Ghost in the media machine: Frances Ann Conant, the Banner of Light, and the manufacture of the Spiritualist celebrity

Abstract

For fifty years from 1857–1907, a Boston-based newspaper helped form a cultural identity for its thousands of subscribers in a time when the nation struggled to find its place on the global stage, reconcile technological and societal advances with traditional religious doctrine, and cope with the economic and political turmoil of the industrial revolution. Spiritualism offered answers on how to navigate the future by communicating with the spirits of those who had already passed on. No periodical captured that reader interest more completely than the Banner of Light: A Weekly Journal of Romance Literature and General Intelligence / An Exponent of the Spiritual Philosophy of the Nineteenth/Twentieth Century. The Banner’s ability to attract readers centered on its skill at marketing an exclusive medium as a neatly packaged, commodified product. In doing so, it capitalized on the growing connection between consumerism and celebrity within the emerging retail market. By building its reputation and brand on the likeness of a specific medium, Frances Ann Conant (née Crowell), also known as the “World’s Medium,” it allowed the paper to outlive its competitors by decades and successfully recognize its subscribers’ need to belong. As the longest-running Spiritualist publication in America, the Banner’s proprietors innately understood that to survive, the reputational capital of their resident medium had to be protected. Anything that did not align with the Banner’s carefully curated marketing was systematically withheld from or erased from the public record. This research shows that as the Banner worked to strengthen its brand identity, William Berry (Co-Founder), the “real” Frances Ann Conant (the Medium), and John Hubbard Conant (the Medium’s Husband) effectively lost their own. As this strategy of control lost its effectiveness following the death of Frances Ann Conant, the inability of the company to maintain its image significantly contributed to the Banner’s decline. This study recovers these suppressed histories and situates the Banner of Light within the broader narratives of nineteenth-century American print culture, celebrity, and religious commercialization.