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The "Bangs Sisters", Mary "May" E. Bangs and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Snow Bangs were mediums from Chicago, who made a career out of painting the dead or "Spirit Portraits".〔"Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology" 1920 (page 93) By Lewis Spence〕〔Photographing the invisible: practical studies in spirit photography, spirit" By James Coates〕 ==Early years (1860-1895)== Elizabeth was born around 1860 to Meroe and Edward Bangs while they were living in Atchison, Kansas. They moved to Chicago in 1861, and Mary was born there in 1864. Edward was a tinsmith and stove repairman, originally from Massachusetts. Their mother was a medium herself, and soon got her four children (sons Edward and W.B.) into the act. By the early 1870s the Bangs family were performing seances as described in the August 3rd, 1872, ''Religio-Philosophical Journal'' article by Steven Sanborn Jones called, "An Evening with the Bangs Children". People paid to be entertained at the Bangs home. Messages from the dead appeared on slabs of slate as chairs and furniture moved about the room. The children were tied up in a cabinet, then a guitar inside strummed and hands waved from within. For the finale, Mary brought forward a shaved cat, said to be a "spirit cat" from the afterworld.〔 In the summer of 1881, May and her mother were arrested for "doing business without a license",〔"Atchison Little Globe", August 23, 1881〕 but this was dismissed because they claimed to be evangelists, and such charges could not be brought against ministers. On April 2, 1888, two plainclothes police arrested May and Lizzie during a seance and confiscated all of their props. Sadly, Lizzie's seven-year-old daughter died while she was being held. A few weeks later, an April 17, 1888 ''Washington Post'' article reported that Lizzie and May Bangs had created the very lucrative firm, the "Bangs Sisters", which operated spiritualistic parlors in the Chicago area. That year, one of their wealthy clients, photographer Henry Jestram, reportedly paid vast amounts of his fortune for their seances. When Jestram died after being committed to an insane asylum, many blamed the Bangs Sisters.〔Hornellsville Weekly Tribune, April 20, 1888〕 By now, the media were having a field day with the "Notorious Bangs Sisters", with five failed marriages between the two sisters, and Lizzie's bizarre speech during her daughter's funeral service.〔 By November 1890, May was on her second divorce from wealthy chemical manufacturer Henry H. Graham. They had been married under the pretense that his dead wife had told him to do so.〔Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1890〕 According to the ''Chicago Daily Tribune'', in March 1890, a Chicago grand jury dismissed the charges against the Bangs Sisters, but in May 1891, the Illinois Senate passed a bill: "...prohibiting anyone from personating the spirits of the dead, commonly known as spirit-medium séances, on penalty of fine and imprisonment." With the new law in place, and having upset their peers by ruining the seance business, the Bangs Sisters re-invented their act to include portraits, writings, and even typing from the dead. According to a ''Los Angeles Times'' article, the two sisters even fooled one of the main investors in the typewriter, G.W.N. Yost, with their "spirit typewriter" which produced messages from everyone from Moses to James Garfield. In late 1894, Lizzie and May began "spirit painting", with "Life Sized Spirit Portraits a Specialty" printed on their business cards. It was not long before they ventured out of Chicago. As reported in the September 10th, 1894 ''Fort Wayne Sentinel'', the Bangs conducted a Massachusetts wedding ceremony between a wealthy woman and her dead fiancé. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bangs Sisters」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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