Sara Weiss’s Journeys to the Planet Mars

Sara Weiss wrote a lengthy account of life and afterlife on Mars, a place she said she visited through psychic travels starting in 1892.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:44Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:58Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have talked about the spiritualist movement that peaked in the United States and Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries on a bunch of previous episodes of the show. It is a frequent guest topic, not just during October, but a lot of other times of the year. It was a prevalent movement. We have also talked about fantastical accounts of life on other worlds, and sometimes this world. One of those might be the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. So today, we have something that combines the two. Sarah Weiss's account of life and afterlife on Mars. That's a place she said she visited through psychic travels, starting in 1892.

• 3:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  It is possible that she pronounced her last name in a more German way. I think the man she married was a German immigrant, although I could not find a lot of information about him. We'll be sticking, though, to the pronunciation that is more familiar to our primarily English-speaking audience.

• 4:04Holly Frey?

  So to set the stage, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people in the US and Europe were fascinated with Mars. There are written descriptions of Mars going back thousands of years, with the oldest ones in Egyptian, Chinese, and Babylonian texts. Early astronomers observed things like how the planet moved across the sky and how it was brighter at some times than others. The first person to try to look at Mars through a telescope was probably Galileo, and that was something he did in the early 17th century. His telescope couldn't really reveal anything about the planet's surface, but by the late

• 4:44Holly Frey?

  19th century, telescopes were much bigger and more powerful, and newly discovered details on the surface of Mars got a lot of attention.

• 4:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  One such telescope was at the US Naval Observatory. Galileo's telescopes were fairly small devices. They could be held in the hands or mounted on a small stand. But the Naval Observatory's Great Equatorial Telescope had a 26-inch or 66-centimeter aperture. It had a lens that weighed 110 pounds, or 50 kilograms, and it was mounted under a huge wooden dome that was plated with iron. When this telescope started operations in 1873, it was the largest refracting telescope in the world. And today, it's also the world's oldest continually operated research telescope.

• 5:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1877, Asaf Hall used this telescope to discover that Mars had two moons, which were later named Phobos and Demos.

• 5:45Holly Frey?

  That same year, Italian astronomer Giovanni Scaparelli was working at Brera Observatory in Milan and observed lines on the surface of Mars, which he described as "canali." That meant channels, but it was translated into English as canals. Scaparelli was not the first person to describe something like this. That was probably Italian astronomer Angelo Secchi, who was a Jesuit priest in 1859. But Scaparelli started mapping these lines and publicizing his work, and other astronomers started trying to confirm his findings.

• 6:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was challenging. The first successful attempt to photograph something that was not on Earth was in 1840, when John William Draper used a telescope to make a daguerreotype of the moon. Other attempts to photograph other astronomical objects followed. That included more pictures of the moon and of the sun and other stars. But it wasn't until the development of the dry plate process in the 1870s that photography became fast enough to try to capture pictures of Mars. Even then, though, there was almost no surface detail in these pictures. Photos of the moon, taken in the 1880s and 90s, show all kinds of craters and shadows

• 7:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  and other surface features, while photos of Mars, taken around those same years, look more like smudgy blobs.

• 7:13Holly Frey?

  So without the ability to take clear photographs, astronomers had to sketch what they were seeing. Because Mars and Earth are both in elliptical orbits around the sun, the relative distance between them varies dramatically. And Mars was much easier to observe during the windows when the two planets were closest together. That happens roughly every two years. Mars and Earth also both have atmospheres and clouds, which can obstruct the view. So astronomers spent a lot of time waiting for a clear look at the surface of Mars, and even if they got one, it tended to be very brief.

• 7:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, and that roughly two years closest point, sometimes that's a lot closer than others. It's many years between the two planets being actually closest together. The maps that made their way into public view through all of this work gave the impression that astronomers were looking up at Mars and seeing massive networks of linear structures. What was really happening was that they were mostly seeing tiny, short glimpses of different parts of the planet, and they were compiling all of those observations into maps. So these maps were composites, not illustrations of what astronomers were seeing across the whole planet in any given moment.

• 8:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  That, combined with the idea that these were canals, to suggest that intelligent beings were living on Mars, and they were building huge systems of irrigation channels or other waterways, and astronomers on Earth were seeing and recording them.

