Maggie Fox (left) and Kate Fox
Icy blasts swirled around the tiny frame farmhouse on a bleak March evening in 1848. The weathered story-and-a-half dwelling sat in a snow-covered field in the hamlet of Hydesville, New York, a farming community just east of Rochester, midway between the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario. Inside the home, the Fox family—John, Margaret, and their two daughters, Maggie and Kate, huddled in the dark beneath their blankets and quilts, shivering from the cold and, perhaps, from the desolate night sounds as well. The howling wind seemed to carry the voices of the dead as it probed the cracks and crevices of the old wooden house. If spirits were to walk abroad to meddle in the affairs of man, it would be on a night like this.
The family shared the same bedroom in the tiny home, with John and Margaret sleeping in one bed and Maggie, age fourteen, and Kate, eleven, in another. The two girls snuggled together for warmth, an easy camaraderie for the sisters, who were seldom far apart at any time. The dark-haired Fox girls were a fetching pair: Maggie, plump and pixie cute, and Kate, slender, solemn, and ethereal, with huge, soulful eyes. Maggie and Kate were the only Fox children remaining at home, their four older siblings having grown up and moved on. Perhaps that was why the sisters felt the loneliness of their isolated dwelling so keenly. It would have been nice to have more friends around to dispel the monotony. As the girls whispered beneath their blankets, they may have been discussing an ingenious way to add a bit of fun to their lives.
The Fox family had moved into their rented home the previous December, while awaiting the completion of their new house a short distance away. The winter was especially harsh that year, trapping the family indoors for much of the day, the long nights sending them to bed at an early hour. Those nights seemed to stretch forever, black and silent except for the ghostly voices carried on the wind. Maybe there were spirits hovering about the house—who could say? That question seemed to find an answer in the middle of March, when a new night sound startled the Fox family into alertness. Shortly after the four had retired, they heard distinct rapping noises, as if someone were knocking on the floor, walls, and ceiling of their bedroom.1 Mrs. Fox implored her husband to investigate, although a search of the house revealed no possible source of the noises.
The rapping sounds continued every night for the next two weeks. On the night of March 31—the eve of April Fool’s Day—Mrs. Fox sent her husband to ask a neighbor family to come witness the strange noises. Mr. Fox returned home with their neighbor Mary Redfield. Mrs. Redfield listened to the rapping sounds, which appeared on que. Mrs. Fox and her daughters had recently begun interacting with the rapping noises, convinced that they came from the spirit of a murdered peddler who’d been buried in their cellar (itinerant peddlers were often the focus of ghost stories in that period). Mrs. Fox asked the “spirit” a series of questions, to which it responded with a rap for “yes” and silence for “no.” Other questions required the spirit to answer with a series of raps: How old is Maggie? Fourteen raps. How old is Kate? Eleven raps.2
The incredulous Mrs. Redfield immediately fetched her husband, who invited several other neighbors. Before the night was over, a crowd of villagers filled the Fox home. The next night, several hundred people stopped by to witness the spectacle, which Mrs. Fox attributed to her daughters’ affinity with the spirit world, since the rapping only occurred in their presence. Maggie and Kate were delighted to play their parts, asking their resident shade numerous questions on behalf of their neighbors: Who was your murderer? A former resident of the house named John Bell. Is there a heaven? Yes. Are the spirits of our dead friends and loved ones around us? Yes.3
Before long, newspapers carried stories about the strange goings-on in Hydesville, some of them supporting the claim that Maggie and Kate Fox possessed the ability to communicate with the spirits of the departed.4 The accounts signaled the start of lifelong careers for the two girls. In short order, they would become the most famous mediums in the country. The curious events at Hydesville in 1848 marked the birth of the phenomenon known as Spiritualism, an international movement based on the belief that the human spirit passes through many states and that the dead can speak to the living. In the heyday of Spiritualism, from the 1840s to the 1920s, vast numbers of adherents—some say millions—hung on the words of an army of self-professed mediums, those “gifted” individuals who could supposedly call forth the spirits of eminent historical figures and deceased loved ones.5
The belief that humans can communicate with the spirit world was nothing new. It’s been a staple of religion and the occult for centuries, although the seers and oracles of old tended to do their spiritual communicating in private, hidden away in caves and other mystical hotspots. The new Spiritualism democratized the contact process, bringing it to theaters and into people’s homes so the public could hear what the dead were saying firsthand. Mushrooming into a combination of entertainment industry and unorganized religion, the movement rewarded its most celebrated practitioners handsomely through their lectures and private séances.
Spiritualism appealed to people from every level of society, although the bulk of its supporters were from the middle and upper classes, many of them active in abolitionist and women’s suffrage efforts.6 Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was an enthusiastic believer, as was noted British scientist Alfred Russel Wallace and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who held séances in the White House to communicate with her dead son.
