what kind of atmosphere they found to some of the conversations that they had with the life‑forms they met. Traveling to each planet required a rather elaborate, symbolism‑filled ritual—for Saturn, that meant using things like the Lesser Invoking Hexagram of Saturn and traveling along indigo rays. Once they got there, Annie records, they met an armor‑clad angel who told them all about their civilization. The Saturnites were an ancient people, and they were dying. He gave them a tour, and even though he made them invisible so they wouldn’t frighten anyone, the Saturnites were able to feel their presence.

In contrast, Jupiter was shrouded with protections and illusions, and it was much, much more difficult for them to summon their beautiful female guide, who was saddened by the state of things on Earth.

It’s unknown whether Horniman and Gardner truly thought their journeys were real. It’s suggested that their writings were more an exploration of light and sense than an actual belief in a physical journey, but it’s hard to tell.

9. Madame Blavatsky

Even as a child, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a little strange. She claimed to have invisible friends that she called her “hunchbacks,” and she was often found holding and stroking birds until they fell asleep.

As a young woman, she married briefly and then left her new husband to wander the world for a decade. When she reemerged into society, it was reported that she had gained all sorts of spiritual and telepathic abilities, from controlling winds indoors to telekinesis. By 1873, she was in New York, and by 1875 she had founded the Theosophical Society. The Society had some pretty lofty goals, including uniting mankind in a universal brotherhood that had truly, completely explored the divine, mystical powers she believed all humans possessed.

Soon, the society got the attention of the British Society for Psychical Research, and their interpretation and report on the phenomenon—or lack thereof—was less than stellar. After a three‑month investigation, they claimed the whole thing was nothing but fraud and sleight‑of‑hand trickery. It’s not that they didn’t believe in the occult; they just didn’t believe that Blavatsky was authentic.

Somehow, the society survived, and in 1888, Blavatsky published what would be her masterpiece, a book called The Secret Doctrine. It’s just as bizarre as you might expect. She talks about the birth of the races of mankind and says that the fourth race, the Atlantean Race, was the one responsible for developing sin and breeding monsters. While the First Race was the color of the moon, the Second Race was gold, and the Third Race was red, the Fourth “became black with sin.” Lemuria and Atlantis were both also real and would be proven as such. They were ruled by demigods in human form, and all the problems started when an evil demigod rose to power and turned the Atlanteans into evil magicians.

8. Annie Besant And Charles Leadbeater

Besant and Leadbeater were outspoken supporters of Madame Blavatsky and the London Theosophical Society, to the point where they almost entirely turned their backs on their former lives once they stumbled into the occult. Besant had already separated from her clergyman husband and father of her two children, largely because of her anti‑religious views. Leadbeater had been an Anglican priest when he converted to the Theosophical Society, specifically citing that ritual had made the original message of Christianity effectively nonexistent. So he headed off to India, and it was there that they both embraced the idea that elements of Hinduism and Buddhism could be combined to reach the otherworldly.

Later, they would partner to write Thought‑Forms, a pretty bizarre work that was grandiose in every sense of the word, and would capture a few different things, depending on how you interpret the book. Their contemporaries understood the work as depicting everything that an understanding of the other world would open up, while today, we recognize the same ideas with a different name: synesthesia.

The book contains a series of illustrations that the authors claim people have actually seen. They’re pictures of emotions and sounds; they’re non‑visual things made visual. Music was given color and a shape, shown pouring out of a cathedral. It was a powerful attempt at making the abstract visual, and it’s not just an occult phenomenon—it’s a mental one that we absolutely don’t understand even today.

It wasn’t just simple emotions or images that they were documenting, either. They assigned colors and shapes to a wide range of emotions and intentions, from the quest for intellectual knowledge to the desire to embrace everything in the cosmos; that desire is purple.

7. Philippe De Lyon

Rasputin is perhaps one of the most notorious occultists and figures of the Russian court, but the stories of his predecessor are no less incredible.

According to the story, Phillippe Nizier‑Anthelme Vachod was born to parents Joseph and Mary on April 25, 1849. It was said he caused his mother no pain, and she delivered him while singing and overcome with joy. The storm that had been raging stopped, and a shooting star heralded his arrival. Clearly, the stories imply that he was something special.

Small miracles were said to follow him around, and by 1874 he was working in a pharmacy in Lyon, France. It was there that he got a reputation as a healer, curing disease wherever he went and eventually being dismissed from the school for fraud. By that time, though, word had spread, and he welcomed anyone in need into his home, where he healed and cured people no matter what their affliction.

One story in particular tells of how powerful Phillippe was reputed to be. Two doctors are leaving the bedside of a boy who had just died, lamenting how they were unable to save him. Philippe enters the room, where the boy has already been dead for two hours—the boy does, of course, wake up.

