Guernica Magazine

Mira Ptacin: What Does It Feel Like to Have a Ghost in the Room?

In her new book, Ptacin goes deep with mediums and clairvoyants, and embraces the unknown. The post Mira Ptacin: What Does It Feel Like to Have a Ghost in the Room? appeared first on Guernica.
Author Mira Ptacin Credit: Shane Thomas McMillan

When I heard Mira Ptacin was working on a nonfiction book about mediums, I immediately thought about how her 2016 memoir, Poor Your Soul, weaves together two narratives of senseless loss. First is the story of Ptacin’s younger brother, who was killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver when they were just teenagers. Later, in her twenties, Ptacin unexpectedly became pregnant; only after embracing the idea of motherhood did she learn her unborn child would not survive. Reviewing the memoir for Vol.1 Brooklyn, Joe Winkler summed up its central question: “How do we, as humans, survive the violence of living?” 

Ptacin’s second book, The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna offers one answer. The book, published by Liveright on October 29, is the result of five years Ptacin spent visiting a summer camp for mediums and clairvoyants in rural Maine. In it, she chronicles the feminist origins of Spiritualism, a little-known religion rooted in the belief that everyone has an innate ability to communicate with the dead. The movement was popularized in the mid-19th century by two sisters who gave public séances, carving out roles for themselves that diverged from what was expected of women at the time.

Through a mix of research, reporting, and personal reflection, Ptacin explores whether we are eternal souls with access to infinite wisdom—or just “giant bags of chemicals, eating and farting our way through life.” The In-Betweens offers a rare glimpse into the day-to-day lives of practicing mediums, which include a host of activities meant to summon spirits. On their face, practices like table tipping, water witching, and ghost hunting may appear no more sophisticated than a Ouija board. But Ptacin cannot help but become a kind of case study in the therapeutic benefits of connecting with the spirit world—or

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Guernica Magazine

Guernica Magazine2 min read
Elegy For A River
Most mighty rivers enjoy a spectacular finale: a fertile delta, a mouth agape to the sea, a bay of plenty. But it had taken me almost a week to find where the Amu Darya comes to die. Decades ago the river fed the Aral Sea, the world’s fourth largest
Guernica Magazine11 min read
The Smoke of the Land Went Up
We were the three of us in bed together, the Palm Tree Wholesaler and the Division-I High Jumper and me. The High Jumper slept in the middle and on his side, his back facing me and his left leg thrown over the legs of the Palm Tree Wholesaler, who re
Guernica Magazine17 min read
Sleeper Hit
He sounded ready to cry. If I could see his face better in the dark, it might have scared me even more. Who was this person who felt so deeply?

Related Books & Audiobooks