SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS - Dods, 1st 1854 GHOSTS APPARITIONS, w/EDITOR/AUTHOR NOTES

Title: SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS EXAMINED AND EXPLAINED. JUDGE EDMONDS REFUTED; OR, AND EXPOSITION OF THE INVOLUNTARY POWERS AND INSTINCTS OF THE HUMAN MIND

Book Details + Condition: First edition from 1854 of John Bover Dods' SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS EXAMINED AND EXPLAINED. JUDGE EDMONDS REFUTED; OR, AND EXPOSITION OF THE INVOLUNTARY POWERS AND INSTINCTS OF THE HUMAN MIND. Original brown cloth decorated in blind, lettered in gilt on spine. In very good condition: Binding is tight; cloth of boards rubbed overall; some fading and discoloration to front and back boards; corners and spine ends bumped and rubbed; owner's embossed stamp on front endpaper; occasional foxing and browning, age toning to pages. A solid, tight copy. Text is unmarked save a few areas of underlining and what appears to be editor or author notes (most likely the latter) — areas of small pencil notes, with additions and/or corrections to the text. An example: a line crossed out, with the script "Predictions fulfilled - Put at end." Handwriting appears in line with Dods' correspondences to Abraham Lincoln. (Please see pictures.) This is the text of a series of lectures that were first delivered in Auburn, NY, in 1851. The author, John Bovee Dods (1795-1872) was a New York-born clergyman, philosopher, mesmerist, and early psychologist who spent much of his adult life in Maine. He appears to have both embraced and rejected Spiritualism at varying times of his life: at the time of delivering these lectures he seems to have been taking a middle-ground, suggesting that the phenomena were real, but natural rather than supernatural; the product of a pyschological electrical force rather than of the occult.