Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,827

This is the grave of Charles Henry Foster.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1833, Foster became a spiritualist. The weird religious movements of the pre-Civil War era brought on by the rapid changes to American society and economy continued after the war to some extent too, almost entirely located among the northern middle and upper classes. This included communicated with the dead. The rise of spiritualism is well-known, largely connected to the idea of the good death and the lack thereof among the hundreds of thousands who died in the Civil War, many of whom were never identified. Devastating for families, to be sure. So people such as the Fox sisters or Foster entered the scene to provide a service. They would serve as a medium between family and their loved ones. It’s worth noting here the southern critique of the North was very much about slavery, but it was also about all the other weirdo social movements of the North and there were indeed a lot of weirdo social movements in the North, including things like this, oddball religious cults practicing free love and such, and plenty to make fun of. It’s definitely true that the customers for these types of grifters tended to be reformist upper class types who opposed slavery and might even have truly crazy beliefs, like supporting women’s suffrage, which even for most committed abolitionists was completely unthinkable.

Foster started as what was called a skin reader. Supposedly, names of spirits would appear on his skin for people to read. Then he moved into what was called pellet reading. This was especially stupid. Foster would have his customers write the name of the dead they wanted to speak to on small pieces of paper. They would then be rolled up into pellets and mixed up with blank pieces of paper too. He would then select a piece of paper and give the name with a message that person had wanted to give the living.

Of course this was all a total scam. But boy did people want to believe it. Foster was exposed in 1872. A guy named John Truesdell wrote about what ridiculousness this all was and believed he discovered Foster’s tricks. He wrote:

I noticed that the medium experienced fresh trouble in lighting his cigar. After several matches had been destroyed in this apparently fruitless attempt, Mr. Foster picked up one of the little paper balls, and slowly spelled out one of the names I had written, and, pointing it out, requested me to see if the spirits were correct. I did so, and, at the same time, seized the other five pellets, which proved, upon examination, to be every one of them a blank / So quickly did I accomplish this little piece of strategy that the medium scarcely realized his dilemma.

But as we know today when it comes to health or religion or so many other things, evidence means nothing. People are going to believe what they want to believe, such as that vaccination causes autism. All the science in the world and all the evidence that the people pushing this are fraudulent idiots? Well that’s just The Man trying to stop us from the truth! So sure, people exposed Foster. But it just didn’t matter. First, part of the exposure was from people also engaged in other dubious tactics who were trying to discredit him so they could push their own personal forms of the big grift. Second, even if the exposure did come from people legitimately disgusted by people such as Foster taking advantage of grieving family members, those grieving family members simply wanted to believe. So in 1874, two years after the piece mentioned above, Foster went to Australia. He was popular among those who wanted to believe down there too.

Foster died in the 1885, at the age of 52. I am not sure why. I do know that this main contribution to American life was engaging in one of the most ridiculous fleecing of people possible. He should be an inspiration to Donald Trump today. He’s probably not even the most famous Charles Henry Foster among historians, as there was a prominent North Carolina unionist during the Civil War who has received more attention. But as a type, he’s good enough for one of these posts. Also, like so many things on that site, the dates on Wikipedia for both his birth and death are wrong and that’s confirmed by the cemetery records.

Charles Henry Foster is buried in Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit some of the other grifters, fakes, and weirdos involved in 19th century alternative religious movements, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Joseph Smith is buried in Nauvoo, Illinois and Phineas Quimby is in Belfast, Maine. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.