• 8:52Holly Frey?

  One of the astronomers who really popularized these kinds of maps, and the idea that the canali were an irrigation system that had been constructed by intelligent beings, was Percival Lowell, who started mapping Mars in 1894. He built an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, specifically to study the planet and look for signs of intelligent life. Lowell published three books on Mars. The book simply titled Mars in 1895, Mars and Its Canals in 1906, and Mars as the Aboate of Life, which came out in 1908.

• 9:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  The popular fascination with Mars became known as Mars Mania. Newspapers ran headlines like "A Call From Mars," and "Hello, Mars," and "Something Like Human Intelligence on Mars." Laypeople poured over the work of Lowell and other astronomers. The idea of an inhabited Mars started to show up more often in fiction, including H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds in 1898, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Under the Moons of Mars, which was later published as A Princess of Mars. That was the book that introduced the character of John Carter of Mars in 1912.

• 10:10Holly Frey?

  As we said at the top of the show, this was also around the height of the spiritualist movement, a social and religious movement rooted in the idea that the souls of the deceased can connect to and communicate with the living. Timelines of this movement often start with the Fox Sisters, who reported communicating with spirits in a farmhouse in Hydesville, New York in 1848.

• 10:35Holly Frey?

  Séances and other attempts to communicate with the dead became a popular pastime. I feel like séances on their own are a frequent guest visitor on this show. We talk about them a lot. The first formal spiritualist organizations in the US were founded in the years after the Civil War. And the first national organization, the National Spiritualist Association, was established in 1893.

• 11:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  The rise in spiritualism led to a corresponding effort by scientists and other researchers to explain, or maybe disprove, psychic and paranormal experiences and phenomena. The Society for Psychical Research was established in London in 1882, and the American branch followed in 1885. This also had some overlap with all of the Mars stuff. Simon Newcombe, first president of the American branch of the society, was a Canadian-American astronomer. Percival Lowell had connections with members of the society on both sides of the Atlantic.

• 11:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Lowell's other works had also included things like Occult Japan or The Way of the Gods, an esoteric study of Japanese personality and possession, published in 1894. The field of psychology was also in its infancy, and there was a lot of interconnection between the research into human psychology and spiritualism and psychic phenomena.

• 12:03Holly Frey?

  So that is some of what was happening in the world when Sarah Weiss wrote her book. And we are going to get to that after we pause for a sponsor break.

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• 14:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast, from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

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  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:21Speaker 06

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 16:16Tracy V. Wilson?

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  find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 17:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sarah Weiss published her book on Mars and her spiritual journeys to the planet in 1903, which of course is in the midst of all the public fascination about Mars and the spiritualist movement. Beyond that, though, we don't have a ton of specific detail about her. She was born in Ohio on January 5, 1834. Her father, John McBride, was a farmer. There are a couple of records that spell her first name as Z-A-R-A, rather than starting with an S. And sometimes she is given the middle name of Ditto. I am not sure exactly how that got into the record, but I am pretty sure it is a mistake.

• 18:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think somebody used ditto marks to note that the name being referenced was the same as the one on the line above it, and then that somehow morphed into the word Ditto. There is at least one census record in which her middle initial is D, though, so I guess it is not impossible that somebody really did give her the middle name Ditto.

• 18:36Holly Frey?

  I kind of love that.

• 18:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  I do too.

• 18:39Holly Frey?

  That's a cute name. The McBrides were very religious. Sarah got a basic education, but she was discouraged from reading anything other than the Bible and other religious works. In 1850, when she was only 16, she married William F. Mueller, who was 44. They had children, including a son named Carl Bernard, known as Bernard, in 1854, and a daughter named Adelaide, who went by Ada, and she was born in 1855.

• 19:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  We really don't have any other detail about this marriage. Sarah didn't say anything specific about William and any of her later writing or interviews. And by 1863, she had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, apparently without him. It seems like they got divorced. He later remarried, and he died in 1877. By that point, Sarah had also gotten married again to Adolf M. Weiss. Their wedding was on May 6, 1873, when she was 39 and he was 28.

