Emanuel Swedenborg claimed to have communicated with the spirits of dead authorities, e.g. Abraham, Moses, Plato, Jesus, Cicero, and Augustine. Among Swedenborg’s many disciples and admirers were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and John Chapman (“Johnny Appleseed”). John W. Edmonds, a leading nineteenth-century American lawyer, politician, prison reformer, and judge, claimed to have engaged in spiritual communication with Swedenborg.