How to speak with the dead

"How to speak with the dead" by Sciens is a practical handbook written in the early 20th century. It argues, in a coolly “scientific” tone, that human souls survive bodily death and that disciplined methods can enable communication with them. Framed against spiritualism’s showmanship, it promises evidence, procedures, and cautions for rational readers seeking results rather than spectacle. The opening of the handbook lays out its plan: practical instructions later, but first a case for survival and communication that claims impartiality and “hard facts.” The Preface defends investigation on utilitarian grounds, even asserting that spirit-derived insights into gravitation and levitation could transform aviation, citing Crookes and Crawford and alluding to Edison’s rumored “spook factory.” Chapter I argues that religion and science alike imply survival, distinguishing soul from body via examples (trance, paralysis, sleep), and offers Crawford’s lab weighings as proof of intelligent, discarnate agency, buttressed by Lodge’s “Raymond” and S.P.R. work, plus a moral critique of strict materialism. Chapter II separates impersonal, organizing “life” from the personal, conscious, moral “soul,” listing sharp contrasts and clarifying that “death” ends bodily life but not soul-existence. Chapter III introduces telepathy and “tele-mnemoniky” (memory-reading), proposing an ether-like medium to explain thought and memory transfer, including apparent “thought-reading.

How to speak with the dead, by Sciens. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77281.