The Ghost of Katie King: Spiritualism, Séances, and Scandal (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Citegeist. I'm your host, Joshua Spellman. Throughout the golden age of spiritualism, there were many well known mediums. But one spirit emerged from the ectoplasmic ether and obtained a cult like following that converted even staunch men of science into ardent defenders of spiritualism, and that spirit was Katie King. Katie King's influence spanned oceans, and her power was so great that she could manifest a fully physical corporeal form that posed for photographs and even allowed for her pulse to be taken.

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While Katie King's manifestations and seances are thoroughly documented, the history behind the spirit is peak historic drama complete with epic chases, hidden paths, and no shortage of scandal. But as you know, before we can take a crack at the truth, we must first learn about the alleged history of Katie King. Mediums, spirits, seances, These were common occurrences in the post civil war era. The religion or philosophy of spiritualism was at its height. While some mediums could only speak on behalf of or lead activities like table turning where a spirit would tap on a table when a letter was spoken aloud, there were some mediums whose abilities far surpassed your average spirit conversationalist.

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Some mediums were so powerful that they could fully materialize spirits either via ectoplasm or in a full physical form. But who held that power is debated. Many argue that the mediums were powerful, while others insisted it was the spirits who granted the mediums their supernatural strength. As after certain spirits stopped channeling through their mediums, the medium's powers seemingly vanished and never recovered. These powerful spirits were known as spirit controls and they acted as orchestrators of seances and they allowed spirits to come through and manifest during a session using their energy as well as the mediums to draw on.

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One of the most prominent of these spirits was Katie King. Katie King claimed that she had once been Annie Morgan, daughter of the infamous pirate, Henry Morgan. Though her father was known in spirit as John King. Katie King's most notable channeler was Florence Cook, a teenage girl from London, England. Florence learned to channel spirits from famous mediums Frank Hearn and Charles Williams.

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Hearne was known to channel John King as a spirit control in his own seances, but John King was around for much longer and served more mediums than just Hearne. It was actually decades earlier in the eighteen fifties that the spirit of John King provided the dimensions and instructions to build the first spirit cabinet to the Davenport brothers, a pair of mediums from Buffalo, New York. Soon variations of their cabinet became the norm for mediums who could now use cabinets to summon spirits on the physical plane. Mediums would lock themselves in these cabinets often tied and bound and spirit hands and faces and sometimes even entire bodies would manifest from the large curtained openings or apertures. Florence Cook's manifestations of Katie King were no different.

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Sitters would be led into a room where they were allowed to inspect the spirit cabinet before the lights were dimmed or put out completely. You see, light is detrimental to the manifestation of spirit forms. It's most likely why we see spirits most often at night. After the lights were turned out, Florence would step inside of her cabinet, often tied at the wrists, and the seance would begin. Katie King manifested as a young woman dressed in white with a veil or sometimes a headdress.

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During a seance in Hackney on 12/09/1873, a lawyer named William Volkmann attended one of Florence's seances. Once Katie King had been summoned forth from the hereafter and was mingling amongst the crowd, holding the hands of participants as she was won't to do, Volkmann seized Katie by the wrist and refused to let her go, shouting to the others in the room it was none other than Florence Cook herself, citing all of their similarities. Undoubtedly, there were visual similarities between Florence Cook and Katie King, but that was to be expected. Spirits draw energy and literal physical matter from their medium in order to manifest. It was not uncommon for spirits to take on the traits of their medium.

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But the spirit in Florence did have differences. For one, Cook had pierced ears while Katie did not. And Katie King had perfectly smooth skin while Cook was known to have a large blister on her neck that was scaly and rough to the touch. Eventually, Volkmann was restrained by the crowd and the spirit fled into the cabinet where Cook emerged moments later half naked and in distress. It later came out that Volkmann was engaged to another medium named missus Guppy who wanted to besmirch the name of her competition.

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And Guppy was soon exposed as a fraud herself. So those in the spiritualist community determined that Guppy was jealous and projecting her insecurity onto a legitimately skilled medium. A man of science, sir William Crooks, investigated Florence Cook. He made her manifest as Katie King in his own home, which she did successfully, and the spirit of Katie allowed him to weigh and measure her. She talked and walked about his home and even held the family's baby in her arms.

