The Sleeping Preacher (1794-?)

Rachel Baker, known as "the Sleeping Preacher," was born at Pelham, Massachusetts, in 1794. When she was nine years old, her parents moved to Marcellus, New York. As a child she had religious training, her parents being devout people, and she manifested a strong conviction about sinfulness. In 1811 she showed symptoms of somnambulism, in which she seemed stricken with horror and despondency. But gradually her mind became calmer, and she delivered discourses of singular clarity, marked by a devout and solemn tone. Reportedly, these fits of somnambulism, or trance-speaking, seized her regularly every day.

She began and concluded her devotional exercises with prayer, between which came the discourse. Then a period of apparent physical distress appeared, characterized by shaking, sobs, and groans. At length the paroxysms passed, and she would fall into a natural sleep. Change of scene did not affect these exercises, but the administration of opium would interrupt them.

Such trance sermons later became an integral phenomenon of the Spiritualist movement. Among famous later trance speakers were Nettie Colburn (Henrietta Maynard ), remembered for the trance address before Abraham Lincoln, and Louis Anne Meurig Morris in Britain. Trance addresses of an inspirational or a spiritually guiding nature became an important part of the modern New Age movement under the label channeling.

Sources:

Devotional Somnium; or a Collection of Prayers and Exhortations Uttered by Rachel Baker … During her Abstracted and Unconscious State. New York, 1815.

Remarkable Sermons of Rachel Baker and Pious Ejaculations Delivered During Sleep Taken Down in Shorthand. London, 1815.