How was the ghost-summoning Spiritualist movement navigated by bereaved mothers in nineteenth-century literature and culture? In an era of séances and spirit mediumship, female authors experiencing loss turned to the ghost story as an invaluable form of therapeutic expression. Exploring themes of communication and community and of loss and reconnection, prominent women writers in Britain and America, including Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, alongside lesser-known authors, such as Florence Marryat, used Spiritualist literature as a profound response to grief. For readers invested in lived experience and literature, Emily Vincent's new examinations of archival sources, life-writing, periodicals, poetry, and ghost stories reveal how nineteenth-century mourning culture was fundamentally shaped by women's spectral tales. Whether they were ardent séance attendees or sceptics of psychics, this study explores how women were united in using the Spiritualist ghost story as a form through which premature loss could be mediated, soothed, and even healed.