The Fox Sisters

The Fox sisters are thought of as the founders of the Spiritualist movement. The three sisters, Maggie, Kate, and Leah, went on to achieve fame for their ability to communicate with spirits. This claim of communication, along with the mythology they created around their home, is what led to people adopting Spiritualism as their belief. One of the most famous Spiritualists was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Eventually, Maggie Fox confessed to the world that the sisters were frauds and that the knocking which could be heard in séances came from the sisters cracking the joints in their toes. Regardless of this confession, the spiritualist movement continued with many people going on to profit from being psychic mediums.

History

The initial event which started it all occured during the March of 1848. The Fox family had moved in to a tiny one-bedroom cottage in the hamlet of Hydesville, New York, during the December of 1947. The family who had moved in consisted of Margaretta Fox, Catherine Fox, and their parents; Margaret and John Fox. Margaretta and Catherine are better known as Maggie and Kate. Other family members, although not living with the family, were Leah and David who were both siblings of Maggie and Kate. The family rented the Hydesville house while they were building a new house in order to be closer to David, and they were possibly the third family to have rented this property.

There are a few variations of the exact events which occured during the families stay within the Hydesville house. An extremely simplified version is that during the March of 1848, the family heard knocking occur within their house and attributed it to a spirit of some sort. The word of the supposed spirit communication then spread to neighbors and to both Leah and David. The reason why I've stated this simplified version of events first is because it seems no one knows for sure as to what exactly happened during this time, aside the details I've started with. A good example of how the story has fallen into the realm of myth and legend is that it doesn't even seem that anyone knows how old Maggie and Kate were at the time. Sources say at the time of the 1848 disturbances Maggie was older than Kate, and some say they were aged 14 and 11, others say 15 and 12, more say 8 and 5, and a few say 12 and 9. From what I've found, the ages of 8 and 9 come from Maggies confession, the ages of 12 and 9 come from what Robert Dale Owen was told by the family during 1860, and the ages of 12 and 15 come from a statement the mother signed on the 11th of April 1848.

The tombstone dates for Maggie and Kate give their dates of birth as the 7th of October 1833 for Maggie, and the 27th of March 1837 for Kate. This means that the ages of 14 and 11 could be accurate for the 1848 event. This almost lines up with the mother's statement which was given close to the time of the event. I suspect the younger ages were provided in order to try and gain sympathy from the general public during Maggie's confession; but I will discuss that more later in the article. I've found that their older sister, Leah, was born during 1813. As for what specifically happened during the March of 1848, the Fox sister's mother described it as follows:

“On Friday night, the 31st of March, it was heard as usual… It was very early when we went to bed on this night, hardly dark. We went to bed so early because we had been broken so much of our rest that I was almost sick. My husband had not gone to bed when we first heard the noise on this evening. I had just laid down and it commenced as usual. I knew it from all other noises I had ever heard in the house. The girls, who slept in the other bed in the room, heard the noise and tried to make a similar noise by snapping their fingers. The youngest girl is about 12 years old. She is the one who made her hand go, and as fast as she made the noise with her hands or fingers, the sound was followed up in the room. It did not sound any different at that time, only it made the same number of noises that the girl did. When she stopped, the sound itself stopped for a short time. The other girl, who was in her 15th year, then spoke in sport and said, ‘Now do this just as I do. Count one, two, three, four.’ etc., striking one hand and the other at the same time; but she made no sound, and they heard an immediate four raps. To which she responded, “Oh Mother, look! They can see as well as hear.” And then I spoke and said to the noise, ‘Count ten.’ And it made 10 strokes or noises. Then I asked the ages of my different children, successively, and it gave a number of raps corresponding to the ages of my children.”

It is said that the family had been plagued all month by loud thuds occuring in the house. It's also been said by sources that the sounds followed Maggie and Kate, and that on this particular evening the noises started after the girls had been sent to bed. The noises have also been described as louder than before, and it seemed like they were occuring all over the house. As a result, the mother was convinced something demonic was happening and so sent her husband to get help from the neighbors. It's important to remember that any information not included in any quotes is best taken lightly as it could just be filler included by sources to make for a more interesting and entertaining read. This could be a reason why the story has slight variations amongst sources.

