Séance for the Living
All Souls’ Day or Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
Conjure Up the Spectral Voices of Departed Friends—by Video Call
About Séance for the Living
Séance for the Living asks us to bridge the gap between those whose quick pulses prove their continued union of flesh and spirit and other living persons to whom that description also applies, but who maybe live in a different town so it’s hard to meet up. Building on the reflective tone of All Souls’ Day (as observed by the Catholic Church), this holiday may not involve reckoning with mortality but can demand patience with network connectivity issues or wireless headsets that pair with the wrong device. As the novelist Arthur C. Clarke observed, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Today we encourage you to conduct a séance, not to contact the dearly departed, but to reconnect with friends to whom you haven’t spoken in ages. Arrange candles and talismans for a vaguely mystical ambiance, maybe add a dramatic scarf—not too near the candles though—and summon the screen-trapped avatar of a still-breathing acquaintance via phone or your preferred video-chatting app. It’s a day to reminisce by reaching out so your best friend from college can speak with you “from the great beyond” (so long as their ethereal realm, be it Tampa or Denver or somewhere in between, has adequate internet or cellular service).
Ways to observe
(A) Low effort
Turn on a TV to scroll or click through programs until you see one starring at least one actor who has definitely died since the show was recorded. Congratulations! You’ve summoned a manifestation of the dead. For someone whose work as a medium began today, you can be very proud.
(B) Recommended
Create a makeshift magic 8 ball with a single six-sided die by writing out affirmative, negative, or evasive answers each assigned to one of the numeric values represented on the sides of the dice. Ask a question, roll the dice, and accept the pre-written reply next to the number you’ve rolled as an oracular pronouncement.
(C) High effort
Five days after the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories shaped early detective fiction, thousands of people gathered in a theater to see a spiritualist receive and transmit his promised communication from the afterlife. Draft a plan for how you would like your surviving friends and family to look for expressions of your posthumous presence.
Inspiration
All Saints’ Day (yesterday) is for the saints appointed by God, the platinum-tier dead. All Souls’ Day (today) is for everyone else: whether their lives were exceptional or banal, in death their stature is conferred by loving memories rather than traces of the divine. To ease the darker implications of an afterlife in which a soul’s conditions would either reflect their former piety and goodness or failings in faith and virtue, a 10th-Century French Abbot, Odilo of Cluny chose the day for an occasion when the living might seek to intercede with God by petitioning for the relief of those in purgatory through offerings and prayers. Celebrants around the world commonly visit cemeteries to clean and repair loved ones’ tombs: in Brittany, it's traditional to anoint a sepulcher with holy water; in India, one might light incense and scatter flower petals; in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it’s customary to burn candles at grave markers. In southern Italy, children may receive sweets said to be gifts from their deceased ancestors.
A Séance for the Living can be less macabre than appeals to mitigate the torments of the dead, and the living spirit with whom you commune may both receive and bestow the grace of unexpected human connection, a welcome remedy for the sorrows of a punishing day.
Adornments
Watch
Frequency (2000)
Not a ghost story per se, but a poignant sci-fi drama about reaching across time. An eerie aurora links a 1990s son with his long-dead father via ham radio, letting them chat 30 years apart and even rewrite tragedy.
The Frighteners (1996)
A vastly underrated horror-comedy from Peter Jackson. Michael J. Fox plays a psychic con man who teams up with friendly spirits to scam people, until a dark supernatural threat emerges. It’s a clever twist on ghost-hunting that balances campy laughs with an unexpectedly heartfelt story.
Listen
Ouija Board, Ouija Board by Morrissey
Morrissey tries contacting a departed friend only to be cheekily told to "push off." The song’s melodramatic gloom is layered with wit, perfectly capturing an irreverent séance vibe.
Read
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
A deeply strange novel set in a graveyard “bardo” (limbo) in 1862. Abraham Lincoln grieves for his young son Willie, who is stuck as a confused ghost among a chorus of spirits. The story is a tragic yet comic father-son tale told from the perspectives of both the living and the dead.
Eat
Victorian Funeral Biscuits
Historically, these biscuits were wrapped in paper printed with morbid verses and sealed with black wax as mementos. For a modern, less morbid take, bake spiced cookies, using molasses, ginger, and caraway to evoke flavors of the era, and wrap them like old-fashioned favors.