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Over many sessions, countless photographs were taken of Katie King. One even shows Florence Cook and Katie King in the same frame. Completely convinced, Crooks published a report in 1874 boasting of Cook's genuine abilities, which caused quite the stir amongst the scientific community. It was shortly after this publication that Florence Cook announced that Katie King would no longer appear as her mission was complete and she was headed to a higher sphere. Florence Cook may have thought that Katie meant the heavenly realm, the great beyond, perhaps the light, but Katie King was headed to Philadelphia.

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Right before Florence Cook announced that Katie King would no longer be appearing at her seances, Katie King had been frequenting two relatively unknown mediums in Philadelphia, Nelson and Jenny Holmes. The Holmeses were quite a contrasting pair. Nelson was a waif of a man with a delicate if somewhat feminine quality, while Jenny was described as pre possessing and mannish. They rented a nearly empty apartment above a stationer shop on 9th Street to hold their seances. They were relatively new mediums and could not afford to have a custom spirit cabinet built.

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So they used the corner of a room where two doors opened inward to create a triangular shape. On top of the doors, they placed a board to create an enclosed space. Inside either of the doors, they cut holes to act as apertures for the spirits to make their appearances. Now before Katie's arrival, Nelson was the main attraction. After allowing sitters to search his person and the space, he would be tied up and sealed in the makeshift spirit cabinet, and Jenny would lock the door and the only other door into the room.

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Spirits and faces of the audience's loved ones would appear in the apertures, though not always fully formed or immediately recognizable. This was because some spirits simply did not have the strength or knowledge of how to fully materialize And Nelson was not a strong enough medium. That is until one night in May 1874 while conducting a seance, something miraculous happened. Rising from the aperture was not a face that resembled a waxen mask, but a veiled figure. As she lifted her head from the darkness, she revealed a head of beautiful curls.

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She was introduced as Katie King and Jenny requested that she show the audience her hands. Katie acquiesced and lifted her hands up into the window, but there were not only her hands appearing in the cabinet's porthole, but several, including that of a child. The audience gasped, half in fear and half in astonishment. Katie King then went on to tell those gathered about her life as a pirate's daughter and said to one of the sitters in attendance, I wish you'd write to my medium in London and tell her to come here. And she provided Florence Cook's address, seemingly proving that this was the real Katie King.

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Newspapers were abuzz with Katie King's arrival in The States. And by June, the Holmeses had enough money to create a proper spirit cabinet. Their cabinet stood eight feet tall and seven feet wide made of black walnut with two enormous curtain apertures, five and six feet high in its front. It didn't take long for Katie to draw curious crowds to the Holmes' small apartment. Visitors sat in concentric semicircles facing the cabinet, watching and eagerly waiting for Katie to materialize through one of the dark apertures.

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Some attendees became more than just regulars. They became devotees, forming Katie's literal inner circle as they were awarded the regular seats closest to the cabinet. Katie King's materializations grew so powerful that she emerged from the cabinet and walked amongst the crowds, allowing them to touch her hair and her skin, and Katie even accepted jewelry and gifts from sitters, which were bestowed upon her regularly. Some of these gifts were meant for her, but others she was meant to take back to the spirit realm in order to give the sitters loved ones on the other side. Two members of Katie King's inner circle were respected men of science, Doctor Henry t Child, a vaccine physician, and Robert Dale Owen, a politician and utopian socialist.

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They were such loyal supporters that they became somewhat derisively known as her apostles. In fact, Owen grew so close to Katie as a somewhat paternal figure that she addressed him as father Owen. Meanwhile, doctor Child held public lectures on Katie King's materializations and the validity spiritualism as a whole and was working on a larger scholarly book on the subject. That fall, the Holmeses took Katie on the road while staying with their cousins in Blissfield just outside of Detroit, Michigan. They held seances there and planned to tour the nation.

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However, whispers of some event in Michigan began spreading through the grapevine after the Holmes' returned to Philadelphia weeks early. Fall soon turned into winter and in one December seance, Katie King emerged from the spirit cabinet as usual. She made her rounds greeting those in the audience, holding eager hands of those in her inner circle. However, as she made her way over to one regular and bent down to touch him on the shoulder, he recoiled. He tried to rationalize it.

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He tried to tell himself that it made sense. She was a spirit, a corpse. It wasn't unusual. But no, deep down he knew. And this is where the cracks in the world of spiritualism widened to a fissure.

