The meeting of the Sandhurst Progressive Spiritualist and Freethought Association ended in abject panic as 130 men, women and children screamed and bolted to the doors, fighting each other to be the first to escape a hall plunged into darkness.

But to be fair, the shade of notoriously bloodthirsty Dan Morgan had crossed into the plane of the living.

This story really did appear in the pages of the Bendigo Advertiser in 1875, even if the idea that a bushranging poltergeist really had snatched a Bendigonian's body was open to interpretation.

A young man "had been making himself particularly disagreeable by pretending to be controlled by the spirit of Morgan, the deceased and notorious bushranger", according to the next day's paper.

Spiritualism itself was a genuine belief system.

It attracted a range of devotees hoping to gain profound understandings of our own existence by connecting with the plane the dead occupy.

Some were motivated by the loss of loved ones.

Prominent Ballarat businessman and leading Australian Spiritualist James Curtis was able to keep in contact with long dead love, Annie.

"Curtis believed that he and Annie were spiritual 'affinities', each the other's destined opposite, whose fate was to be re-united forever in the spheres above," historian Greg Young wrote in his thesis James Curtis and Spiritualism In 19^th Century Ballarat.

Other devotees seemed to have sensed a business opportunity, including travelling performers who regularly communed with the dead, predicting the future and even outing killers responsible for local murders.

Most 19^th century Bendigonians appear to have a dubious view of Spiritualist claims, fed by skeptics methodically working to undermine the claims, hostile religious leaders and emerging ideas about mental health and the nature of the human mind.

Yet Spiritualist ideas probably only seem unusual to us because of the society they developed in.

There are plenty of people in other cultures who seem to be able to connect with another plane of existence.

Their experiences are no less profound if we might try to dismiss them.

They are often highly respected for their skills and the sacrifices they are prepared to make to connect with the other side.

They might even be able to share some advice with the Bendigonians who made some amateurish mistakes during their séance, 146 years ago.

It must have seemed so clear in retrospect where things started sliding out of control.

The séance was no place for an "undeveloped medium", one organiser of that ill-fated meeting told the Advertiser amid profuse apologies to everyone who had been affected.

They were indignant that someone had brought the young man along, knowing "full well that he is a subject at present to the control of dark spirits at any moment".

"Such a medium should be kept within the influence of private circles until he is more progressed, and anyone who willfully brings him to a public spiritualistic service is no friend to the cause of spiritualism," the organiser said.

Still, wouldn't it have been obvious the moment the séance began that a problem was brewing? The young man had started swearing pretty loudly.

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A bystander began making "passes" down the young man's body and that seemed to settle things down.

Proceedings took a turn for the worse towards the end of the séance, when the energy in the room changed and the possessed man began lashing out at those nearby.

One of the association's committee members - a man called Boddington - decided he "would soon put a stop to this", according to one account from a witness.

For reasons completely unclear to everyone else in the room, Boddington figured that the best way to regain control was to switch off the hall's gas-powered lights.

It was plunged into darkness.

"A rush, of course, was made by every person to get out, and the screaming of women and the cries of children for their parents in fear of a maniac behind them, together with men fighting for an exit, were not either proper sounds to be heard or proper sights to be seen," they wrote.

At least no-one was badly hurt.

And it should be noted that this was not the only time someone in Bendigo had switched off the lights to force a meeting to a close during this era.

It was to prove a very rare moment of danger in meetings that continued all around Victoria for decades to come.

It is unclear what happened to the young man who was possessed.

Hopefully he mastered his otherworldly gift.

Perhaps he and Morgan even explored the world of the living together before they, like James Curtis and his lost love Anna, finally met up somewhere on the other side of life.

This story is the latest in the Bendigo Weekly's regular history series entitled WHAT HAPPENED?

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