• 19:41Holly Frey?

  Sarah and Adolf were both interested in spiritualism when they met, and Sarah eventually served as president of the first Spiritual Association of St. Louis. But at first, she viewed spiritualism with a degree of skepticism. That changed after her first experiences with automatic writing. She and her husband had a friend named William Cox, who had died of tuberculosis in Texas after going there for the sake of his health. William and Sarah had a pact that if one of them died, they would try to reach one another from the afterlife. A couple of years after William's death, she was really missing him one day when suddenly her right arm started to shake violently.

• 20:25Holly Frey?

  She said this shaking was relieved only after she got a pencil and the words "Will Cox" wrote themselves on a page through her.

• 20:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Her husband Adolf described her automatic writing this way, quote, "It was her habit to sit in a room, which she had carefully darkened, or from which she had excluded most of the light, pencil in hand with paper before her. She did not know at what instant the actual tracing of letters and words would begin. At one time, when the influence moved her, she wrote for hours. On such occasions, she worked until a condition very like exhaustion overtook her. While she was deeply interested in the various phenomena of the spirit world, she was not a professional medium and confessed her extraordinary experience in full only to her intimate friends."

• 21:19Holly Frey?

  Sarah started conducting séances in which she said she was visited by the spirits of her deceased parents and siblings. She also said her son Bernard sent messages through automatic writing after his death in 1890.

• 21:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  When Sarah's daughter Ada was preparing to give birth, Sarah went to New York City to be with her. Sarah had a very troubling dream that when her daughter went into labor, they were not able to get the doctor. Then when Ada really did go into labor, the doctor hadn't arrived by the time the baby was born. Sarah described being directed by something outside of herself with that presence telling the nurse what to do through her. According to Weiss's account, she was able to assist her daughter through a complicated delivery, even though she had no training as a midwife. And then when the doctor arrived, it was the man she had seen in her dream.

• 22:16Holly Frey?

  Some of what we know about Sarah Weiss's personality comes from an exchange of letters between her husband and psychical investigator, James H. Hyslop, in 1913. These letters were written after her death. In Adolf's words in one of these letters, quote, "A more singularly high-minded woman I never knew, nor one more modest and unassuming. She lacked the literary training, which is the basis of most scientific books. She was, it is true, a woman of quite uncommon order of intellect. But to the end, she seemed surprised and delighted at the unseen influences which guided her in her writing." He also described her as, quote,

• 23:00Holly Frey?

  "A pleasantly normal woman, fond of her home and of quiet entertainments, and of a group of friends who were by no means exclusively of the spiritualistic faith."

• 23:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Adolf also said, quote, "It may throw some light upon her personality if I say that a favorite diversion of hers, when in the presence of intimate friends, was to relate dreams which had come to her. These were embellished with beautiful minuteness of detail. They assumed the aspects of unearthly experiences rather than dreams." He also wrote, quote, "She had a longing to gaze at the stars and often wished to know something of the beautiful shining planets."

• 23:42Holly Frey?

  According to Sarah Weiss, her spiritual voyages to Mars started in October of 1892, while she was recovering from an illness and still really grieving for her son Bernard. She said she was visited by a spirit of a man named Carl DeLester, who had died in Alsace 200 years prior, and acted sort of like a guide and an interpreter. These spirit journeys were physically and psychically exhausting, and the spirit of an Englishman named George Brooks guided her in a more physiological sense. During her visitations, she was eventually reunited with her son Bernard, who sometimes served in a similar capacity to Brooks.

• 24:25Holly Frey?

  She also channeled an artist named Aaron Poole of Philadelphia, who had died 40 years prior, to create images of some of the plant life of Mars. Her account of this, presented primarily as dialogues with people on Mars, was published as "Journeys to the Planet Mars" or "Our Mission to Ento", and that came out in 1903.

