Everybody has different stories about where I came from. Nobody really knows.

Once the social and spiritual opening was created for women in the form of spiritualism, suddenly ambitious women who wanted to participate in the culture had a kind of a voice.

Even back in its colonial days, America developed a reputation as a safe harbor for people with unusual or radical religious beliefs.

I think spiritualism, mesmerism, the mental healing movement, provided some people with the most meaningful experiences of their lives.

Science, as it reaches the public mind, has both served to discredit and unintentionally reaffirmed mystical ideas.

America became a special source of attraction to people who were fleeing the aftereffects of the 30 Years War and the religious persecution that began to sweep through Europe in the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. And when people got here, very often they succeeded.

Americans were in love with mesmerism because it was something that you could do in your own home. You could mesmerize or hypnotize your aunt or your mother or your father and people would go into these trance states and you could introduction autosuggestions tot hem or as some people saw it, you could cure them of illnesses.