Margaret Gaule Reidinger (Maggie Gaule)
Maggie Gaule was born about 1857 in Baltimore, Maryland to Stephen and Catherine Gaule. Her mother was widowed very early, and Maggie was reared in the Catholic faith and educated in a convent. After graduating from school, she took a position as a saleswoman in a shoe store. The Evening Sun (Baltimore), 13 June 1910, interviewed Spiritualist, Dr. John D. Roberts. He told the paper that while Maggie was working, a man came in to buy shoes for his wife. She wrapped them up and as she handed the shoes to him, she spontaneously said, “You’re going to kill the woman for whom you bought these shoes.” Three days later, he shot his wife.
Afterward, Maggie met Mr. Washington A. Dansking, a prominent medium at the time. Her abilities improved, and she made a business of going to houses and sitting in on family seances. Raps on the tables answered questions addressed to her in sealed envelopes. Washie, a native American, was her spirit guide. Dr. Roberts said, “…she always used her powers to help humanity. No person who was too poor to pay was ever turned away from her door when they came seeking knowledge of their dead. She made money, but she spent it for the relief of others as fast as she made it.” She traveled across the eastern part of the United States, working as a test medium in different cities and Spiritualist camps.
In 1904, Maggie married August T. Reidinger in New York but always known as Maggie Gaule. Dr. Roberts said, “They will tell you that Maggie Gaule was clairaudient, which means simply that she heard clearly the voices of spirits; that she was a ‘mental medium,’ as distinguished from a physical medium.” She was pastor of the First Spiritualist Society and later pastor of the First Ethical Society.
In Glimpses of the Next State (1911), author, Vice-Admiral W. Usborne Moore said, “In a quarter of an hour, Maggie Gaule came in, and, standing by the table, gave an address on the objects of spiritualism and the various faculties of mediums. She denied the power she exercised was that of telepathy. Her friends in that room brought their spirits with them, and it was from these spirits that she obtained the information which she imparted; and more to the same effect.” She said she was correct despite only meeting him for the first time that evening. Moses Hull said she, “…has few peers and no superiors as a test medium….”
Dr. Roberts said, “There was no ‘flying dutchman’ spiritualism about her…. Windows did not open and shut in unaccountable ways. She did not sit in darkness clothed in the gown of a priestess of sombre things. She sat usually in a room filled with light—daylight as frequently as not, and told the person who had consulted her first things about the living then things about the dead.” Many of her messages were given to settle family disputes and advise about business affairs and marriage, as well as find lost or stolen articles. “She seldom went into trances during the last of the thirty years in which she practiced her arts in Baltimore. The trance seances were most frequent when she was giving public seances in a hall on Saratoga street, near Pine.”
Maggie died in June 1910 in New York at the age of 48.