A Touch Macabre – The Leslie Stringfellow Letters

Join Rachel Whitaker from the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History for a presentation on the spiritualist movement in the Ozarks and the Leslie Stringfellow letters.

Who doesn’t love a good spooky store this time of year? This presentation will explore the spiritualist movement that swept the country in the nineteenth century and led to scientific experimentation that attempted to provide proof, or disproof, of the afterlife. This movement led to seances, claims of automatic writing and the creation of early Ouija boards.

While we might think of this part of the country as removed from that part of the American experience, our Ozark predecessors were not immune to the fascination with the macabre. The Leslie Stringfellow letters were published in 2005 by University of Arkansas librarian Stephen Chism and provide us with some insight into a local family’s desire to contact lost loved ones and perhaps find hope in life after death.

About the instructor:

Rachel Whitaker grew up in Highfill, Arkansas, and attended school in nearby Gentry until she began homeschool in the seventh grade. She attended college at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her educational background is in history and libraries. Rachel’s work in the history field has included internships at George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri, and the Hunter’s Home in Park Hill, Oklahoma. She also spent time among the Kiowa tribe in southwestern Oklahoma, working on a project to collect animal tales. Rachel is currently a history instructor at Connors State College in Muskogee, Oklahoma and student at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She spends her limited spare time outside or reading something not assigned by her professors.