Philippe conjured an almost Christ‑like image and belief in his abilities. The stories that go along with him have a powerful undertone, as he always asks for something from those he heals; whether it be the forgiveness of a debt or a halt to gossiping, the general idea behind his work is that if you’re a good person, God will help. He was, sadly, less successful when it came to his own children, though, losing a son in infancy and a daughter to lifelong ill health. When asked to save his children, he claimed that his daughter’s death was postponing an event that would have been devastating for the planet.

Philippe was understandably sought after, and eventually had the ear of the Russian court. There were plenty of people that didn’t approve of him or his teachings, from doctors who claimed he was a fraud to others who claimed he was a spy of some sort. He did, however, have a group of disciples that he taught, and he has long held a place in between religion, the occult, and spiritualism.

6. Alexis Vincent Charles Berbiguier De Terreneuve De Thym

We’re not quite sure what exactly was wrong with Alexis Vincent Charles Berbiguier de Terreneuve de Thym, but his writing makes it pretty clear that he was suffering from some kind of mental illness. Unfortunately, science and psychology didn’t have the tools to truly help him, and he was sent from one occultist to another.

In 1821, he published a three‑volume autobiography which was completely unlike any life story that a rich Frenchman had written before. The volumes detailed his constant struggle with what he called “hobgoblins.” According to Berbiguier, he had killed so many of them that he had earned the title “Scourge of Hobgoblins,” but it turns out that killing them only makes them even madder.

While living in Paris, Alexis saw several doctors and clairvoyants who attempted to treat him in a variety of different ways, from mesmerism to consultations with the tarot cards. In the meantime, the hobgoblin attacks continued. Eventually, Alexis became convinced that his doctors were ambassadors of the hobgoblins, and they’d done something to make his problem worse. He recognized doctors for the traitors that they were and increased his hobgoblin‑killing efforts. He filled his rooms with hobgoblin‑killing plants and kept glass bottles to trap them in, and he did indeed trap them by the thousands.

Those around him (whether they were doctors, professors, students, or animals) became, in Alexis’s mind, hobgoblins in disguise. There were demons, too—a local druggist was really Lilith, and a doctor was Moloch. Berbiguier would spend his entire life haunted by the hobgoblins.

5. The Fox Sisters

Spirituality got a strange, strange start at the hands of three teenage sisters from Upstate New York. On March 31, 1848, the Fox sisters, Maggie, Kate, and Leah, made their first demonstration of their so‑called channeling abilities. They claimed that the spirit of a peddler was present in the house, and they did the now‑familiar routine of asking questions that were answered by a series of knocks. They headed to Rochester and then on to New York City, where they met with huge fame—even after one of the sisters, Maggie, confessed that the whole thing had been an April Fools’ joke that got way, way out of hand.

It wasn’t until 1888 that Maggie demonstrated exactly how the knocks were done, in perhaps the simplest way imaginable: It was her toes cracking against the floor. It was exactly the source of the knocking that researchers from the University at Buffalo had suggested when they investigated the sisters. This revelation didn’t stop the movement from spreading, and it didn’t stop Maggie from going back to the life of a medium, either. When she died in 1895, thousands of faithful followers came to pay their last respects.

Weirdly, that wasn’t the end of the story. In 1904, the Boston Journal reported that a skeleton had been found lodged in the walls of the house where it all started. Believers immediately thought it was the skeleton of the peddler, who had been given the initials “C.B.” A few years later, the claims were further examined, and a doctor working with the Occult Review and the American Society for Psychical Research determined that it wasn’t so much a skeleton as it was a few bones. Most of those bones were, appropriately, chicken bones.

4. William Stead

William Stead was one of the victims of the Titanic, and at the time, his was a name that was on the top of the list of the influential and powerful people that had been lost in the catastrophe. Now, sadly, he’s been reduced to a footnote in any story about the Titanic.

Stead has been credited as being the founder of what we now think of as investigative journalism. In 1885, his expose on child prostitutes that were living and working in the streets of London not only brought a whole new level of attention to the problem but also set a new tone in newspapers. (Bizarrely, he was ultimately arrested for his involvement in the story, as he took the child on which the story had focused away from her home without her father’s consent; he spent three months in jail.)

In 1892, Stead came forward with another bit of news: He was getting messages from the afterlife. Specifically, they were messages from dead journalist Julia Ames, and he believed in them so much that he organized an office in which women would sit, receiving messages from the Great Beyond and getting those messages to loved ones.

Regardless of anyone’s belief in the occult, he did leave behind something that was absolutely prophetic. His short story How the Atlantic Mail Steamer Went Down was about a Transatlantic ship that sank with devastating loss of life, because the ship only had lifeboats capable of carrying 390 of the 916 passengers that were on board. He also included a warning that while the story was fictional, it was incredibly plausible.

