Daniel Dunglas Home

Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886) was a Scottish spiritualist medium known for séances and reports of feats including levitation. He became famous for performing before audiences that included European aristocrats.

Home’s levitation claims: Accounts described Home rising or moving through the air during séances, though the claims remain disputed. The most famous feats associated with Home were reports of levitation.
Séance: A gathering intended to communicate with spirits, often through a medium. Home’s performances took place in séances, where witnesses interpreted unusual events as spiritual phenomena.
Harry Houdini: An American escape artist and magician who investigated and publicly challenged spiritualist mediums. Houdini represents a later, systematic campaign to expose alleged spirit phenomena as deception.
Victorian spiritualism: The 19th-century movement that sought evidence of communication between the living and the dead. Home became one of the era’s most prominent public figures in spiritualism.
Ashley House séance: A London séance in 1868 at which witnesses reported Daniel Dunglas Home floating outside a window and entering another. This disputed episode became the best-known specific account of Home’s alleged levitation.
Spiritualism: A religious and philosophical movement asserting that the living can communicate with the spirits of the dead. Home’s mediumship became famous within the movement that gave séances their spiritual meaning.
Joseph McCabe: An English writer and former Catholic priest who became a prominent critic of spiritualism. McCabe challenged favorable accounts of Home and emphasized the weakness of the evidence.
Society for Psychical Research: A British organization founded in 1882 to investigate claims involving psychic and paranormal phenomena. The society institutionalized inquiry into phenomena associated with mediums such as Home.
Cox–Home controversy: A dispute following a séance investigated by the London Dialectical Society, involving accusations and defenses of Home’s mediumship. The controversy shows how Home’s séances became subjects of public scrutiny.
Mediumship: The claimed ability to communicate with spirits or convey their actions through a living person. Home’s public identity rested on claims that he mediated contact with spirits.

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SéanceRelated: Home's demonstrations made him one of Spiritualism's most famous mediums.