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Now before we get into the unraveling of Katie King, we have to get a quick background on spiritualism and the discrepancies of this spirit's life story. For those that don't know, the religion of spiritualism formed our modern perception of ghosts and spirits. Before its rise in the mid eighteen hundreds, ghosts did exist, no doubt, but in a much different capacity. Instead of loved ones coming back from the other side to communicate with the living or to make their presence known or provide comfort, ghosts were almost solely depicted as the restless dead. They were not friendly.

[00:12:00] - [Speaker 0]
They were menacing and often completely purpose driven, either seeking proper burial or vengeance. Now spiritualism emerged from the grief and loss of the civil war, and it actually has a lot of connections to where I live. The Fox sisters who are often credited with the creation of spiritualism lived about an hour east of me, and the Davenport brothers who invented the spirit cabinet are from where I live right now. And then the modern day world center of spiritualism, the village of Lilydale, is forty five minutes south of here. So I'm kind of like low key in the epicenter of spiritualism, but I don't think that's something to brag about.

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Because there was and still is a lot of deception in spiritualism. Despite most spiritualist mediums being ousted as frauds, there is still an incredibly robust community and religion. Not saying that they're all frauds, but they are prone to be fraudulent. Now, I actually used to work with one of the former leaders of the Lilydale Assembly years ago. And to say that we butt heads is an understatement, but we shan't get into that bit of my lore.

[00:13:11] - [Speaker 0]
Not now. It's a mess, and we have our own spiritual mess to cover. First off, before getting into the real meat, it should be noted that John King or Captain Morgan never had any documented children, let alone a daughter named Annie Morgan. Biographical details supplied for both John and Katie King were incredibly inaccurate, including the dates provided as well as their characterization. Katie King, as materialized by the Holmeses in particular, often used American phrases and seemed to really enjoy calling people you stupid.

[00:13:45] - [Speaker 0]
And maybe this was a little bit of projection on how Katie King really felt about the attendees. I got a good chunk of my base research from this book, Philadelphia Spiritualism and the Curious Case of Katie King by Stephanie Hoover. However, once I began looking at historic sources, I noticed a lot of discrepancies between Hoover's book and firsthand accounts of the seances. And this was a little frustrating because unlike a traditional historian or archivist, there are no footnotes in this book. There is a bibliography which lists some specific articles.

[00:14:19] - [Speaker 0]
But then almost frustratingly, halfway through, she says that there were space constraints and then just listed states and different newspapers that she got articles from. So that was annoying, but we persisted. And I'm not saying that Holmes' research was bad. It's just that there were a lot of differing accounts that came out at different times. Also, with sensational stories and gossip, things aren't always the most reliable.

[00:14:46] - [Speaker 0]
But aside from all of that, one difference I noticed was the Holmes' spirit cabinet. And as mentioned in the story portion, the Holmeses went to Michigan in the fall of eighteen seventy four to stay with Jenny's cousins, the lions, in Blissfield, taking up residence in their home. According to Hoover, they left their spirit cabinet back in Philadelphia, and the Blissfield seances took place with a makes hift cabinet made of draperies. However, the 09/19/1874 issue of the Detroit News explicitly states that at the seance in Blissfield was quote, the cabinet brought from Philadelphia made of rough black walnut boards fitted into the corner of the room and looking like a cupboard. Also, while Hoover covers the Blissfield incident very well, she leaves out one of my favorite details I discovered in the papers, and that's namely that a group of townspeople conspired in clandestine meetings to take down the Holmeses and expose Katie King as a fraud, and they succeeded twice.

[00:15:47] - [Speaker 0]
My favorite headline comes from the Detroit News article that I had just mentioned, and they sure do not make them like this anymore. Holmes's humbug. A news skeptic goes after that Blissfield ghost and finds her to be of the earth earthy, the stupidity of the Blissfield investigators. The ghost is pursued and caught by a brawny Irishman, a desperate struggle with the spirit who's finally captured. This newspaper article tells of an evening news reporter who read about Katie King's manifestations and hoped to expose Katie King himself.

