LIVE: Talking with the Dead

Okay, our guest is alive. But he has some pretty good dirt to spill, especially for someone who's above ground.

FARGO — Are you one of those people who thinks you can communicate with the dead?

If you lived in the Fargo-Moorhead of the 1880s, you probably believed you could.

That’s what records from that era show,  according to the Clay County Historical and Cultural Society’s Markus Krueger.

A religion called “Spiritualism” was big here in those days, as it was in a lot of the rest of the U.S.

It featured people who called themselves mediums, and who used techniques like “automatic writing,” ouija boards, parlor tricks and photographic sleight-of-hand to convince their audiences they were truly connecting with the dead.

Sadly, the usually turned out to be con men, often preying on those who were recently bereaved.

Krueger sat down for a live in-studio interview for our latest Ghoul Morning segment with Emily Welker to give us a preview of his presentation “Spiritualism: Ghosts, Magnetic Physicians, and Con-Artists” happening this week at the Moorhead Public Library.

In it, Krueger explains why one “medium” went on straight from Fargo-Moorhead to Denver to continue his con and almost immediately landed in jail, and how the U-S Patent Office was once the scene of a real-life seance.

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