How a Spirit Corrected the Standard Dictionary

The latest contribution to The Supernatural Writings of Stuart Palmer is an ostensibly non-fiction article, from the June 1929 issue of Ghost Stories. Henry Ward Beecher (L) and Isaac K. Funk (R) — the central characters of this “true ghost experience”. In How a Spirit Corrected the Standard Dictionary, Palmer relates how the ghost of Henry Ward Beecher sent a message to his friend Isaac Funk, during a seance. Funk was co-founder of the publishing house Funk & Wagnalls, who produced a number of authoritative reference works, including the Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary. According to the story, Funk and his colleagues inadvertently misplaced a valuable ancient coin, and made an error in verifying its authenticity, to boot. So Beecher had to send a message from the Beyond to fix the situation. This is supposedly the incident that converted Isaac Funk to a believer in Spiritualism. He wrote about the events in his book The Widow’s Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena (1904). I imagine that…