The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp by Mira Ptacin

Abstract

Reviewed by: The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp by Mira Ptacin Jade Hagan Keywords Camp Etna, Spiritualism, medium, communication with the dead, death, ghost, paranormal, women's rights movement, abolition movement mira ptacin. The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna. New York: Liveright/W. W. Norton, 2019. Pp. xxviii + 260. It is commonplace to describe Spiritualism in terms of a desire to communicate with the dead. Less recognized is the undead nature of that desire, and of Spiritualism itself. In The In-Betweens, Mira Ptacin demonstrates spiritualism's endurance, and enduring appeal, through her account of the presentday characters and historical contexts of Camp Etna, a still operational and little-known Spiritualist camp in rural Maine. Given the steady increase of academic studies of Spiritualism's nineteenth-century origins and contexts, Roger Luckhurst points out in a review that appeared in this journal in 2017 that new studies of Spiritualism have "to fight hard to find space to say something new in this area."1 Ptacin's focus on Spiritualism as it is practiced today, as well as her specific focus on the past and present of Camp Etna, are what enable her to "say something new." Through Ptacin's personal interviews of Camp Etna's members, direct participation in Spiritualist practices and events, and research in the Camp's archives, The In-Betweens not only contributes to our understanding of this particular camp's place in the history of Spiritualism, but also serves as a meditation on the state of religion and faith today. Although Camp Etna was once "one of the largest Spiritualist communities in the nation," it does not have the same recognizability as other Spiritualist camps such as Lily Dale or Cassadaga, in part due to its remote location in the middle of Maine (13). Ptacin's ostensible aim in visiting Camp Etna many times over several years, and in recovering its history in her book, is "to learn about how a strong, independent, faith-based subculture of women (and a few men) live and have lived for centuries, unbeknownst to most of us, in a specific way that is uniquely fulfilling to them" (xxii). Echoing major studies such as Ann Braude's Radical Spirits and Alex Owen's The Darkened Room that are concerned primarily with Spiritualism's challenges to traditional gender roles and ties to nineteenth-century women's rights movements, Ptacin goes further than these previous works in suggesting that the movement remains a source of empowerment for women today (xxii–xxiii, 78). But the scope of The In-Betweens is much broader than this characterization suggests. In under three hundred pages, Ptacin manages to traverse a wide range of issues in existing scholarship on Spiritualism: Spiritualism's connection to abolition and other social reform movements, the movement's fascination [End Page 155] with and appropriation of Native American culture, how Spiritualism fills a void in our culture's attitudes toward death, the relation of Spiritualism to mass media and the entertainment industry, the popular appeal of Spiritualism and critiques of organized religion, how the counterculture and New Age movements of the 1960s and '70s both preserved and transformed the legacy of Spiritualism, and debates about modernity and (dis)enchantment. Alternating between the past and present of Camp Etna, the introduction and nine chapters of The In-Betweens trace the ways in which Camp Etna has historically navigated these issues and continues to grapple with them today. Each of the nine chapters explores a different facet of Camp Etna through the lives of specific individuals and descriptions of specific practices. After Ptacin describes her aim in seeking out Camp Etna in the introduction, the first two chapters concentrate on the history of Spiritualism and Camp Etna. Many scholars will be familiar with the historical touchstones—the Fox sisters, the connection between Spiritualism and nineteenth-century women's rights and abolition movements—covered in the first chapter. But the second chapter's turn to Etna's camp historian, Diane Jackman Skolfield, who recounts the history of Camp Etna by way of "Etna's most famous medium," Mary Ann Scannell Pepper Vanderbilt, and her Native American spirit...