International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

   

Periodical: Facts

Summary:  From Pat Deveney's database:

Facts.
A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Mental and Spiritual Phenomena, Including Psychometry, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Mesmerism, Trance, Inspiration, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and all Classes of Psychical Effect.
Devoted to the Statements of Mental and Spiritual Phenomena / Pledged but to truth, to liberty and law, No favor sways us, and no fear shall awe

1882-1887 Quarterly, then monthly

Boston, MA. Language: English.
Publisher: Facts Publishing Co.. Editor: L.L. Whitlock. Succeeded by: Soul

1/1-2 March and June 1882-6/7, July 1887 (last?). $1.50 a year. This was the organ of the most egregiously phenomenal side of spiritualism in the 1880s, opening its pages freely to the likes of J. William Fletcher, Henry Slade, Pierre L.O.A. Keeler, Anna Kimbal, J.V. Mansfield, Mary B. Thayer, James A. Bliss, Henry Rogers, and others. Its theoretical standpoint, to the extent it had one, was given on the title page of its bound volumes: "Prove the Truth of all Science, and we do not know by any other means any Truth; we, therefore, give the so-called Facts of our Contributors to prove the Intellectual Part of Man to be Immortal." In practice, the journal functioned as an advertising vehicle for its contributors, who used its pages to describe the wonders they produced. Whitlock, whose wife was the house medium for the journal, was a long-time publisher who published other journals unrelated to spiritualism both before and after this venture.

Other Sources:Harvard University; Kent State University; University of Texas, Austin; Wisconsin Historical Society; Cleveland Public Library; Kent State University; NSAC Lily Dale (entire run); Wisconsin Historical Society.
Issues:Facts V1 Index
Facts V1 N1-2 March-june 1882
Facts V1 N3 September 1882
Facts V1 N4 December 1882
Facts V2 N1 March 1883
Facts V2 N2 June 1883
Facts V3 N1 January 1884
Facts V3 N2 February 1884
Facts V3 N3 March 1884
Facts V3 N4 April 1884
Facts V3 N5 May 1884
Facts V3 N6 June 1884
Facts V3 N7 July 1884
Facts V3 N8 August 1884
Facts V3 N9 September 1884
Facts V3 N10 October 1884
Facts V3 N11 November 1884
Facts V3 N12 December 1884
Facts V4 N1 January 1885
Facts V4 N2 February 1885
Facts V4 N3 March 1885
Facts V4 N4 April 1885
Facts V4 N5 May 1885
Facts V4 N6 June 1885
Facts V4 N7 July 1885
Facts V4 N8 August 1885
Facts V4 N9 September 1885
Facts V4 N10 October 1885
Facts V4 N11 November 1885
Facts V4 N12 December 1885
Facts V4 Wrappers
Facts V5 N1 January 1886
Facts V5 N2 February 1886
Facts V5 N3 March 1886
Facts V5 N4 April 1886 (Partial)
Facts V5 N5 May 1886
Facts V5 N6 June 1886
Facts V5 N7 July 1886
Facts V5 N8 August 1886
Facts V5 N9 September 1886
Facts V5 N10 October 1886
Facts V5 N11 November 1886
Facts V5 N12 December 1886
Facts V5 Wrappers
Facts V6 N1 January 1887
Facts V6 N3 March 1887
Facts V6 N5-6 May-June 1887
Facts V6 N5-6 May-June 1887 Alternative
Facts V6 N7 July 1887
Claude-Generated Themes:   Facts was a Spiritualist monthly published at Boston between 1882 and 1887, and its title is its argument. The magazine existed to present the phenomena of the seance room as demonstrated fact rather than as belief, and its contents are accordingly a register of cases: materialisations described by named witnesses, mediums whose development is followed sitting by sitting, messages recorded and then checked against people who could not have known them, and spirit controls identified and characterised. Materialisation is its central subject, at a density matched by few papers of its size. Around the case reports run the advertisements that sustained it — magnetic healers offering free consultation, mediums announcing their hours — which are a useful record of Spiritualism as a working trade as well as a belief. The magazine belongs to the movement's evidential wing, the strand that answered the fraud controversies of the 1880s by piling up testimony, and it is a dense source for the American seance room at that moment.

Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
Topics:Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism | Physical Phenomena of Mediumship | Psychometry | Spiritualism | Spiritualist Camp Meetings and Communities