Netflix Supernatural Suspense Series Involves Swedenborgian Church

Last month, Netflix released a new supernatural suspense series, Things Heard and Seen featuring Amanda Seyfriend and James Norton. The couple move from Manhattan to upstate New York so that Norton’s character can take a teaching position at a small college. The locals include members of a Swedenborgian congregation who apparently have mediumistic powers. The founder of the Swedenborg, Emmanual Swedenborg generated a voluminous literature describing his journeys into the Heavenly precincts, including many meetings with the spirits of the deceased. The Swedenborgian Foundation has this to say about the series:

“In the April 29 Netflix release Things Heard and Seen, a young professor and his wife (George and Catherine Claire) move from New York City to the Hudson Valley, where he has just landed a job at the fictional Saginaw College. George promptly runs into a professor who declares that he is a believer in Emanuel Swedenborg, one of a group of people in the area who follow Swedenborg’s teachings.

Later in the movie, we see the professor’s group conducting a séance to try to contact the restless spirits that Catherine Claire has seen in their house. There’s a clear connection drawn in the movie between the idea of spirits surviving after death and the presence of ghosts in the Claires’ house. But how much of what’s in the move reflects what Swedenborg actually wrote? Are Swedenborgians actually real-life “ghost whisperers?” We break it down below.”

Read their whole accounting: https://swedenborg.com/things-heard-and-seen-separating-the-swedenborg-from-the-story/.

Now they know how we felt after Strange Angel started airing!

Here’s a trailer for the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCAaonjgDEA&feature=emb_imp_woyt.

Thanks to Soror Amy for the tip!

THINGS HEARD & SEEN, (aka THINGS HEARD AND SEEN), Amanda Seyfried, 2021. © Netflix /Courtesy Everett Collection

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One Comment

  1. Never thought i’d see the words “suspense” and “Swedenborg” on the same page!

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