Jay Winter has noted that the growth of spiritualism during the war ‘was one of the most disturbing and powerful means by which the living “saw” the dead of the Great War, and used their “return” to help survivors cope with their loss and their trauma’ (Winter 1995: 54). As this book has demonstrated, ghosts and trauma are closely aligned because the ghost both references the passing of a life and, by indicating the continuing presence of the spirit, provides an antidote to grief. The previous chapter explored links between trauma and the plotless ghost, and how that related to an emerging Gothic sensibility at the time. The spiritualist context is different because it softens the horror of trauma by refusing to accept that death is the end. But this does not mean that images of the spirit world are free from a Gothic influence. As we shall see, spirit texts dictated by dead soldiers often assert the presence of malevolent spirits which attempt to hold back a soldier’s spiritual development on the astral plane. These malevolent forms are shaped by a Gothic impulse that contrasts with the benign spirits of dead soldiers. More broadly, the Gothic has a muted but nevertheless important presence within spiritualism at this time, especially in the spiritualist view of the war as a battle between good and evil.

Previous chapters have explored how the uncanny is reworked in tales about dead soldiers, or how trauma generates new formations of a Gothic sensibility. This chapter argues for the continuing influence of often quite specific familiar Gothic impulses. The three principal Gothic influences identified here relate to how the battle between good and evil is orchestrated, the unique way in which wartime spirits may be subject to corruption, and the difficulties involved in interpreting spirit messages which echo issues about analysis, fragmentation and forms of knowing which characterise Gothic texts such as Frankenstein (1818) and Dracula (1897). As we shall see, spiritualism does not just transmit the lost voices of dead soldiers; it also channels an earlier Gothic tradition. The Gothic has a tacit presence within the spiritualist context, often helping to shape models of ‘evil’ associated with the German forces.