• 24:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  In this book, Carl DeLester is described as counselor and guide to one of the spirit bands. The book's preface is in the form of a message directly from him, which is, quote, "In planetary language, known as Ivan Thia, for love's sake." This preface says in part, quote, "With occasional brief interruptions, our journey to the planet, astronomically known as Mars, but to its inhabitants as Ento, which in the Ento language signifies chosen or set apart, extended from October 6, 1892, to September 16, 1894. During this period, through a rather rare phase of mediumship, which we term semi-automatism,

• 25:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  the objective or sole consciousness of our instrument was controlled to write certain observations and experiences. But through various unavoidable conditions, the record was somewhat imperfect, fragmentary, and altogether too voluminous for the purpose in view. Hence, when after quite two years, during which she gradually recovered from the devitalized condition to which her devotion to a most worthy object had reduced her, she expressed her readiness to permit herself to pass under my control for the purpose of revising the manuscript, the contents of which she was almost wholly ignorant. I found myself a little dismayed over the magnitude of our mutual undertaking,

• 26:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  which I well knew would tax our endurance to the utmost, and certainly only patient, persistent endeavor on the part of our instrument and myself, has resulted in what, at the best, we all consider a not very satisfactory rendition of experiences as unique as ever have occurred to one yet embodied in physical form."

• 26:38Holly Frey?

  After Sarah's death, her husband gave a more practical description of the writing process to James H. Hyslop, that her original automatic writing had been in pencil and was almost illegible, and she had written it over again in ink under Carl DeLester's spiritual direction, and then thrown away the original.

• 26:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  We'll talk more about what was in this book after another sponsor break.

• 27:06Speaker 06

  Today's episode is brought to you by YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including but not limited to ad-free, uninterrupted videos. It's great for me. Sometimes my daughter comes up and is like, Dad, I want to watch octopuses using camouflage right now. And so it's great to just go straight to the octopus, ad-free. You've got ad-free, uninterrupted videos. You've got background play. You have offline downloads.

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• 28:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends

• 28:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:14Speaker 06

  Okay, chicken nugget fans. I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself. This new chicken nugget,

• 29:58Speaker 06

  reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 30:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges

• 30:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 31:21Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  According to Sarah Weiss's account of her spiritual journeys, there were spirit bands on Mars that were working to prepare sensitive people on Earth for psychic voyages to the planet. A spirit band had been guiding and protecting Weiss since birth, and so far, she was the only person on Earth who was ready for these kinds of journeys. Her spirit band was full of famous dead intellectual figures from Earth, and they told her all about life on Mars and offered insights about life on Earth.

• 33:06Holly Frey?

  This spirit band included Scottish geologist Hugh Miller, who died in 1856, German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt, who died in 1859, Swiss geologist and naturalist Louis Agassi, who died in 1873, and English biologist Charles Darwin, who died in 1882. Another member was English novelist and politician Edward Bulwer-Litten, who we've talked about on the show before. He died in 1873, and he was probably included in the band because some of his novels had occult and science fiction-esque themes. And then there was Giordano Bruno, who we've also covered on the show before.

• 33:51Holly Frey?

  He was an Italian scholar, occultist, and former Dominican friar, who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600. His works included philosophical dialogues, and his purported heresies included the idea that the universe contains innumerable worlds that are similar to the ones in our solar system.

• 34:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to his being the only one of the people we just named who did not die in the 19th century, Giordano Bruno is the only deceased Earthling to have his own whole entire chapter in Weiss's book. In it, he gives her a message to carry back to Earth. It begins, quote, "Children of Earth's most favored land, children of America. I, Giordano Bruno, once a citizen of sun-kissed Italy, greet you." From there, he goes on to praise the United States for its principles of freedom of thought and speech, and for being a, quote, "City of refuge for the oppressed of other nations." He calls on the United States to stay true to these principles

• 34:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  and to guard its doorways against aristocratic ideas that were trying to break through its temple of equality. It is a very rah-rah America message. He concludes, quote, "May the angels who watch over the destinies of nations be strong enough to guide through the perilous future your ship of state, which through calm and storm steers toward an unknown shore." Amen, amen.

• 35:27Holly Frey?

  After that message, Bruno goes on to say that this isn't just about the United States. Quote, "The heartbeats of your republic send a vitalizing current through all the peoples of our planet. How all-important, then, that this life current shall flow unpolluted to the hearts and brains of all nations."