It's said the Fox sisters' bedroom was crowded with people in candlelight witnessing the noises for themselves. William Duesler, a neighbor, asked questions to the 'spirits' and termed the responding knocks as 'raps'. Slowly they found out that the spirit, who the sisters had originally called 'Mr. Splitfoot', was a thirty-one year old peddler who had been murdered for $500 and then buried beneath the house by a previous tenant. At the time no one knew who the peddler could be, although the Fox's eldest son David suggested running through the alphabet to find out the name and no name was given. A slight variation to this is that a name was given, and that the spirit was found to be called 'Charles B. Rosna'. Alternations of 'Rosna' to be cited are 'Rosa' and 'Rosma'. After this event the locals began to remember a young peddler that passed through a few years earlier, but they couldn't say exactly when. Other locals also said that David had dug beneath the house one summer and discovered bones and a set of human teeth. These tales and half-remembered details are likely why the telling of the original event from the 31st of March 1848 is retold in a few different ways.

For instance, the consistent details are that Maggie and Kate claimed a spirit was communication through the raps; and after the mother asked the spirit how many children she had, the correct number of raps was given. It's also said that a neighbor witnessed the sounds. The Smithsonian Magazine recounts the event as saying they told a neighbor about the raps, and so the neighbor went to see them. The mother asked questions such as asking to count to five, then fifteen. She also asked for three raps if the spirit was injured, which it did, and asked the neighbors age to which the spirit accurately replied with thirty-three raps. The Smithsonian Magazine also points out that this event all happened on the 31st of March, which is the eve of April Fools Day; plus that residents examined the cellar of the home and found hair and bone fragments.

The community leaders Isaac and Amy Post were intrigued by the story being spun by the Fox sisters, along with the rumour about the peddler. They invited the girls to their home to see if they could communicate with the spirits in another location. Isaac Post wrote the following:

"I suppose I went with as much unbelief as Thomas felt when he was introduced to Jesus after he had ascended." He also said he was swayed by "very distinct thumps under the floor... and several apparent answers."

It's said that in a few weeks the story of the Hydesville haunting had made it's way across the state. Leah Fox Fish, who is sometimes referred to just as Leah Fish, was a music teacher in nearby Rochester. It's said she first heard about the haunting when a pupil read out a newspaper article documenting it. It's also said that by the time she returned home, the Fox family had all moved to David's house in a neighboring village to escape from the crowds of locals who had hoped to meet the girls they heard could communicate with the dead. Apparently Leah quickly discovered that the noises were being created by Maggie and Kate, and the sisters admitted it to her, revealing that they created the noises by cracking their toes with no visible movement to others. When the sisters did this in contact with wooden surfaces to amplify the noise, the sounds seemed like they were coming from spirits and not the girl's feet. However, instead of telling the truth about the sounds, Leah 'decided to turn this into a little bit of a business'; as said by Nancy Robinson Stuart, the author of 'The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life Of Maggie Fox'.

Leah moved herself, Maggie, and Kate into a house in Rochester where, for a dollar each, people could attend a séance with them. Isaac Post was also convinced when Leah claimed to be a medium and communicated with Post's recently deceased daughter. The Post's then rented Rochester's Corinthian Hall for the sisters to perform in. The Fox sisters quickly became popular as psychic mediums and their fame spread. This was all made possible due to the context of the time period. During the spring and summer of 1848, revolutions were happening across western Europe, the Mexican-American war came to an end, and the gold rush was under way in California. Things were slower in rural New York, so this is why word quickly spread through the state.

