Examining the “unearthly archives”: Spiritualism, Psychical Research, and Psychometric Material Culture in the US and Britain

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the intersection of material culture and the occult by exploring the practice of psychometry, drawing parallels between this esoteric mode of object interpretation and more conventional approaches. Coined by physician Joseph Rodes Buchanan in the 1840s, psychometry—meaning “soul or mind measurement”—is the ability of “sensitive” individuals, often women, to read an object’s electrical vibration and glean information about its history, as well as that of its owner, living or deceased. Adopted by spiritualists and psychical researchers in the United States and Britain, psychometry mediated between humans and objects, and humans and their own mortality, in the decades spanning the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on material culture studies, consumer studies, and histories of spiritualism and psychical research, I contextualize and compare firsthand accounts of psychometric readings with more traditional approaches to object-based inquiry to contend that psychometry is a mode of affective design historical practice, a speculative design history that relies on senses other than vision, and knowledge more intuitive than rational.