• 35:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Giordano Bruno also gives Sarah Weiss a Martian name. Up until this point in the book, she's mostly referred to as Medium, but Bruno gives her the name Gentola, which in the Ento language means lady, friend, gentle, loving, kind, beloved, and the like.

• 36:05Holly Frey?

  Beyond her encounter with Giordano Bruno, Weiss's account of Mars has utopian elements. Martian society is described as spiritually advanced and egalitarian. There are some religious sects that sacrifice animals, but the spirits Weiss talks to think they're moving away from that, just as they moved away from doing human sacrifices centuries before. Alexander von Humboldt tells her that there are no class stratifications on Mars, and all labor of every kind is considered to be elevating. He says that the Martians think idleness is a crime and that the Earth could benefit from a similar outlook, with every person having a useful occupation,

• 36:49Holly Frey?

  rather than the, quote, "yearly expenditure of millions of money for the maintenance of armies of men engaged in murdering each other, and for the erection and support of prisons, reformatories, almshouses, and the like."

• 37:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Von Humboldt describes Earth's peoples as uncivilized because civilized peoples do not murder one another. But he also says a day will come when the people of Earth will advance beyond that. But not everything in this book seems so progressive. For example, while Delester describes all humans as essentially the same, no matter what planet they may be living on, von Humboldt gives Weiss a very lengthy explanation of the purported origins of the people who are native to Earth's polar regions. He frames them not as direct descendants of primitive man, but as survivors of a different race that was wiped out by a glacial catastrophe.

• 37:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  The whole thing, in addition to setting the indigenous peoples of the far polar regions as different, his descriptions of them are insulting and racist.

• 37:59Holly Frey?

  There are also descriptions of Mars and its people. Delester tells Weiss that Mars is older than the Earth and far more magnetic. It has a rarer, lighter atmosphere, but one that is extremely humid. This book also describes the waterways of Mars, which are, as had been speculated on Earth, used for irrigation and to carry large amounts of meltwater away from the poles every spring. As a side note, Weiss sent a copy of her published book to Percival Lowell, who had done so much to promote the idea that Mars had intentionally built canals on its surface.

• 38:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  During these voyages, Weiss also sees interesting plants and animals on Mars, buildings adorned with sculptures and intricate windows, a kitchen with an electric cooking range, Martian works of art, and Martian people from different parts of the planet. As on Earth, the Martian people have different physical traits, like eye and skin color, depending on where they are from on the planet. And she learns about Martian religion and culture, and its schools, and libraries, and hospitals, and nurseries. She discusses things with the spirits, like science, philosophy, and spirituality. It is impossible to go into detail about everything

• 39:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  because this book is almost 600 pages long, including a short glossary of words in the Martian language of Ento, tables of Ento colors and numbers, and a list of Ento personal pronouns, including the words for thee, thou, and thy.

• 39:40Holly Frey?

  This book was published in 1903, but Weiss was talking about its contents publicly before that. There are multiple articles about her channeling and spiritual journeys in St. Louis newspapers between 1899 and 1903. An article about her that ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on June 2, 1901, is titled "St. Louis Woman Draws Under Spirit Influence." This article was focused primarily on Weiss's depictions of Martian plant life, including pictures of the plants, which until that point had been kept as a family treasure for seven years. It said of her, quote, "She is what many another good housewife of St. Louis is,

• 40:24Holly Frey?

  a spiritualist in the privacy of her own home."

• 40:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Reviews of the published book were mixed. The St. Louis Republic described it as a, quote, "strangely attractive narrative from the spiritualistic point of view. Quite apart from what it may be considered as a literary production, it contains a quantity of unusual philosophy and many passages of ethical value. Also, it contains some love episodes of an ideal and sentimental character. There are several personalities in the narrative of considerable interest."

• 41:01Holly Frey?

  On the other hand, the Boston Evening Transcripts Books of the Day page said in part, quote, "If anyone is seeking a curiosity, not to say freak, in literature, journeys to the planet Mars should be perfectly satisfactory. The story certainly is a wonder in its way, but it is about as interesting as a table of logarithms or a dictionary." The reviewer described the pictures of Martian plant life as comparable to what you might see in any seed catalog, and said, quote, "If the spirit artist had desired to show something really striking, he should have drawn pictures of the animals of Ento, which, according to the description, are truly wonderful." And perhaps sarcastically, this review says

• 41:43Holly Frey?

  the dictionary of the Ento language would be very useful to tourists who decide to visit Mars.

