Contacting the spirit of Emily Dickinson .

Karen Tauches

In this experiment I called on the traditions of both Spiritualists and telecommunications. Here participants were invited to go into a private booth, pick up the phone and ask a question. . .and emily dickinson would answer in poetry. . .I wired the telephone receiver to a crusty old mixer on the other side in a secret room, I waited back there till the bells rang, then picked a passage randomly from Emily's book of collected poems and spoke it back through the mixer and into the receiver. And don't get the wrong idea. . .this is not a hoax. . .I believe that through this process we may have indeed called on the spirit of this beloved dead nineteenth century ancestor. It is also interesting to note that Alexander Graham Bell's famous assistant, Watson, was a famous adept. Bell hired him for that reason specifically. . .for many people were expecting to be able to talk to their dead relatives through the invention of the telephone. Imagine a time before the telephone. . .a time of letters and bells and candlelight. . .the idea of talking easily across continents was as absurd as talking to the dead.