Spooky Ladies

From seances to stage magic, Spooky Ladies reveals the rebellious women who used wit, spectacle and the supernatural to survive, scandalise and captivate the world.

Spooky Ladies is a wildly entertaining and sharply insightful celebration of the clairvoyants, mediums, mind-readers and magicians’ assistants who dazzled audiences, scandalised sceptics and carved out lives on the fringes of polite society.

In this fascinating new work by the beloved chronicler of women’s lives, Kaz Cooke uncovers the extraordinary stories of women who conjured ghosts, delivered prophecies, read minds and performed miracles – whether through genuine belief, theatrical flair, calculated fraud or sheer survival instinct. From the Victorian séance parlours of the Fox sisters to the enduring legend of Bess Houdini, these women built careers in worlds dominated by men, using skill, spectacle and audacity to make their own way.

Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters – including Lady Conan Doyle, Helen Duncan, the last woman imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act, Adelaide Herrmann and the ‘Wild Colonial Girls’ of Australia’s spiritualist scene – Spooky Ladies explores the blurred lines between performance, belief, feminism and deception.

Rich with astonishing true stories and fabulous archival photographs, this is a spirited journey through the lives of women who ignored convention, embraced mystery and lived gloriously unladylike lives. By turns funny, thought-provoking and utterly spellbinding, Spooky Ladies asks whether today’s astrologers, TikTok witches and modern mystics are simply the latest in a long line of independent women making magic from their own ingenuity.

About the Author

Kaz Cooke is a journalist-turned-author and cartoonist. Her bestselling and award-winning books are beloved and trusted by generations of girls and women, and have been updated and kept continually in print. They include Up The Duff: The Real Guide to Pregnancy, Babies & Toddlers (formerly Kidwrangling), Girl Stuff 8–12, Girl Stuff 13+ and It's The Menopause.

Her trademark blend of trusted research and humour meets her love of history and archives in You're Doing It Wrong: A History of Bad & Bonkers Advice to Women, Ada, and her latest book, Spooky Ladies. Kaz has been awarded research fellowships at the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Victoria. She lives in Melbourne, where she drinks tea, talks on the phone and can't find her keys.