The popularity of the Fox sisters marked a shift in popular attitudes towards the paranormal as 200 years earlier the sisters would have been burned as witches for such claims of spirit communication; but instead they found themselves to be celebrities. Most people who saw them thought they were real, but there were still skeptics. Maggie in particular was subject to abuse from those who thought she was either a fraud or a heretic. In Troy, New York, Maggie was a victim of a kidnapping attempt by a group of men who were seemingly offended by the sister's show. It became too much for Maggie and Kate as they were still only children, and what had started as a joke to relieve boredom had all spun out of control.

The sisters performed to full theatres; but their first public show was on the 14th of November 1849, when they performed in Rochester's Corinthian Hall and demonstrated their abilities to a crowd of nearly 400 people. This was the performance booked by Isaac Post, and after this performance Amy Post accompanied the sisters to a private chamber where their robes were removed and they were examined by a committee of skeptics who found no evidence of a hoax. However, apparently some people did correctly guess that the sisters were cracking their joints. Apparently during the November of 1849, because it was getting too much for the girls, they tried ending the shows by spelling out 'we will now bid you farewell' with the raps during a séance. For two weeks the spirits seemingly remained silent, but Leah decided to keep the show going with her sisters. I'm unsure if this message was spelled out during their first public demonstration in the Corinthian Hall, or if it was later.

By 1850, 'rapping' had become a nationwide craze and spiritualism had been born. This movement separated itself from previous spiritual and religious beliefs due to it's connection to the growing media and the entertainment industries in both the US and Europe. People in the work of spiritualism were paid to give theatrical performances; and so they used elaborate lighting, music, and table-tipping séances to fool their audience. During the 1850s, Ira and William Davenport became famous for a magic show which featured tricks they claimed were due to spiritual intervention. Magicians, such as Harry Houdini, differentiated themselves from spiritualism by exposing the spiritualists as a hoax. This trend continues today, with a good modern example of a debunking magician being the late James Randi. However, despite people's attempts to debunk the hoaxes, spiritualism remained popular.

It can be argued that the spiritualism movement began before the Fox sisters, and that they were just a stage in the movement's development. Andrew Jackson Davis, an American seer from the 1800s, became known as the 'John the Baptist of modern spiritualism'. He used the ideologies of the 1700s Australian healer, Franz Anton Mesmer, and the 1700s Swedish philosopher and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, to predict the rise of spiritualism. Davis believed that his prediction arose a year later when word had spread about the Hydesville haunting. When Davis heard about this incident, he invited the sisters to his home in New York City to witness their abilities himself. This elevated his own status from being an obscure prophet into being a recognised leader of a mass movement.

During the October of 1850, the 'New Haven Journal' reported that there were 40 families in upstate New York who claimed to have the same gifts as the Fox sisters, and that there were hundreds more from Virginia to Ohio. During 1851, a writer at 'Spiritual World' tallied more than 100 spirit mediums in New York City alone. The spiritualism movement didn't emerge as a shadowy occult practise or as a roadside attraction. Instead, it was viewed as an exciting way of reconciling the mysteries of the soul with the complicated realities of a modern, rapidly industrialising nation. It was respectable and proponents included Thomas Edison, the antislavery leader William Lloyd Garrison, and many prominent women's rights advocates based in Rochester.

Along with the names mentioned, there were a conspicuous number of new adherents from scientific backgrounds. A physician from New England, Dr. Phelps, reported that his windows had spontaneously shattered, his clothes had torn, inanimate objects had danced together on his floor, and turnips inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs had surged forth from his living room carpet. As science challenged the old ways, spiritualism offered a way of clinging to the past. Spiritualists believed they were cutting edge with their ideas, and that they were using scientific methods to prove the existence of God and the afterlife. Science was rapidly changing the world with things such as Darwinism, the railroads, the telegraph, mass production, and mass immigration. People refused to believe that spiritualism was more outlandish than what science was doing. For instance, the telegraph seemed to magically allow communication to occur across oceans; and the rapping from 'spirit communication' didn't sound too dissimilar from the noise of a telegraph.

