Paranormal Petroleum

ED: In the 150 odd years since Americans first discovered how to get oil out of the ground, we have come to rely on the stuff in nearly every aspect of our daily lives. We’re extraordinarily dependent on a steady supply of it, and yet, by its very nature, oil is one of the most unsteady commodities there is. And so today on the show, with concerns over the Keystone XL pipeline fueling debates about America’s energy future, we’re reflecting on the changing ways in which Americans have dealt with the inevitable, oil getting out of control.

We’ll consider the story of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, hear why one Texas governor sent troops to the oil fields in the 1930s, and look back on the year that put the idea of energy independence on America’s political map.

PETER: But first, a story from the time of America’s very first oil boom. It wasn’t in Texas, California, or Oklahoma. It was in Western Pennsylvania. Oil was struck there in 1859, and it unleashed a stream of prospectors who rushed to the region hoping to strike it rich.

But it was a risky business. Only about half of the wells in those early days became productive. Oil geology was still in its infancy. And so some prospectors turned to the supernatural.

BRIAN: One of the best known stories of paranormal activity in the oil fields around this time featured a man named Abraham James. He arrived in Western Pennsylvania in 1866, and on October 31, appropriately enough, something spooky happened to him.

James and three other men were riding in a buggy near Pleasantville Pennsylvania when James suddenly and without warning–

ROCHELLE ZUCK: Is thrown out of the buggy by unseen forces, and moved–

BRIAN: Unseen forces? You mean non human sources.

ROCHELLE ZUCK: That’s correct.

BRIAN: This is Rochelle Zuck, who was written about James and his deep connections to the spiritualist movement. Spiritualism, which took off in America right around the same time as the oil industry, centered on the belief that it was possible for the living to communicate directly with the spirits of the dead. So on that day in 1866, when James was thrown from his wagon, he was supposedly receiving messages from the spirit plane.

ROCHELLE ZUCK: His spirits communicate to the men that this particular spot is the site of a tremendous oil reserve, and a well should be placed on this location. And James, under the influence of these spirit guides, thrusts a penny into the ground.

BRIAN: James and his cohorts eventually sunk an oil well on that spot. It was a solid hit. And the well would eventually produce more than 100 barrels a day and spark yet another wave of speculators. It wasn’t unusual to see prospectors using all kinds of methods for divining where the oil was going to be. They used dowsing rods and other kinds of tools, sometimes just their noses. But among these seekers, it was the spiritualists that most captured the attentions of the oil men. I sat down with Zuck to talk about why oil prospecting and spiritualism were such a good match for each other.

ROCHELLE ZUCK: Accounts of James suggest that the spiritualist were looking to demonstrate spiritualism’s practical applications. And spiritualists felt that with their potential for understanding the unseen aspects of the natural world, they felt that they had unique contributions to make to the oil industry, whose success depended on the location of unseen oil reserves. And so the oil industry and spiritualism, to an extent, one could argue that both are invested in a belief in the unseen, whether that unseen represents deceased loved ones or these underground oil reserves.

BRIAN: And were the spiritualists successful in demonstrating the practicality of their beliefs? Did the spiritualists help promote oil in any way?

ROCHELLE ZUCK: They did. One thing that’s important to note is that spiritualism had an established literary network. And so when James, for example, strikes oil, this is written up in spiritualist publications across the country, as well as local papers and publications related specifically to oil. So one of the things that spiritualism brought to the endeavour was this established literary network.

BRIAN: Why do you think oil men were particularly attracted to the spiritualists?

ROCHELLE ZUCK: I think there’s a number of reasons. First, in a world where there are no oil experts, someone like James was as good as the next guy, and oil men were willing to entertain a number of methods. As one writer for the New York Tribune reflected quote, “This business is all lottery.”

This second is that it’s important to remember that in the 19th century, industry and industrialization were often framed as potentially corruptive influences to American culture.

BRIAN: This is era of the robber baron.

ROCHELLE ZUCK: This is the era of the robber barren, but we also have this legacy that equates farming and agrarian production with civic virtue, coming out of the Jeffersonian tradition, for example. There are also religious discourses that suggest that the pursuit of wealth and capital is potentially corruptive for individuals and societies. And so spiritualism also offered a kind of guiding morality to the oil industry, in the sense that someone like James is framed as a synthesis of the spiritual, the industrial, and the scientific. And so it is a way, I think, for the oil industry to frame itself as not antithetical to people’s moral and spiritual lives.

BRIAN: Do you think that once the science of geology was better established that all of these spiritualists became an embarrassment for the oil industry?

ROCHELLE ZUCK: I think there is a certain amount of that, yes. Because you see, for example, in accounts from the mid 20th century an attempt to distinguish the modern scientific industry from what is framed as its chaotic and superstitious beginnings. And so James and his harmonial well become a kind of amusing footnote in the broader story of the oil industry, as this industry seeks to present itself as cutting edge, modern, scientific, and professional.

BRIAN: Rochelle Zuck is a professor at the University of Minnesota – Duluth.

PETER: It’s time for a short break, but don’t go away. When we get back, we’ll consider two different ways of controlling one of the most volatile commodity markets in history.

BRIAN: You’re listening to BackStory. We’ll be back in a minute.