Elsa Barker (1869–1954) was an American novelist, poet, and short-story writer. Born in Leicester, Vermont, she was orphaned at a young age following the deaths of her parents, Albert G. and Louise Marie Barker. She pursued an early career as a shorthand reporter, teacher, and journalist. Her editorial work included contributions to the Consolidated Encyclopaedia Library, she lectured for the New York Board of Education, and she was a staff member of Hamptons magazine. She wrote ‘The Scab’, a labour-themed play performed in New York and Boston between 1904 and 1906, and her first novel, ‘The Son of Mary Bethel’, was published in 1909.

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Barker had a deep interest in the occult, a passion she inherited from her father. She joined the Theosophical Society and was later initiated into the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega. Her time in Europe from 1910 to 1914, particularly in Paris and London, proved to be a turning point in her spiritual journey. In 1912, she experienced a strong compulsion to write a passage whose origin was unknown to her. She later discovered that the words were purportedly messages from the late Los Angeles judge David P. Hatch. This led to the publication of ‘Letters from a Living Dead Man’ (1914), followed by ‘War Letters from the Living Dead Man’ (1915) and ‘Last Letters from the Living Dead Man’ (1919).

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In her later years, she studied psychoanalysis intensely. She spent time on the French Riviera from 1928 to 1930 before returning to the United States. Barker passed away on 31 August 1954.