David Brandon Hodge is a historian, collector, and the leading scholar on the history of spirit communication devices. Long fascinated by haunting accounts of table-tipping, séances, talking boards, and ghostly encounters, Hodge has spent the last 30 years carefully curating the world’s largest collections of writing planchettes, Ouija, and obscure spirit communication apparatus, all featured on his popular website, MysteriousPlanchette.com. He is a director and preservationist of the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP), and has contributed spirit apparatus from his extensive collection to museum exhibitions worldwide, including the acclaimed Supernatural America exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum’s Conjuring the Spirit World exhibit, SFO Museum’s One Step Beyond, and the Geister exhibit at Switzerland’s prestigious Kunstmuseum Basel. Hodge holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from the University of Texas, and has traveled extensively documenting spirit apparatus from many cultures and sharing his expertise with institutions worldwide. His research has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine and Rue Morgue, and his popular Ghosts in the Machines column ran for a decade in the pages of Paranormal Review. He frequently appears in prominent programs as an expert on Spiritualism and the occult, including Oddities, Mysteries at the Museum, and Expedition Files, and provided historical consultation and antique props for Rick Alverson’s film The Mountain and Lasse Hellström’s biopic Hilma. Hodge owns and operates Monkey See, Monkey Do! toy store and Big Top Candy Shop in Austin, Texas, where he lives with his two children, Jack and Elliot, and the ghosts of several cats.