A séance is known as the Victorian practice of trying to contact spirits – something that seems to be alive and well on Prince Edward Island.
Beaconsfield Historic House in Charlottetown is normally open to the public Thursday afternoons, but it was closed this week to get ready for another kind of history.
A fraudulent séance will employ the methods and tools historical hucksters and charlatans used to convince their audiences they could contact spirits.
“We do know that many of the spirit mediums operating in the 1800s were putting on a show and were fake,” said Caitlyn Paxson, an historical interpreter. “So, we’re following in their footsteps and exploring why they did that, how they did that, and what the repercussions of it were.”
Séances were all the rage in the Victorian era, but even then, the field was filled with scams.
Paxson says it was a time of great change and many new technologies looked much like magic.
“It was an environment particularly ripe for that phenomena because death was a very big presence for the Victorians in a way that I don’t think we fully understand today," she said.
The reenactments serve as a way to explore that history, and better understand the people who lived in that time.
“We often look at the past as this either romantic ideal or this terrible time, and it was both. It was all things,” said Paxson. “People were complicated.”
The fraudulent séances is part of a broader effort on P.E.I. to bring people into historical places and teach them a little something about the past.
Shows like the one at Beaconsfield Historic House give people who wouldn't otherwise visit a chance to walk through the door.
“I was chatting with one of the attendees and they said to me, ‘You know, I’ve lived here for 20 years and I’ve never been inside this house. Is that a terrible thing?’ I said, ‘No, that’s a wonderful thing, because you’re the exact kind of person we’re trying to reach through these programs,’” said Matthew McRae, the executive director at the Museum and Heritage Foundation.
The historic home will also serve as the backdrop for a Victorian Christmas, another seasonal event to better connect history to the present.