Maggie, Kate, and Leah all went on a professional tour to spread word about spirits, during which they booked a suite at Barnum's Hotel on the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane. At this time, an editorial in the 'Scientific American' referred to the sisters as the 'spiritual knockers from Rochester'. The Fox sisters conducted sessions in the hotel's parlour and invited as many as thirty attendees to gather around a large table at 10am, 5pm, and 8pm. These attendees included members of New York society such as the influential editor of the New York Trubune, James Fenimore Cooper, the editor and poet, William Cullen Bryant, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and Horace Greeley. It's said they witnessed spirits rap in time to popular songs and that the spirits spelled out 'spiritualism will work miracles in the cause of reform'.

Leah stayed in New York and entertained callers in a séance room. However, Maggie and Kate took their show to other cities such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, Washington D.C., and Philidelphia. It was during 1852, in Philidelphia, that Maggie came to meet the famous Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. Kane deemed Maggie as a fraud, although couldn't prove how the sounds were happening. He wasn't the only one who thought this and there was ample evidence of the sisters being frauds in their first four years. Some people pointed out the frequency that famous figures, such as Benjamin Franklin, would appear at séances. One man even noticed that Franklin's spelling and grammar had diminished terribly since the man's death. There were also times that Franklin wouldn't turn up at all. This was accompanied by the excuse of the conditions not being to the spirit's liking.

During a performance in Buffalo, cushions were placed between the girl's feet and the wooden floorboards. Leah then claimed the negative energy of cynics polluted the channel between the girls and the spirits. She also claimed that only those of pure heart who believed without question would be able to witness definitive proof of the girl's powers. This excuse worked well for the girls at the time, and it's the kind of excuse which is often provided by psychics and certain investigative teams today.

Eventually, Maggie ended up in a romance with Kane. Apparently she was thirteen years younger than Kane, and at the time of their meeting in 1852 she was seventeen years old. Kane encouraged Maggie to give up her 'life of dreary sameness and suspected deciet', and so Maggie retired to attend school at Kane's expense. Kane promised Maggie that they would one day be married, however Kane's family viewed Maggie as a backwoods purveyor of profane heresy. As Kane was fearful of the consequences of a proper marriage, he compromised with a ring exchanging ceremony with the promise of a full wedding recognised by God and law upon his return from his latest expedition. The legal wedding never occured, and the ring exchanging ceremony happened shortly before his death in 1857. Kane's death occured at the age of thirty-six after he fell ill in Cuba .

Kane's parents forbid Maggie from attending his funeral and refused to acknowledge her as their son's betrothed and common-law wife. They also rejected her claim to a share of his estate. Maggie retaliated by publishing 'The Love-Life Of Dr. Kane'; a book consisting of his letters to her. To honour Kane's memory, Maggie converted to Catholicism as he had always encouraged her to do this. However, distraught by Kane' death, Maggie began drinking heavily. She also vowed to keep her promise to Kane to 'wholly and forever abandon spiritualism'.

Also during 1857, presumably before Kane's death occured, the 'Boston Courier' offered a $500 prize to any medium who could demonstrate genuine paranormal abilities in front of a committee of Harvard professors. The sisters attempted this challenge, but they failed as the professors concluded that the raps came from the sisters cracking their joints. After the sister's US tour, Kate pursued an education in England. This was sponsored by the wealthy benefactor, Horace Greeley, who had seen the sisters perform at Barnum's Hotel. With Kate's move to England came the spread of spiritualism to Great Britain. While in England, she staged shows where the ghosts appeared in physical form. It's still unclear how she did this, but the apparitions were said to appear in a strange 'psychic light' during her séances. Kate also developed her medium powers by communicating two messages at the same time; one being written, while the other was spoken.

The 1860s were a prominent time for spiritualism's rise. The American Civil War began on the 12th of April 1861, and Prince Albert died on the 14th of December 1861. People found comfort in the idea that they could still communicate with those they had lost. This led to Queen Victoria holding many séances in Buckingham Palace to communicate with Prince Albert; and the first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, held séances in the White House to communicate with her and Abraham Lincoln's dead children. Kate's business boomed during this era, and the prominent spiritualist, Emma Hardinge, wrote that the American Civil War added two million new believers to the movement.