[00:16:19] - [Speaker 0]
However, when he arrived in Blissfield, he heard rumors that Katie King had already been revealed as a fraud. When the reporter made his way to the Lyons' home, he noticed a crowd of men outside looking a little bit lost on the porch. Through the open door to the house, he could see a woman lying on her back on a sofa with a group of five or six women gathered around her. An old man on the porch said, we came here to see the spirits, but missus Holmes has been taken with fainting spells and they ain't gonna have a show this evening. The reporter found this odd, probably as odd as the accent that I just used, especially when he coupled it with the knowledge he had of the rumors back in town.

[00:16:56] - [Speaker 0]
So the reporter engaged in conversation with the professor as Nelson Holmes was sometimes called for some reason. Many publications and individuals have described the Holmeses as being rather simple and kind of illiterate, though they could read and write, but they were they were known to be kinda stupid. During this conversation, Nelson Holmes was seemingly not concerned at all with his unconscious wife and instead went on to tell the reporter that he was mildly disgusted with the treatment he had received at the hands of the Blissfield people in the last couple of days. They have a story, he said, that they caught Katie King in the adjoining lot on Wednesday evening at the time that the seance was going on. And one of them ran after her and caught her and took a cane that he said belonged to me and broke it and showed people pieces of it.

[00:17:47] - [Speaker 0]
But that man is one of the lowest grades, a barkeeper and a bad character. And then, Nelson Holmes went on to explain his wife's current condition. Well, in order to materialize a spirit, we have to part with so much of her own vital forces for the time being. A gentleman sees Katie King in his arms when she was materialized almost wholly by my wife. She parted with her material form immediately and escaped, but the shock so disturbed the psychological condition that my wife became seriously ill.

[00:18:17] - [Speaker 0]
After hearing this, the reporter left the Lyons home and went to town to hear the townspeople's perspective of these exposures. Eventually, he found a group hanging out down by the river who told him everything. First, it's important to understand the layout of the seance room, which is why the newspaper's diagram is particularly helpful. The triangular spirit cabinet sat in the corner of the room kind of like a corner shelf would. However, one of the walls against the cabinet was actually flush against a door to a bedroom, which by all accounts was boarded and nailed up on the other side.

[00:18:52] - [Speaker 0]
And this was the same kind of setup the Holmes' had in their apartment in Philadelphia, which the Holmes' always let visitors investigate. Now in the back of the room, behind the audience and the cabinet, was a door that led to the dining room as well as a door outside to the porch or the piazza. However, on this particular night, a man requested that someone remain in the bedroom during the seance. At first, Nelson protested, but Jenny eventually agreed to this test. Back in the seance room, Jenny had her nephew stand in front of the door that led to the dining room saying that this would guarantee that no outside influences could enter the room.

[00:19:31] - [Speaker 0]
Shortly, the seance began, but nothing happened. No spirits appeared in the cabinet. Jenny claimed that influences such as the September heat were preventing Katie's appearance and that a dark seance may provide better conditions for her spirit to materialize in such a weakened state. As we mentioned earlier, light is known to be harmful to spirits, and getting rid of it would require less energy for Katie. So a dark seance began.

[00:19:58] - [Speaker 0]
After a few minutes of singing and chanting, a veiled figure robed in white appeared in the cabinet. Katie King was able to materialize after all. Jenny slowly turned up the lamps and Katie greeted the sitters before returning to the cabinet. Once inside, Jenny asked if Katie could help materialize a male spirit, perhaps her father John King, and Katie tried, but claimed she was still too weak and that it would require another dark seance to gather her strength. But those in the room clocked the ruse.

[00:20:29] - [Speaker 0]
She was going to use the dark seance to get away, and Jenny would claim that there wasn't enough energy to summon another. And like the skeptics assumed, once the lights were put out, no other spirit came forward and Katie vanished. But now they knew the stunt, And with a man in the bedroom, Katie had to enter through the dining room door where Jenny's nephew stood guard. So they decided to try again on Wednesday. But this time, they'd be ready.

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On Wednesday afternoon, 18 citizens met and concocted a plan of attack for that night. The plan was to have someone stand guard in the bedroom again, which would cause Jenny to request another dark seance. However, this time they would be ready for it, and they would be holding the doors shut. And as an extra measure of caution, they planted two men outside in the bushes in case Katie tried to come in from the outside when the dining room door failed her. And if she then eluded both of these barriers, it didn't mean that she was legitimate.

