Anna Eva Fay

Anna Eva Fay was one of the most iconic and successful mediums and stage mentalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known as "The Indescribable Phenomenon" and "The High Priestess of Mysticism," she enthralled audiences across America and Europe with performances that convinced many she could summon spirits, communicate with the dead, and read minds. Her extraordinary stagecraft, psychological acuity, and theatrical flair made her a legend in an era when the boundary between spiritualism and entertainment was deliberately blurred.

A Childhood Steeped in Spiritualism

Born Ann Eliza Heathman on 31 March 1851 in Southington, Ohio, just three years after the Fox Sisters had sparked the spiritualist movement, Fay entered a world already captivated by the possibility of communication with the dead. Her childhood was marked by hardship: when her mother died young, she was fostered by a spiritualist family and lived as a servant. Surrounded by table-rapping, slate-writing, and séances from her earliest years, she gave her first public exhibition in a schoolhouse as a child.

Her life took a dramatic turn when she met Henry Cummings Melville Fay, a self-proclaimed medium and confidence man with ties to both exposing and perpetrating spiritualist frauds. He became her manager and husband, and under the name "Henry Melville Fay" taught her the secrets of fraudulent mediumship — including the intricate rope-tie techniques she would become famous for.

The Cabinet Act and International Fame

Fay's signature performance involved being bound to a chair inside a curtained cabinet while extraordinary phenomena occurred: musical instruments played, objects moved, bells rang, and hands appeared through the curtains. The apparent impossibility of these manifestations — performed while she was tightly bound — drew enormous audiences and established her as one of the most famous performers of her age.

When the Fays reached London in June 1874, their performances at the Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, caused a sensation. Although billed as entertainment rather than spiritualism, Fay was immediately hailed as a genuine physical medium by the spiritualist community — and this caught the attention of one of the most eminent scientists in Britain.

The Crookes Experiments

In February 1875, Sir William Crookes — the discoverer of thallium, inventor of the radiometer, Fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the most respected scientists of the Victorian age — invited Fay to his London home for a series of controlled experiments. The test was ingenious: Fay was asked to grip two electrodes connected to a galvanometer in an adjoining room. Any release of the electrodes would break the circuit and register on the meter.

Yet phenomena continued to occur while the galvanometer showed the circuit unbroken. A heavy musical box was moved across the room, opened, wound up, started, and stopped. A handbell was rung. Crookes's locked bureau was opened. Crookes published his findings declaring Fay's mediumship genuine.

How did she do it? Decades later, Fay confessed to the psychical researcher Eric Dingwall in 1913 that she had duped Crookes. She later revealed to Houdini the precise method: she gripped one handle of the battery beneath her knee joint, keeping the circuit unbroken while her hands were free to produce the phenomena. Magic historian Barry Wiley has also suggested she may have had help from Crookes's own assistant, Charles Henry Gimingham, who had built the experimental apparatus.

Reinvention and The Magic Circle

As the star of spiritualism waned in the early twentieth century, Fay adapted brilliantly. She shifted from séances to theatrical mind reading, performing billet-reading tests and thought-transmission demonstrations that drew on the same psychological skills but framed as entertainment rather than supernatural claims.

In 1913, during a tour of Britain, Fay applied for membership of The Magic Circle in London. So great were her abilities that she was elected the first Honorary Lady Associate of The Magic Circle — a remarkable distinction for a woman in the Edwardian era, and a testament to the respect she commanded among professional magicians.

Confession and Legacy

After her retirement from performing in 1924, Fay was visited by Harry Houdini, who was then conducting his famous crusade against fraudulent mediums. To Houdini, she confessed the full extent of her methods — the rope-tie techniques, the galvanometer deception, the use of confederates planted in audiences. Her honesty in retirement stood in striking contrast to the decades of deception that had preceded it.

Anna Eva Fay died on 20 May 1927 in Melrose, Massachusetts, at the age of seventy-six. Her legacy is complex: she was simultaneously a fraud and a pioneer, a deceiver and an entertainer of genius. She paved the way for countless mentalists who followed, demonstrating that the line between "genuine" psychic phenomena and masterful performance could be made invisible to even the most brilliant scientific minds.

The original version of this article appeared in The Magic Circular, the official journal of The Magic Circle.

Original Magic Circular Article

Download the article as originally published in The Magic Circular

Download PDF