In addition to launching the modern Spiritualism movement, Maggie and Kate Fox symbolized its contradictions. The two sisters wore the mantle of fame for four decades—uneasily at times—then fell into disrepute after publicly confessing that they’d been perpetuating an elaborate hoax all along. Although Maggie later recanted and once again took up her role as a medium, the sisters ended their days in poverty.7 Despite the frequent unmasking of fraudulent mediums, people continued to believe in Spiritualism, and many still do, as witnessed by the scattering of Spiritualist churches in the United States, Britain, and other countries.
The Fox sisters lived in a place and time of great cultural upheaval. Their home in western New York State was located in the Burned-Over District, a region named for its frequent fire-and-brimstone religious revivals. It was there that Joseph Smith claimed to have discovered the golden tablets that sparked the creation of Mormonism. The area was home to utopian groups and communities of Shakers and radical Quakers, the latter being among the strongest supporters of abolitionism and women’s suffrage. In 1848, the Burned-Over District was the site of the first women’s rights convention in America, held in Seneca Falls.8
Internationally, the second half of the 1800s saw seismic shifts in scientific thinking. In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the foundation of evolutionary biology. At the same time, geologists were proclaiming that our planet is many millions of years old (scientists have now determined that the earth is at least 4.5 billion years old). The mechanisms of evolution and the discovery that the earth is far older than formerly thought contradicted long-held religious views, igniting controversies that have never gone away.
In the early 1860s, the Civil War—the bloodiest conflict Americans have ever fought—added to the nation’s ferment. The country seemed to come untethered as more than six hundred thousand soldiers perished. Spiritualism offered the prospect of communing with those lost loved ones. And the testament of departed souls that heaven was real and that the dead were waiting there for us gave comfort to the religious, whose beliefs seemed to be under assault.
It was the ideal moment for the Fox girls and Spiritualism to catch the public’s fancy. Maggie and Kate’s older sister Leah was quick to seize the opportunity. Following up on the notoriety of the first spirit rappings in Hydesville, Leah, a single mother living in nearby Rochester, took her younger sisters in tow and guided their careers as professional mediums. Leah moved her sisters to Rochester, where they continued to demonstrate their abilities at a series of private “spirit circles,” or séances. Maggie and Kate summoned the spirit of the murdered peddler and also that of a local woman who’d been poisoned by her husband. Besides making the usual rapping noises, the spirits moved a heavy parlor table, tugged at guests’ clothing, and played the piano. Even a skeptical visiting minister was convinced the girls’ abilities were genuine.9
In Rochester, the girls perfected their routine, working out a system of communication with the spirit world in which rapping sounds could be linked to the letters of the alphabet. Despite continuing skepticism and occasional hostility—many Christians thought that communicating with spirits was akin to witchcraft—the sisters prepared to make the leap to public presentations. On the evening of November 14, 1849, four hundred people paid a twenty-five-cent admission fee to attend their inaugural appearance. Although Kate was away visiting friends, Maggie and Leah took their place on the stage of Corinthian Hall, Rochester’s largest theater. After a windy lecture by their presenter, Maggie called up the spirits to answer questions from the audience. The performance stirred up the locals so much that they formed a committee of town residents to determine if the sisters were pulling off a hoax.10
At the end of three days of tests and observations, during which Maggie and Leah were subjected to a tearful strip search by Rochester matrons, the committee announced that the sisters had not used fraudulent means to create the rapping sounds. The decision did little to settle the issue. Skeptics still thought the sisters were tricking the public, while believers saw the decision as confirmation that the sisters could actually talk with spirits. It was an argument without the slightest chance of resolution. The only thing it accomplished was to publicize Spiritualism beyond western New York. Following their profitable four-night run in Rochester, the Fox sisters were unleashed upon the world, for better or for worse.
In the ensuing years, the Fox sisters inspired, baffled, and entertained audiences in the United States and Britain through their private séances and public appearances. Although Maggie and Kate were the stars, Leah eventually proclaimed her own powers as a medium.11 People attended their demonstrations for a variety of reasons. Some hoped to catch the girls out, to see if they could spot how they pulled off their parlor tricks. Others came with open minds, willing to be amazed. The sisters’ most ardent—and vulnerable—patrons were people grieving for departed loved ones. The entire Spiritualism movement leaned heavily on the supposition that the living could find comfort from the spirits of the dead. In that regard, the Fox sisters no doubt brought solace to many—as long as they plunked down the price of admission.
The notoriety the Fox sisters received naturally inspired imitators. Hundreds of people suddenly discovered that, lo and behold, they too possessed the talents of a spiritual medium. The gorgeous young Cora L. V. Scott, for example, produced a surge of interest in spiritual matters among men. A full-blown industry sprang up, complete with conventions and summer camps. Private home séances became immensely popular with women’s groups—like metaphysical Avon parties. Publishers cranked out books and periodicals to serve the market, some emphasizing the religious aspects of Spiritualism and others promoting social reform.12
As Spiritualism gained in popularity, adepts competed to come up with showier types of spiritual manifestations. In addition to rapping noises and levitating furniture, mediums conjured up spirit lights and ghostly writing (predecessors of the Ouija board came into widespread use in the 1860s). Hypnotists claimed they could put their subjects into contact with spirits while they were in a trance, and stage performers such as the famous Davenport brothers created the illusion of visitations while tied up inside a “spirit cabinet,” a sort of telephone booth to the beyond.13 Spiritualism clearly offered as much chicanery as solace.