• 41:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sarah Weiss died of stomach cancer at her home on March 23, 1904, at the age of 70. That was just a year after Journeys to the Planet Mars was published. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch announced her death on its front page. In a letter later on, her husband Adolf said, quote, "The work had so greatly impaired her energy that she went into a decline, which resulted in her death."

• 42:18Holly Frey?

  Weiss's work continued to be published and promoted after her death. The Austin Publishing Company of Rochester, New York, which was owned by Canadian spiritualist Benjamin Fish Austin, reprinted her book in 1905 with the longer title, "Journeys to the Planet Mars," or "Our Mission to Ento, Mars, Being a Record of Visits Made to Ento, Mars," by Sarah Weiss, psychic, under the guidance of a spirit band for the purpose of conveying to the Entoans a knowledge of the continuity of life, transcribed automatically by Sarah Weiss under the editorial direction of spirit Carl DeLester,

• 42:58Holly Frey?

  author of "Story of Decimonhoitus: A Romance of the Planet Mars," illustrated by 13 original drawings.

• 43:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Decimonhoitus: A Romance of Mars, a story of actual experiences in Ento, Mars, many centuries ago, given to the psychic Sarah Weiss and by her transcribed automatically under the editorial direction of spirit Carl DeLester, was published in 1906, which seems to be the first time it appeared in print. That is a little confusing, though, since both the 1903 and 1905 editions of "Journeys to the Planet Mars" mention this book on the title page, at which point it does not seem to have existed yet. It is possible that there was an earlier self-published version of this book that she didn't copyright, but I could not find evidence of it anywhere.

• 43:50Holly Frey?

  Maybe she's the George Lucas of the spirit world of Mars. Austin Publishing Company continued to market her books after this. For example, a 1910 edition of another of Austin's publications, the journal Reason, contains an ad for an offer to get a subscription to the journal and a copy of either of the books at a discount. It ends somewhat hilariously, "Now, what are you going to do about it?" Truly the finest in ad copy.

• 44:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's in all capital letters also.

• 44:20Holly Frey?

  I love it. He's gonna bark at you. In 1930, Austin also published 20 Views of Plants and Flowers of Mars, and that was based on her books.

• 44:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sarah Weiss was not the only person to publish books that married spiritualism and the planet Mars around the turn of the 20th century. Other examples are Henry Gaston's Mars Revealed, or Seven Days in the Spirit World, in 1880, and The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars by Louis-Pope Gradicap in 1903. There is also From India to the Planet Mars by Theodore Flornoy, who was professor of psychology at the University of Geneva, as well as a psychical researcher. That book came out in 1900. James H. Heislop, who translated this book into English, summed it up as, quote, "A book purporting to represent a case of the reincarnation of a deceased

• 45:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  human being on the planet Mars and communicating therefrom regarding its inhabitants, life, institutions, language, and various things pertaining to that planet."

• 45:27Holly Frey?

  As we said earlier, Heislop was a psychical researcher, and his research included trying to determine whether Weiss's book was authentic. He compared it to the writing of other mediums who said they had been in contact with Mars, including Mademoiselle Helene Smith, whose account was detailed in Flornoy's book, and a Mrs. Smeed.

• 45:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Heislop said of Weiss's book, quote, "Whether the book is really a communication about the planet Mars, no one can prove, no matter what he believes. But he can study it as a work of psychological interest, and it will abundantly repay study from that point of view." To that end, pursuing that kind of study, Heislop did things like comparing Weiss's handwriting in a poem that she had written automatically, which she said had been dictated to her by her late brother. He compared that to a regular handwriting sample from when she was not receiving psychic communications. Heislop looked at these writings after receiving them from Weiss's husband,

• 46:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  and he was dismayed to learn that she had thrown away the original copies of her automatic writing for the book. That was what he really wanted to compare, was the book automatic writing and her regular writing. In Heislop's words, quote, "The difference between them is such that you would have to examine them carefully to notice they were written by the same person."

