International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

   

Periodical: Ghosts

Summary:  From Pat Deveney's database:

Ghosts.
A Magazine of Romance and Reason. Magic, Mystery, Spiritism, and Psychical Research, for Entertainment and Recreation.
1910-1910 Bimonthly
Kansas City, MO. Language: English.
Publisher: Ernest Evangeline. Editor: A.M. Wilson, M.D., conductor. Succeeded by: Magic
1/1, February 1910. 16 pp., 60 cents a year (or $1.00 a year for both this journal and its "twin," Magic).

The two journals were to appear in alternate months. Ghosts was to be devoted more particularly to "thresh[ing] out this ghost business," with discussions of optical illusions, directions for seeing the spectres, labyrinths, the classic literature of ritual magic, and the like. The first issue carried an excerpt from the anonymous Revelations of a Spirit Medium (1891) and a contribution by Henry Ridgely Evans. The companion journal, Magic, was to be devoted more to stage magic and illusions, with articles promised on novel paper cut-out tricks, sleight of hand, puzzles, ventriloquism, and the like. After the first issue of this journal the two were consolidated and published as Ghosts, which continued until the next year. A.M. Wilson, the "conductor" of the journal also published The Sphinx, "An Independent Monthly Magazine for Magicials," which was directed more exclusively to stage magicians.

Other Sources:NYPL.
Issues:Ghosts V1 N2 Feb 1910
Claude-Generated Themes:   'Ghosts' is a stage-conjuring periodical — a trade magazine for prestidigitators — and its overwhelming 'magic' vocabulary is the magic of sleights, illusions and the performer's art, not of occult initiation. Its pages teach hand-passes and finger-positions and praise 'the greatest work on the magic art ever written,' addressing amateur and professional entertainers alike. Its only real point of contact with the esoteric corpus is the old rivalry between the conjurer and the medium: séances, rappings and materialisations appear here as effects to be explained or reproduced on stage rather than believed. It sits outside the taxonomy proper and is retained only for that thin exposure-of-mediumship thread.

Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
Topics:Ceremonial Magic and Thelema | Psychical Research and Parapsychology | Spiritism (Kardecist) | Spiritualism