Spectral Aphasia, Psychical Ghost Stories, and Spirit Post Offices: Three Modern Ghost Stories about Communication Infrastructures

Nineteenth-century Spiritualism was a watershed moment in which many of the keywords our communication vocabulary—“medium,” “channel,” and “communication” itself—were first given fleshly ghostly form spiritualist séance, early on likened to “spiritual telegraph.” Throughout this period, newfangled ghosts infrastructures (including telegraph, but also equally novel postal service) developed tandem. This article explores three such boundary genres between living dead: how séance converted “spectral aphasia” haunted houses into domestic séance; loved ones dying far away across “phantasmal empire” turned ghost from an actor message, working tandem with telegrams letters “psychical story”; lastly, American press created “spirit post offices” publish communications dead alongside ordinary “correspondence” living.