Familiar Spirits is a memoir published in 2000 by American writer Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie is an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she has also written numerous non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.-Personal...

. In it, she recounts a friendship with poet James Merrill

James Merrill

James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies...

 and his life partner

Life partner

A life partner is a romantic or otherwise very close friend for life. The partners can be of the same or opposite sexes, married or unmarried, and monogamous or polyamorous....

 David Jackson

David Noyes Jackson

David Noyes Jackson was the life partner of poet James Merrill . A writer and artist, Jackson is remembered today primarily for his literary collaboration with Merrill....

 which began in the 1950s.

Merrill and Jackson were both wealthy, well-educated men, who lived an openly gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 life decades before that was common. Together, the two men spent many years gathering Ouija board

Ouija Board

Ouija Board is a Thoroughbred mare racehorse owned by Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby and trained by Ed Dunlop. In a career spanning four seasons, she won 10 of her 22 races, 7 of them Group 1s, including the Epsom Oaks in 2004 and the Hong Kong Vase in 2005...

 messages during séance

Séance

A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...

s, a fact of which Lurie was made aware of early on, and about which she never lost her early skepticism. For Merrill, the poetic result was a 560-page apocalyptic

Apocalypse

An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...

 epic called The Changing Light at Sandover

The Changing Light at Sandover

The Changing Light at Sandover is a 560-page epic poem by James Merrill . Sometimes described as a postmodern apocalyptic epic, the poem was published in three separate installments between 1976 and 1980, and in its entirety in 1982...

(1982), which is in large measure transcribed from supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 voices. In Familiar Spirits, Lurie attempts to provide several rational and mundane explanations for Merrill and Jackson's epiphanies

Epiphany (feeling)

An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something...

 and revelation

Revelation

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...

s.