[00:21:25] - [Speaker 0]
Instead, they would execute their backup plan, plan c as I call it, and they were just gonna jump Katie during the seance. A simple plan for simple men. That night, the seance began, dark of course, and Jenny's nephew once again stood guard by the door to the dining room. However, this time in the dark, a man from the group casually moved his chair in front of the door and rested against it with another man holding it shut. A third gentleman then stood in front of the door leading outside to the porch.

[00:21:52] - [Speaker 0]
The chanting and singing began again as expected, and there was a soft push on the door to the dining room, but the men kept it held in place. The pushing came again twice and more forceful, and the door opened a few inches, and one of the men saw back clicked from a window behind the figure of someone darting away, and then they heard the door to the outside open and close. Unaware of what was happening in the back of the room, Jenny claimed that the conditions were inharmonious and that Katie would likely stay in the Summerlands and could not materialize. Jenny and Nelson proceeded to plead and beg with Katie to just try. And amusing himself, one of the townspeople, a jolly old butcher, knocked on the wall beside him three times to which Nelson excitedly proclaimed, Katie, is that you?

[00:22:40] - [Speaker 0]
But he was met with silence. Meanwhile, outside, a frantic scene was unfolding. The men in the bushes saw two male figures leaving the house, and one returned inside while the other ran into a small field in the back of the house. One of those townsmen posts outside, Lennon, heard something rustling in the leaves and saw in front of him the figure of a boy, and he went on the pursuit. The boy first tried to get into a neighboring house, but the door was locked, so he continued running, but was caught by Lennon as he tried to hop over a fence.

[00:23:11] - [Speaker 0]
Both of them threatened to shoot each other, but the boy wriggled free, hopped over the fence, and the chase began again. But Lennon was close on his heels and even snatched the boy's hat off of his head. But it wasn't until they reached the next corner that a barking dog frightened the boy just enough to slow him down that Lennon was able to tackle him to the ground. The boy screamed for release, proclaiming that he was a girl just as he struck Lennon with a black cane she was holding. But the large man was unfazed and the cane broke into pieces.

[00:23:40] - [Speaker 0]
The struggle continued and in an act of desperation, the tomboy pulled Lennon's head to hers and kissed him on the lips. In his shock, she struggled free, but was soon taken down again. However, instead of continuing the fight, Lennon simply suggested that they talk. While Lennon knew that he was supposed to be on the lookout for the spirit of Katie King, he didn't think anything of the person sitting in front of him. If not only because just two days prior, a woman was arrested in town for wearing men's clothes and Lennon assumed that this was simply another case of a woman in disguise.

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This was helped by the fact that the girl told him a sob story about how she had rich parents and had run away from home, hence her mannish disguise. Lennon, undoubtedly a sap and perhaps a bit thick, bought the story hook, line, and sinker. As they talked, she avoided all questions about her identity, but at some point, let it slip that her name was Eliza White. She asked for help finding her cane, which was lost during the struggle, saying that it was a present from her brother and she couldn't bear to part with it. They looked for some time and as she gathered a couple pieces, she began to slowly walk away before breaking into a full on sprint and disappearing into the night.

[00:24:55] - [Speaker 0]
The next morning, more pieces of the cane were found and Lennon went back to the lion's house. And in the window of the home, he saw the girl from the night before. She nodded and smiled coyly at him. And when Lennon asked the lions, he was told it was the neighbor's girl. But he wouldn't be deceived again.

[00:25:13] - [Speaker 0]
The pieces of the broken cane were shown proudly in town, and it was identified as the cane that Nelson Holmes carried with him everywhere. The townspeople sent a deputy to the Lyon home and asked Nelson to produce his cane, but he refused, even after being offered money by the sheriff to do so. To the townspeople, this solidified that this was Nelson's cane. But suspiciously, Nelson was seen some hours later walking through town quite visibly sporting a cane, but the townspeople noted that this one was brand new and lacked any signs of wear. But the townspeople weren't done yet.

[00:25:48] - [Speaker 0]
Another stance was held, Hoover says on September 23, but the local newspapers say it was on the twenty second, when someone decided it was time to execute plan c. Once again, a dark seance was held and Katie King materialized. After her manifestation was complete, as she was retreating back into the cabinet, mister Frank Brown jumped into the cabinet and grabbed Katie. The lamps were immediately extinguished and a scuffle ensued in the dark. As Katie's rabid followers descended upon mister Brown, exclaiming that the Holmeses could be hurt if something happened to Katie's spiritual form.