The pressure for mediums to spice up their demonstrations was intense, since they had to compete for public attention with the period’s glut of theatrical presentations—everything from boxers, comedians, and Shakespearean actors to mesmerists, magicians, and ventriloquists. P. T. Barnum’s circus and museum offered elephants, acrobats, and oddities. Traveling minstrel shows featured raucous troupes of singers and dancers. And public displays of scientific discoveries and technological innovations introduced such marvels as electric lights, the telegraph, and newly discovered dinosaur fossils.14 The pre-television world had no shortage of entertainment.
For Maggie and Kate Fox, achieving success at a young age came at a high cost. Just two years after leaving the backwater of Hydesville, the girls were appearing in New York City before luminaries such as editor Horace Greeley, poet William Cullen Bryant, and novelist James Fenimore Cooper. By experiencing widespread fame while they were still teenagers, Maggie and Kate were thrown into an adult world before they’d matured. They received minimal supervision from their parents, and the guidance they received from their sister Leah, who was more than twenty years their senior, consisted mostly of manipulation.15
Maggie and Kate began drinking at an early age, and both ended up as alcoholics. Gradually, the excitement of public adulation began to pall. Maggie had a tragic love affair and ceased making public appearances for several years. Kate married but lost her husband early, leaving her with two young sons to support. In May 1888, New York City police arrested Kate in a drunken stupor and charged her with child neglect.16
By that point, Maggie and Kate both faced financial difficulties. They’d also fallen out with the leaders of Spiritualism—especially their older sister, who’d written a book portraying herself as the movement’s guiding light. Maggie and Kate decided that the best way to lash out at their antagonists was to confess that their entire careers had been built on deceit. On October 21, 1888, Maggie appeared before an audience of two thousand at the New York Academy of Music and announced that the spirits of the dead did not speak to anyone. “I am here tonight as one of the founders of Spiritualism to denounce it as an absolute falsehood from beginning to end, as the flimsiest of superstitions, the most wicked blasphemy known to the world.”17
With Kate seated nearby, Maggie explained that she and her sister had produced the mysterious rapping sounds by cracking their knuckles and toe joints, a trick they’d played on their skittish mother as a joke. They’d created other noises in their Hydesville farmhouse by tying an apple to a string and bouncing it on the floor of their bedroom.18 Originating as a private prank, the rapping phenomenon had spiraled beyond their control as first their mother and then more and more people came to believe that the noises emanated from the spirits of the dead. For Maggie and Kate, Spiritualism became a runaway train on which they were trapped.
Nonbelievers gloried in Maggie’s confession, calling it the “death-blow to Spiritualism,” but their pronouncement turned out to be wrong.19 Spiritualism had become too widespread and entrenched. A year later, Maggie retracted her confession, claiming she’d been unduly influenced by opponents of the movement and was under extreme financial pressure. Her flip-flop didn’t have much impact either. Within five years, Maggie, Kate, and Leah were all dead—Maggie and Kate as destitute pariahs.20
The phenomenon the Fox sisters initiated, however, steamed ahead into the twentieth century, gaining fresh momentum from the slaughter that took place during World War I, when a new generation of mourners embraced the possibility of contacting the spirits of their loved ones. After the war, Spiritualism endured the derision of one of its harshest critics, the master magician Houdini, who exposed many of the gimmicks used by fraudulent mediums. Houdini called the movement “the result of deluded brains or those which were too actively and intensely willing to believe.”21
Spiritualism has survived such ridicule into the twenty-first century, with two American towns—Lily Dale, New York, and Cassadaga, Florida—still supporting communities of Spiritualists.22 Only the residents of those towns could tell you whether they actually believe their own claims about communicating with the spirits of the dead or simply enjoy the thrill of dabbling in mystical affairs. Today, movies and television shows abound with psychics and ghosts, and New Age bookstores are crammed with works about the spirit world—demonstrating that the market for the paranormal is at least one thing that never dies.
Spiritualism has been labeled a total fraud, a form of theatrical entertainment, and its own form of religion. As with other contested beliefs, we’re all free to decide for ourselves how we choose to perceive it. For Maggie and Kate Fox, Spiritualism brought a level of fame that proved more burden than blessing. They spent much of their youth and their entire adult lives living up to the expectations of others. They did fulfill a need for certain people, although tricking grieving families in exchange for cash doesn’t seem in the least spiritual. Like so many mediums since, these sad, conflicted sisters were lost in the gray borderland between comforters and con artists.