3. William Wynn Westcott

Born in 1848, Westcott had an incredibly learned background. By 1871, he was a partner in his family’s medical practice and would later become the Deputy Coroner for Northeast London and Central Middlesex. He was an active member of the Freemasons and the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Obviously, he really liked secret societies, so he started his own.

According to accepted lore, Westcott came into the possession of some cryptic manuscripts in 1887. They were written in a code that he could, fortunately, crack, and it turned out that they were instructions for the rites and rituals of the Isis‑Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn. Supposedly there was also instructions on how to contact an “Adept” and get permission to form the society in Britain.

The society took off, and by 1888, there were several temples. Westcott himself had become the “Praemonstrator of the Kabbalah to the Isis‑Urania Temple of the G.D.” But, not surprisingly, the crown tended to frown on that sort of thing, and Westcott, after some of his super‑secret papers had been discovered in a London cab, was forced to leave the organization if he wanted to keep his job. Nevertheless, it flourished without him.

Even today, the organization claims that it’ll help prospective members connect with other spiritual people, attain enlightenment, discover all the secrets of the occult in an easy, step‑by‑step program, and be given all the secrets of “sexual alchemy and soul power.”

2. Allan Kardec

Spiritualism and Spiritism are two different things, and the latter was founded by Allan Kardec in roughly 1856. Kardec, who took his first and last names based on names he claimed he’d had in previous lives, was born Hypolyte Leon Denizard Rivial in 1804. Although he originally studied law, he disapproved of the field’s intolerance, so he turned to translating textbooks and running a school for boys. By 1850, he had been completely taken with the idea of table‑turning, or moving objects from where they sat, and wrote his first book based on spirits that he claimed to be able to channel.

The Spirits’ Book is still widely available, and it’s gone through a series of 25 editions. According to Kardec, Spiritualism was the belief in something that existed within a person’s soul, and that’s not what he was going for. His book was on spirits—actual entities that existed—and communication with them. Much of his initial interest and later proof of the spirit world was based on the phenomenon of table‑turning. In his argument, Kardec pointed out that we don’t dispute that there are forces that we can’t see acting on the world around us, like the forces that cause earthquakes, and said that his beliefs were no different.

Much of the information Kardec got about the spirit world came from mediums gifted in involuntary writing. He was optimistic that as the mediums’ knowledge progressed, conversation would have been easier. Through spirit communications, he formed the basic rules that guide the interaction between the corporeal world and the spirit world.

The bodies we inhabit are temporary vessels for spirits, which exist in an infinite, eternal place. Spirits can be made visible, and some can even be touched. While a spirit exists in a body, there’s a tenuous link between the corporeal and the incorporeal. Kardec also goes into good and evil spirits, with the good ones belonging to the highest order and the evil ones being, essentially, the lower‑class citizens of the spirit realm. Spirits are also always in a state of movement throughout the hierarchy, moving up through the ranks each time they’re reborn. It’s the spirit that dictates personality and person. Kardec also says that every time spirits are reborn, they’ll find other spirits that they’ve known in past lives and eventually remember connections, friendships, and past incarnations.

1. Anna Kingsford

Anna Kingsford was a president of the Theosophical Society, and it’s thought that she was one of the inspirations for the name of the mysterious German woman, Anna Sprengel, who supplied William Wynn Westcott with the documents that he claimed outlined the rules and regulations for the founding of the Golden Dawn. She’s something of a contradictory figure, too. On one hand, she was one of Britain’s first female doctors, and she was one of the driving forces behind the development of an animal rights movement. She also believed that she could talk to fairies, travel through time and space, and that she had channeled visions which included the creation of the universe.

The result of these two very different sides of Anna’s personality is that her writings are incredibly detailed, and, unlike a lot of writings on the occult, they remain consistent throughout. Her huge volume of work is fascinating.

In Clothed With The Sun, she touches on things like the life of Nebuchadnezzar, the story of Persephone, the Greek gods, the trees of creation, the Christian disciples, death, sin, and life. She paints pictures of scenes as she says they truly were, as she’s seen all these moments in visions.

Kingsford writes about some pretty bizarre things, too, like a vision of walking with Jesus and being approached by a man who could see a person’s past lives. She asks Jesus why he has come to Earth as a man instead of a woman when, clearly, woman is the highest form of life there is. Christ answers that while he has been a woman, he has returned as a man in his current form only on the outside, because the tasks and the life ahead of him were not suited to the body of a woman. This is one of three reasons why a spirit can move backward down the reincarnation ladder from female to male; another is transgressions of the spirit. He assures her that on the inside, the spirit within was completely female.