September 2026
Harry Houdini was not a fan of the spiritualism movement. The famous magician worked in his later years to expose the fraud of mediums, psychics, and other spiritualists. This photograph of Houdini speaking to the ghost of Abraham Lincoln was created in the 1920s to debunk spirit photography of the era. Today, people are still seeking to contact historical figures, but instead of communicating with their spirits, they are speaking with chatbots. In “Teaching with Ghosts,” Amy Allen and David Hicks caution against classroom use of AI tools that mislead and (at worst) lie about the past and offer pedagogical tips for evaluating the ghosts students now encounter in the AI era.
Photograph: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, public domain
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