[00:26:25] - [Speaker 0]
However, mister Brown said that what he struggled with against in the dark was no spirit. It was made of flesh and blood. It did not dematerialize or disappear in any spiritual way, but forced itself from his grip. Katie King evaded capture once more. The next day, the Holmeses talked about their next tour stop in Adrian.

[00:26:46] - [Speaker 0]
But the train that they boarded wasn't headed to Adrian. It headed back east to Philadelphia, where they hoped news of their exposure would never reach. Unfortunately, the news spread fast, but the Holmeses were still able to spin the story enough that believers in spiritualism weren't deterred. But as I mentioned in December, after a loyal sitter smelled Katie King's breath, though it smelled like it came from a corpse, solidified in this ex believer's mind that Katie was nothing more than a human with poor dental hygiene. This unnamed man conducted a stakeout outside the Holmes' apartment and identified the woman who posed as Katie King.

[00:27:27] - [Speaker 0]
By this time, Katie had not appeared in the Holmes' seances for a few weeks, and she had moved into a boarding house. This unnamed man then went to the boarding house and called for the woman and confronted her about her charade as Katie King. At least, that's the version that Katie King tells in her newspaper confession. However, Hoover tells of a more elaborate scheme where this man befriended her at a bar before telling her he knew that the jig was up. And then he worked with her to create a plan for exposure.

[00:27:57] - [Speaker 0]
Naturally, the story that Katie King tells paints her in a more sympathetic light, being confronted unexpectedly. And this was a version that was published in multiple parts beginning in the 01/09/1875 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer under the headline, Katie King, her full history as related by herself. The tricks and jugglery of the spirit materialization completely revealed and explained. Statement under oath, authentic autobiography. In this article, Katie King, who was later identified as Eliza White, went on to describe the trickery that Nelson and Jenny employed to get her to materialize.

[00:28:36] - [Speaker 0]
Eliza lived above their flat and would come down during the seances and crawl into the spirit cabinet by unscrewing one of the boards on the door that the spirit cabinet butt up against that most deemed impregnable. Now this tactic would explain an article from the summer that mentioned flower petals were seen in the stairwell after a seance that looked strikingly similar to a bouquet that one of the sitters gifted Katie during that session. But the Holmeses were clever in many ways, skirting around requests of skeptic attendees, like one gentleman who wanted to wait in the hallway where the stairwell was. One would think that the Holmeses would protest, but they said, yes. Tomorrow night you may, buying some time to concoct a plan.

[00:29:17] - [Speaker 0]
The Holmeses quickly created a clever contraption using the bed in the bedroom where ladies would place their coats. Instead of having Eliza come down from the apartment upstairs, they cut the mattress and placed a false box at the head of the bed just big enough for Eliza to hide in. And when inspecting the room, the mattress appeared perfectly normal even if one was to lift it up. And this allowed the Holmeses to once again get away with their charade. To many, this proved that they were legitimate mediums since they couldn't conceive of another way for Katie King to materialize.

[00:29:50] - [Speaker 0]
In this newspaper confession, Eliza White pegged the trickery wholly on Nelson and Jenny Holmes, while still claiming to believe in true mediums in order to save face. Eliza told the paper that she got roped into the mess because she was trying to provide for her sick mother and son. And what started out as a temporary gig went a little too far and she was blackmailed into staying. Eliza said that the guilt of it was weighing on her so much that quote, night after night, her pillow was wet with tears. So naturally, she was relieved when the opportunity, quite literally, came knocking for her to unburden her conscience.

[00:30:26] - [Speaker 0]
But as you could imagine, Eliza was far from innocent. She had a motive for coming out of the cabinet. Eliza had been growing tired of her work as Katie King. One, because of her forced confinement in order to prevent Katie King from being spotted on the streets of Philadelphia, and two, because of money. She felt that the Holmeses were not paying her enough and that they rarely ever paid her on time.

[00:30:51] - [Speaker 0]
Obviously, her completely true and under oath autobiography wasn't wholly true either. Now while the newspapers were running the story of Katie King's confession and self exposure, spiritualists were working hard on their end to do damage control. They used the less than stellar reputation for the Holmes' intellect to paint them as incompetent, well meaning mediums who fell victim to a malicious blackmailing grifter in Eliza White. And the spiritualist dug up a lot of dirt on Eliza. Before the civil war, Eliza had married or at least lived with a man named Wilson White.

