Come Fygures, Come Shadowes

Set in Brooklyn in the 1930s, it relates a sad interval in the life of 18-year-old Claire Nielsen, the oldest of three children being groomed by their determined mother, Morna, to follow in her footsteps as a spirit medium. As depicted by Matheson, spiritualism is indistinguishable from a religious calling, and Morna is a frighteningly fanatical exponent who threatens Claire with hellfire and damnation when she pleads to be relieved of her vocation. Coerced into sitting for seances that make her physically ill, Claire soon finds herself a conduit for ectoplasmic manifestations of the spirit world whose revolting intimacy and intrusive physicality amount to sexual violation.