The Great War had a unique relationship with the supernatural. Sightings were all but uncommon on the battlefields, and even on the home front, people turned to the supernatural in search of relief for the grief of their loss. As traditional religious beliefs failed, the supernatural became stronger. 

The spiritual world was involved in the Great War in many different ways. 
The Spiritualist movement had gained much popularity and following, especially in the middle decades of the 1800s. In that time, many mediums came to renown, whether they kept that fame or not. Born in the United States in 1848, Spiritualism soon found great popularity in all English speaking countries and beyond. 
But at the opening of the 1900s, it had largely lost its momentum, not least because many mediums had been exposed as frauds. 

WWI changed this once more. All through the war and the subsequent interwar years, Spiritualism had a great revival, as people tried to cope with the terrible loss of so many lives. 

Occultism (The Great War #AtoZChallenge 2021) The Great War had a unique relationship with the supernatural. Sightings were all but uncommon on the battlefields. On the home front, people turned to the supernatural in search of relief… Click To Tweet

The powerless Church

Church attendance had been waning even before 1914. Most people in the Western World would have defined themselves as Christian of one denomination or another. And yet, they confined their religious practices to traditional holidays, like Christmas or Easter. 
The young population, in particular, didn’t find their religious practices meaningful for their lives. Tot them, the strictures of the scriptures seem to be outdated by modern life. 

The emotional upheaval of WWI could have brought the population back into a community of believers. The contrary actually happened. 
Clergymen were often called upon to help rouse young people’s combatant spirit and bring them to join the war effort. This was seen as positive during the first stages of the war, but as the conflict dragged on indefinitely and started to mow down thousands of lives, families found it increasingly difficult to find comfort from the same people who had encouraged their children to join the army. 

Bereaved family started to look for consolation elsewhere. Many found in the Spiritualism movement or in ‘supernatural’ practices – sometimes connected with tradition – a way that allowed the living to contact with the dead. Everyone wanted to speak one last time to their loved ones who had disappeared on the battlefields, never to be seen again. 

The occult on the battlefields

Closeness to the ‘otherworld’ came also from the battlefields. Soldiers’ diaries and letters often spoke of supernatural sightings, premonitions, apparitions of diverse kind. 

Canadian War Museum historian Tim Cook says these apparitions were sometimes ghosts of fallen comrades, other times images of loved ones. They often came to warn of danger and occurred almost exclusively on the frontline (never in training camps or rear lines), that is, on the ‘borderline between life and death,’ as he says. In the front trenches, death was a constant companion, a possibility that may happen any moment to anyone. 
Dead were so numerous in the Western Front’s trenches that it was impossible to give them a proper burial. Many were then buried directly in the trenches, inside the earthen walls. Bones popping out from the mud of the trenches wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. 

No man’s land was another place where death came very near to the soldiers, even when the butchering of the battle had stopped. Retrieving the wounded was sometimes impossible. Their comrades in the trenches sometimes heard their cries for help or pain for hours – and could do nothing for them. No man’s land was also covered with rotten corpses, most of the time. The stench was so strong that fresh troops might find themselves unable to eat. 

The danger was unthinkable in any other circumstances, and soldiers longed for comfort in any form it came. Holy images, family photographs kept like keepsakes, objects of any kind adopted as talismans. Belief in these objects’ occult power was very common in the trenches, and no one considered it to go against anyone’s religious belief. 

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RESOURCES

British Library – Faith, Belief and Superstition
Forgotten History – Angels of Mons
Find My Past – ‘Supernatural Occurrences’ Reported From the Trenches
National Post – Soldier diaries tell of ghosts intervening in First World War: Canadian historian
Spartacus – Ghosts and Visions on the Western Front
No More WRiggling Out of Writing… – Speaking to the dead: spiritualism, secularism & seeing the ghosts of the Great War
HIstory Extra – The Rise of Spiritualism after WWI
History – Talking to the Dead: How the 1918 Pandemic Spurred a Spiritualism Craze
World War I Centenary – ‘A solace to a tortured world…’ – The Growing Interest in Spiritualism during and after WW1
Encyclopedia.com – Wartime Occult Phenomena (World War I)

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