[00:31:30] - [Speaker 0]
Wilson White eventually volunteered as a musician in the war and they moved to Washington DC. There, during the winter, Eliza was said to entertain the troops. But in spring, eventually, the military unit was sent out to war. And Eliza, as the spiritualists in a hit piece wrote about it, abandoned herself to a life of immorality in Alexandria. By 1870, Eliza was living with Wilson White along with a young son presumed to be his and her mother in Connecticut.

[00:32:03] - [Speaker 0]
Eliza eventually left her husband or baby daddy or situationship and worked as a comic singer wearing revealing outfits. Eventually, she ended up in Philadelphia and got involved with the Holmeses. These revelations were enough to convince tried and true spiritualists of the Holmes' legitimacy. Meanwhile, the men of science, doctor Child and Robert Dal Owen, suffered great embarrassment from Katie King's exposure, both with incredibly bad timing. Luckily, they had some advanced notice of the article of Katie King coming out, but doctor Child had already written one book titled narratives of the spirits of sir Henry Morgan and his daughter Annie, usually known as John and Katie King the year prior, which unfortunately, he said he actually did not write, but simply transcribed as John and Katie King's spirits dictated the book to him.

[00:33:01] - [Speaker 0]
But worse yet, his second book had just come out, and it focused solely on Annie Morgan aka Katie King, and he scrambled to buy up all the unsold copies. Robert Dale Owen, on the other hand, had a much bigger, more time sensitive problem. Atlantic Monthly had been running a series of articles about Owen's life. And the article that was scheduled to come out in January was an article where Owen talked at great lengths about the veracity and the validity of Katie King and her manifestations. Owen pleaded to the publication to pull the article, but as it had already gone to press, they refused.

[00:33:40] - [Speaker 0]
Despite this though, and a little bit shadily, the magazine did somehow manage to include an editor's note expressing that the opinions in the article were not their own and that they could not vouch for the authenticity of its contents. Naturally, newspapers had a field day with this and mocked Owen mercilessly. However, some publications may have felt bad by the time that summer rolled around when news broke that Owen had lost his mind and was admitted to an insane asylum. While Owen's family denied that his condition was related to Katie King and the Holmeses, the papers disagreed. They either stated that his insanity was due to the embarrassment of the Katie King affair or it was explained that this was how he was so easily deceived in the first place.

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As an older man in his seventies, Robert Owen was thought to never recover from his mental break. But to his family's delight, he was released in October that year and declared of sound mind. But unlike Owen, the Holmeses didn't quite recover from the incident. They tried to continue their seances after their expose. And since, thanks to the efforts of the spiritualist community, their reputations came out somewhat intact.

[00:34:53] - [Speaker 0]
However, without Katie King as a draw and having to revert back to static faces at the cabinet, the crowds and the money just weren't there. They continually assured their audiences that Katie King would eventually make return, but until she recouped her energy, she was only able to materialize her hands or a veiled face. As mentioned, the Society of Spiritualists still had faith in the Holmeses and presented them with the opportunity to prove their abilities. They invited Jenny to show off her powers at the Brooklyn headquarters for a six night limited run of seances. Nelson, unfortunately, was not able to attend.

[00:35:31] - [Speaker 0]
The first night started off as usual, the cabinet, the dark seance, the singing, the chanting. But there was a new item that Jenny incorporated, likely due to Nelson's absence. A large sack or a bag that she tied herself in, allegedly to show that she had no hands in the spirits materializing as she was sealed inside with no means of escape until the seance was over and she was untied. The first performance not only saw a successful materialization of Katie King in the cabinet, but her father John King was present as well. During this first seance, Katie King invited those in the audience to come up and touch her face, and the seasoned spiritualists were impressed.

[00:36:12] - [Speaker 0]
Were the Holmeses back on track to success? The second night after Katie King materialized, a woman approached the cabinet and noticed curly hairs peeking out from underneath Katie King's own hair, which looked suspiciously like Jenny's. Now the woman did not keep this to herself, which led to the crowd inspecting Jenny's cloth bag a little bit more closely. And it was revealed that an undone seam with a trick knot let her escape the bag and to navigate the cabinet freely. And perhaps Jenny should have taken this opportunity to call it quits and end her six night residency.

