Grating The Nutmeg

    Did you ever think the universe was trying to tell you something? I just finished reading Anderson Cooper’s book on the Vanderbilt family. In it, he describes family patriarch Commodore Vanderbilt’s interest in Spiritualism and clairvoyance. Cooper writes “Evidence suggests that the Commodore had begun attending seances as early as 1864, but given the mainstreaming of Spiritualist practices in the 1860s and ‘70s, this was not as unusual as it may sound. The period immediately after the Civil War had seen a dramatic rise in the Spiritualism movement and other alternative modes of healing and perception, driven largely by the staggering loss of life experienced during the Civil War.”  We explored heiress Theodate Pope Riddle’s obsession with Spiritualism in Grating the Nutmeg episode #109 but what did Hartford’s most famous resident of the Gilded Age, Mark Twain, think about it? And what about the ghosts seen in the Twain House? Whether you  believe in the afterlife, don’t believe in it at all, or just wan