• 46:50Holly Frey?

  Heislop spotted some things that raised doubts. Quote, "It is true that the general idea of numbers and pronouns like our own, especially in the pronouns, will be a dubious fact. It is not universal in the languages of terrestrial people, and that Martians should duplicate those of the English language throughout is a fact that suggests the influence of normal habits on the invention of them. It is equally noticeable also that the notation is decimal, which corresponds with ours." But in the end, he said, quote, "It is impossible at this time to pronounce any final judgment on such works."

• 47:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  By the 1910s, most astronomers had moved away from the idea that the canali on Mars were intentionally constructed. Through advances in both telescopes and photography, it became clear that those marks were a lot more irregular than they had appeared to be on earlier human-made composite maps of the planet. But the idea of life on Mars, of course, continued to be a popular theme in science fiction, including during the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction from the 1920s through the 50s. You could argue that the Golden Age went on longer than that. I found many dates, but that sort of is the core.

• 48:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then in 1965, Mariner IV flew by Mars and took 22 photos of the planet. Those were the first close-up photos of Mars ever taken, and they showed its surface covered in craters and apparently inhospitable to complex life forms as we know them. The question of whether Mars is or ever has been home to some kind of life, of course, that continues to be studied and debated. That was Sarah Weiss and her Mars adventures.

• 48:43Holly Frey?

  Do you have listener mail which may or may not have been written through automatic writing on a typewriter, on a computer keyboard?

• 48:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  I don't think anything was written by automatic writing, but we have gotten some emails about our recent episode about Supreme Court cases relating to children in public schools. And this one is from Sarah, and Sarah said, "Just listened to The Six Impossibles, and when I heard the story about the paddles, I was reminded of my eighth grade history teacher. Along the wall, above a row of windows, he had mounted a whole lot of paddles made for him by boys in shop class. He encouraged them to make one for him and to make it more painful than any other paddle. Most had multiple holes drilled in them, which meant that it would go faster and therefore hit harder, and he used them during class.

• 49:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  This guy had a reputation that apparently didn't horrify the administration the way it horrified all the girls. He never hit a girl, but he would take a boy outside to paddle him during class. This was in Orange County, California. I do hope that eventually someone took him to task. To help us all recover from that story, I'm including photos of our three kitties and our sweet dog. I love listening to your episodes and learning so much history, Sarah." So, and then we do, how do we have adorable cat pictures?

• 50:01Holly Frey?

  Kitties.

• 50:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have, we have a kitty cat draped on the back of a chair. One of mine loves to do that, and she often looks very goofy because she will stretch both of her paws out, one side on the other, as she lounges on the chair back. And then we have Luke and Griffin, who are brothers, sitting by, side by side, looking away from the camera. And then we have Luna the dog watching yard TV with Mercury and Griffin. They are looking out a screen door at what's going on outside. And Luna, as a Taiwanese mountain dog rescued from Taiwan, sitting next to baby Mercury. So adorable, all of these animals. I wanted to read this email because I sort of meant to mention

• 50:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  that so often the paddles at school had holes in them, purportedly because it would make them hit harder. And also that often they were made by people in shop class. At my school, they were not made by people in shop class. If I remember correctly, there was no more shop classic, class happening in my high school, but I took shop as an elective in middle school, and we were not allowed to use any of the shop tools other than the drill press. We were allowed to use the drill press to make these plastic keychains,

• 51:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  which she made by heating up this piece of plastic and then twisting it and drilling a hole. But when we did other things that involved using, say, a bandsaw to cut out wood, the teacher did that because they were afraid we would hurt ourselves. So, no one had the option of making a paddle themselves in shop class. Not that I would actually want anyone to do that, because, as I said, I don't think it is good to discipline children by striking them, and I don't think it is good to have the teachers putting a threat of physical violence against the children in the classroom at school.

• 52:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I find that to continue to be a very strange thing to have happened all through my childhood.

• 52:14Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. So, if you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we are at [email protected]. If you would like to see the show notes to this episode, including links to Sarah Weiss's incredibly long book about her psychic voyages to Mars, that is at mistinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 52:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:01Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:31Tracy V. Wilson?

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