Shannon Taggart

Born 1975, United States

Table-tipping workshop with mediums Reverend Jane and Chris Howarth, Erie, Pennsylvania, 2014

Archival digital print

Shannon Taggart, courtesy CONNERSMITH

Shannon Taggart’s dramatic photograph reduces the séance table to its most essential components: participants’ hands together on a table. Table-tipping was one of the earliest methods that mediums used to communicate with the spirit world. With a group seated around the table, the inanimate furniture would suddenly come alive-tilting, rapping out messages, or even floating into the air. Believers suggest that the group dynamic of a séance distracts and relaxes each sitter, allowing psychic abilities to flourish. Skeptics discredit table-tipping as intentional trickery or believe sitters’ involuntary movements are responsible for the table moving.