Abstract
Phelps considers her engagement with spiritualism not as competing religious discourse but as a social spiritual movement through which she could reconsider her Christian world view. While Phelps rejected Calvinist doctrine, she identified herself as Christian to the end of her life, and the author argues that she drew from spiritualism the tools with which to build a reform platform and with which to renovate Christianity. Her continued preoccupation with supernatural phenomena might begin with her grandfather's recollections of his own poltergeist, but her repeated turnings to the spirit world offer both insight into cultural trends and avenues by which she engenders Christian reform. The author traces three trends in Phelps's spiritualist Christianity: those stories in which she explores the practices and manifestations of spiritualism, including seers, mediums, poltergeists and vengeful ghosts; the fiction in which she holds the veil between life and death firmly in place while she visits both sides of it; and, finally, those stories in which the only spirit manifestation is fully Christian.
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