31 Oct 2026
TikTok Mediums, Victorian Séances and The Last Ever Witch | Kate Cherrell
Kate Cherrell on Victorian séances, TikTok mediums, and why the dead never really go away.
Episode Overview
In 1871, a woman called Mrs. Guppy was airlifted three miles across London by spirits and deposited, unconscious, onto a séance table. People at both ends confirmed she was there one minute, gone the next. Kate Cherrell tells this story in the first two minutes. It sets the tone exactly right.
Cherrell has a doctorate in Victorian Gothic and has spent nine years writing about graves, mourning, and séances. She believes spiritualism booms whenever the world is in upheaval, and she has spent decades trying to explain away the man in a blue suit she saw walking through a house in Grimsby, and failing.
In this conversation she explains how Helen Duncan was tried under an 18th-century Witchcraft Act for revealing a state secret during the Second World War, why mediumship was one of the only routes to female autonomy in the 19th century, what cold reading looks like up close, and why someone she knows lost a life-changing amount of money to a TikTok medium.
The Mrs. Guppy opening is delightful. The Grimsby house is unsettling. The TikTok medium section is the most important thing in the episode for anyone with a grieving family member.
Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: Mrs. Guppy airlifted three miles across London
(01:00) Intro: doctorate in Victorian Gothic, nine years of graves and séances
(02:00) Tell me a story: the séance room, the bang, Mrs. Guppy on the table
(04:00) The Fox sisters, Hydesville 1848, where spiritualism began
(05:00) Mesmerism and the ideas that came before
(06:00) Why spiritualism booms in times of upheaval
(07:00) The First World War and the dead who needed to come home
(09:00) The haunted house in Grimsby: footsteps, slashes of light, The Man
(10:00) The man in a blue suit, as real as you or I
(11:00) Skeptical believer: trying to explain it away and never managing
(12:00) Ghost stories as functional objects
(14:00) Victorian memorial culture and the relationship with the dead that didn’t end
(15:00) Helen Duncan: state secret, Witchcraft Act, trial of 1944
(17:00) Portsmouth, HMS Barham, and the arrest
(19:00) What happened to mediums who pushed too far
(20:00) Why mediumship gave Victorian women agency society denied them
(22:00) The modern revival: witchcraft, TikTok, the same patterns
(24:00) Cold reading: how it works
(25:00) The TikTok medium and the unimaginable amount of money
(27:00) The same exploitation, different platform
(29:00) Facebook privacy settings and pre-built readings
(31:00) The sensuality of the séance: smell, sound, darkness
(35:00) Still visiting mediums
(37:00) What protections should exist for spiritualist believers
(39:00) The new book: ectoplasm and the sensory history of the séance
About the Guest
Kate Cherrell has a doctorate in Victorian Gothic and has spent nine years researching séances, mourning culture, and mediumship. She has appeared on Weird Britain, BBC Three’s Britain’s Last Witch, Jonathan Ross’ Haunted Homecoming, and The Yorkshire Exorcist. She is currently completing a book on the sensory history of the séance.
Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413)
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast (https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast)
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod (https://linktr.ee/storycopod)
Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Kate Cherrell.
Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Executive Producer: Jago Lee.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King’s Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard.
