Spiritualism, a religious movement combining Christianity with the belief the souls of the deceased can be communicated with ‘beyond the veil’ through practices like séances, thrived in North America and Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries, capitalising on the high rate of infant and war mortalities during the period. Practitioners channelled spirits with departed children being common manifestations, and the reproductive capacity of women made them the perfect medium. Women could birth spirits without the need of men, and this idea of Spiritualism as an exclusively female parthenogenetic act simultaneously seduced and troubled male investigators.