March 31, 1848. What is so special about this date you ask? I’m glad you asked. I feel a story coming on.
Once upon a time in Hydesville, New York, there lived two young sisters by the name of Kate and Margaret Fox. The house that the sisters lived in was reputed to be haunted. This was confirmed one night when the spirit that dwelled with the Fox’s began making its presence known. Banging and rapping noises would echo throughout the house effectively frightening the entire family. On the night in question, Kate Fox decided to try to communicate with the spirit. She challenged it to repeat a series of finger snaps and to rap out the ages of the girls. The ghost happily obliged and the modern spiritualist movement was henceforth born.
From that night on, the Fox sisters were able to have conversations with the spook. These would consist of questions that were answered with one rap for “yes” and two raps for “no.” Or a number of raps would correspond with a letter of the alphabet. The spirit was eventually identified as that of a murdered peddler. The neighbours insisted on knowing who murdered the poor man and they soon decided that an innocent fellow villager was to blame. All the excitement was hard on the young girls so they were sent to live with their older sister Leah. Unfortunately for them, and quite curiously, the rapping seemed to follow them. Word soon spread far and wide of the Fox sister’s special talent of communicating with the dead. Folks insisted that they perform séances for them so they too could speak with loved ones that had passed on. The news spread amongst the Quakers who then formed the beginnings of the spiritualist movement. The Fox sisters became quite famous and under the tutelage of their equally gifted older sister Leah, their talents flourished. They held séances for the rich and famous and were pioneers in the field of mediumship. Hundreds of people were enamored and found that they too either miraculously developed these powers or had them all along but were too afraid to reveal themselves until the sisters gave them the courage to come forth. Suddenly séances were all the rage and you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a medium. The Fox sisters enjoyed many years of notoriety and people everywhere were now able to reconnect with those on the other side. The End.
Sounds great. Who wouldn’t want to be able talked to dead loved ones? The problem? The founders of the modern spiritualist movement were hoaxers. Yup, on October 21, 1888 Kate and Margaret Fox confessed to faking all of it. Not only did they confess but they also demonstrated how they created the rapping noises by simply cracking their fingers and toes. Margaret explained how they used an apple on a string to create banging noises on that fateful day in 1848. Spiritualists today will say that the confessions were somehow coerced or a product of too much drink in the latter lives of the sisters. Margaret actually wrote a letter in 1889 recanting her confession. The demonstration of how they did it was the nail in the coffin though. Margaret herself even told of how people’s perceptions can so easily be fooled. She is quoted as saying:
"A great many people when they hear the rapping imagine at once that the spirits are touching them. It is a very common delusion. Some very wealthy people came to see me some years ago when I lived in Forty-second Street and I did some rappings for them. I made the spirit rap on the chair and one of the ladies cried out: "I feel the spirit tapping me on the shoulder." Of course that was pure imagination."
So if we can’t trust the founding members of spiritualism then who can we trust? Are any of the mediums the real thing? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say NO.
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