Spooky Ladies is a wildly entertaining and sharply insightful celebration of the clairvoyants, mediums, mind-readers and magicians’ assistants who dazzled audiences, scandalised sceptics and carved out lives on the fringes of polite society. In this fascinating new work by the beloved chronicler of women’s lives, Kaz Cooke uncovers the extraordinary stories of women who conjured ghosts, delivered prophecies, read minds and performed miracles – whether by genuine belief, theatrical flair, calculated fraud or sheer survival instinct. From the Victorian seance parlours of the Fox sisters to the enduring legend of Bess Houdini, these women built careers in worlds dominated by male rationalists, using wit, spectacle and audacity to make their own way. Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters – including Madame Blavatsky, Helen Duncan, the last woman tried for witchcraft, Girardelli the Fireproof Lady, Adelaide Herrmann and the ‘Wild Colonial Girls’ of Australia’s spiritualist scene – Spooky Ladies explores the blurred line between performance, belief, feminism and deception. Rich with astonishing true stories and fabulous archival photographs, this is a spirited journey through the lives of women who ignored convention, embraced mystery and lived gloriously unladylike lives. By turns funny, thought-provoking and utterly spellbinding, Spooky Ladies asks whether today’s astrologers, TikTok witches and modern mystics are simply the latest in a long line of independent women making magic from their own ingenuity.
