The Old Blog in the Desert

The Comstock was nothing if not assorted. It drew miners, merchants, gamblers, preachers, newspaper men, and a fair number of individuals who preferred to keep their occupations descriptive rather than specific.

Among this lively population were women of many backgrounds, schoolteachers, boardinghouse keepers, entertainers, reformers, and, not least, mediums. Victorian society, with its fondness for rigid manners and fainting couches, maintained that women were naturally intuitive, morally refined, and spiritually sensitive.

These same qualities, considered insufficient for voting or holding office, were thought perfectly suitable for communicating with the dead. If a woman could guide a child’s conscience, it followed, by the peculiar arithmetic of the 19th century, that she might also guide a wandering spirit.

In the United States during that era, intuition and moral influence were more readily attributed to women than to men. Regarded as guardians of virtue, women were the moral and spiritual educators of children and society.

At the same time, they were expected to conform to strict standards of propriety and were discouraged from speaking publicly on politics, women’s rights, abolition, or other reform movements. Such matters were in reserve for male debate.

Spiritualism, however, provided a curious and convenient doorway. As mediums, women entered a public sphere that had previously been closed to them.

From lecture platforms and in packed meeting halls, they spoke on philosophy, morality, and social reform, ostensibly as vessels of spiritual insight since advice offered as a message from beyond carried a certain immunity.

A sentiment that might have found dismissal as improper opinion could be received, if attributed to a spirit, with attentive silence.

In this way, many female mediums became popular and influential figures. Spiritualist philosophy soon intertwined with causes such as women’s rights and abolitionism, lending reform an otherworldly endorsement.

Emma Hardinge Britten was among those who found welcome on the Comstock. She was a close friend of Lizzie Doten, the well-known Massachusetts spiritualist and sister of Alfred Doten.

In 1859, Lizzie sent her brother copies of her lectures and sermons, introducing him to Emma and her work. Through such connections, ideas traveled westward along with people, prospectuses, and pickaxes.

Fortune-telling was already thriving in Virginia City, particularly among miners who were ever eager for assurance that the next strike would justify the last failure. When Emma arrived, she entered a community primed for prophecy and was warmly received, finding attentive audiences among those who balanced speculation in mines with speculation in the unseen.

Mark Twain, observing the phenomenon with characteristic mischief, dubbed spiritualism “the New Wild Cat Religion.” Writing in San Francisco newspapers, he treated the subject with tongue-in-cheek humor, poking at table-rappings and trance lectures while acknowledging, in his way, their popularity.

The Comstock offered him no shortage of material. By 1868, spiritualist lectures were being sponsored regularly in Virginia City, drawing large crowds.

Around 1870, a Spiritualist Society took shape in Virginia City. Its hall was beneath the dental office of Dr. Powers at 34 South B Street, between Taylor and Union.

There, amid the creak of floorboards and the murmur of expectation, residents gathered to hear messages said to originate beyond the veil. But not everyone approved, and by the late 1880s, spiritualism faced sustained criticism from established Euro-American churches in Virginia City.

Father Montague, the respected Padre of St. Mary’s in the Mountains Catholic Church and Vicar General of Nevada, openly opposed spiritual philosophy and used his influence to discourage its spread. To him and others in the clergy, the movement was a threat to doctrine and order.

Yet throughout the rise, criticism, and gradual waning of organized spiritualism on the Comstock, more traditional forms of fortune-telling never disappeared. Cards still got laid, palms still read, and hopeful miners still sought glimpses of prosperity in crystal spheres and confident voices.

On the Comstock, belief and skepticism lived side by side, sometimes in the same building, and occasionally under a dentist’s office, or with Zoltar, the Fortune Telling machine at the Sawdust Trails.