[00:36:46] - [Speaker 0]
But she persisted, and so did her doubters. They jeered and harassed her night after night and demanded new tests and restrictions, like having someone hold her hands throughout the entirety of the seance. All of which Jenny refused. And finally, on the sixth and final night, girl, she made it through. A member of the crowd asked why the spirit of John King did not breathe, but Katie King emanated warm breath that could be felt by the crowd.

[00:37:14] - [Speaker 0]
Apparently, that question was the last straw, and the entire crowd turned on Jenny, corning her and accusing her of using wax masks. The crowd demanded that the other women present search Jenny's person for trickery. At this juncture, Jenny did the only thing that she could do and probably should have done on the second night, and she resorted to her infamous fainting spells. Oh, I may faint, she said as she climbed out of the cabinet, shakily making her way out of the room on the verge of collapse, dramatically holding onto the hallway walls for support. But just as she reached where her hat and coat hung, she snatched them with superhuman speed and sprinted outside.

[00:37:54] - [Speaker 0]
It was naturally at this time that the society of spiritualists denounced Jenny and Nelson Holmes as irredeemable frauds. But like roaches, they refused to die. Nelson and Jenny continued with their seances with the few who still believed eagerly awaiting the return of their beloved Katie King. The patience of these true believers eventually paid off as Katie King finally materialized in full corporeal form at a seance, albeit quite briefly. But it was soon revealed that this manifestation was none other than Nelson Holmes wearing women's clothing.

[00:38:33] - [Speaker 0]
The Holmeses continued to get up to mischief for quite a few years, but eventually faded into obscurity. And what of Eliza White? In 1877, it was announced that she was to star in a play called Katie King or Spiritualism Exposed. But no copy or review of the play has ever been found. And like a ghost, she too disappeared from the historic record.

[00:38:56] - [Speaker 0]
And that closes the cabinet door on Katie King, kind of. Katie King was not just used by the Holmeses or Florence Cook. Like John King, she was used by mediums everywhere from Paris to Portland, all with their own sets of problems and legal issues. But Katie King's exposure eventually led to the first downfall of spiritualism, but it was later revived after the world wars and again now in the modern day with shows like the Long Island Medium and was it Tyler Henry, the Hollywood Medium? And of course, like I said, Lilydale and the religion of spiritualism.

[00:39:32] - [Speaker 0]
Maybe one of these days, I'll take a trip to some of the local connections that I mentioned earlier like Lilydale. I actually really adore Lilydale. It's a very charming town, village, area. But I will say that the mediums, they do a lot of cold reading, and it's not always very good. But I might take a trip up there this summer and release that as YouTube video.

[00:39:53] - [Speaker 0]
I'm actually considering, just so you all know, moving the Citegeist podcast to its own YouTube channel and start making regular YouTube videos on my personal channel again since the audiences for this podcast and my original YouTube audience are not the same. They are conflicting. They are not happy. It's like me and the former president of Lilydale, just button heads. But we'll see what happens.

[00:40:16] - [Speaker 0]
And in other news, I'm moving into a haunted building, At least in so far as that my apartment building actually has its own Wikipedia page with a heading labeled haunting accounts. And guess where the ghost is said to be? My unit. So I'm taking this as a fun little personal test of the validity and existence of the supernatural. And while I would love to do an episode on the building I'm moving into because it's really cool and over 200 years old, I don't wanna dox myself.

[00:40:48] - [Speaker 0]
But we'll see. If I experience something, I I don't think I'll be able to contain it. I will have to make some content. That's that's just how it works. I gotta feed the algorithm and get attention.

[00:40:58] - [Speaker 0]
Only time will tell. Please make sure to rate the podcast on iTunes or give the video a thumbs up if you're watching on YouTube. But most importantly, please tell any of your friends who would like the podcast about it to expand our growing community of bibliographers. And remember, always use mouthwash. Kiss a man on the lips if he's attacking you.

[00:41:18] - [Speaker 0]
I think that's where the mouthwash comes in handy, but maybe not. Maybe the rancid breath would be a little bit more, helpful in that scenario. But until next time, I'll see you in the stacks.