During the 1870s, a leading physicist called William Crookes tested Kate and concluded that she was believable; however, others called Crookes gullible for his assessment. During 1872, Kate married the London based barrister, Henry D. Jencken. Jencken was also a devout spiritualist, and the couple had two children together. After marriage, Kate used the name Fox-Jencken. Henry later died during 1881, leaving Kate as a widow with two children. Kate went back to mediumship to support herself, but like Maggie she also gained a drinking problem. Kate returned to the US during 1885, and three years later her children were taken from her due to alcoholism. Another reason cited for Kate's drinking problem is that miracles were expected from her during every séance, and that pressure was too much for her.

As for Leah; she gained wealth, social clout and opportunities which would never have been offered to someone of her background. In the field of mediumship, women dominated. Leah used to be a single mother hampered by the social restrictions of being a woman at the time, but over the next decades she became a venerable society lady and the wife of a wall street banker. As spiritualism had become so mainstream, Leah didn't feel she needed to distance herself from it. By the 1880s, there were an estimated eight million spiritualists in the US and Europe.

It was during the year of 1888, forty years after the initial event at the Hydesville house, that Maggie made a public confession. During this year, there were millions of confirmed spiritualists across the planet including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who published his first Sherlock Holmes book in the same year. Maggies confession occured on the 21st of October 1888 at the New York Academy of Music, and it featured a full demonstration of how the tricks had been performed. Kate sat in the audience and confirmed everything while Leah dismissed her sisters as attention seekers. On the same day, 'New York World' published an interview with Maggie in anticipation of her appearance at the academy. She was paid $1,500 for her exclusive, and this fact has been cited by spiritualists who believe Maggie only confessed for profit, and so they believe the confession to be a lie. They also believe Maggie sought to profit out of becoming one of spiritualism's fiercest critics. Maggie's confession letter to 'New York World' reads as follows:

"Mrs. Underhill, my eldest sister, took Katie and me to Rochester. There it was that we discovered a new way to make the raps. My sister Katie was the first to observe that by swishing her fingers, she could produce certain noises with her knuckles and joints and that the same effect could be made with the toes. Finding that we could make raps with our feet – first with one foot and then with both – we practiced until we could do this easily when the room was dark. Like most perplexing things, when made clear, it is astonishing how easily it is done. The rapping are simply the result of a perfect control of the muscles of the leg below the knee, which govern the tendons of the foot and allow action of the toe and ankle bones that is not commonly known. Such perfect control is only possible when the child is taken at an early age and carefully and continually taught to practice the muscles, which grow stiffer in later years. ... This, then, is the simple explanation of the whole method of the knocks and raps...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."

As for Maggie's motivation for denouncing spiritualism, it is believed that she held rage towards Leah and other spiritualists who publicly chastised Kate for her drinking and accused her of being unable to care for her two young children. The mainstream press referred to Maggie's confession as 'a death blow' to the movement. The confession reads as follows:

“My sister Katie and myself were very young children when this horrible deception began. At night when we went to bed, we used to tie an apple on a string and move the string up and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor, or we would drop the apple on the floor, making a strange noise every time it would rebound."

According to the 'New York Herald', it was reported that Maggie's confession "was greeted with cheers and hisses". The Herald also reported that Maggie said: "When I began this deception I was too young to know right from wrong... That I have been mainly instrumental in perpetuating the fraud of spiritualism upon a too-confiding public, many of you already know. It is the greatest sorrow of my life."

Maggie later recanted her confession during 1889, only a year later; apparently saying her spirit guides told her to do so. In reality, this is possibly because of a realisation that it would deprive her of her only source of income. However, apprently she later went under the pseudonym 'Mrs. Spencer' and revealed several tricks of the profession. Maggie never reconciled with Leah, and Leah died of carditis on the 1st of November 1890. Kate died while on a drinking spree on the 2nd of July 1892. Maggie died on the 8th of March 1893, of heart trouble. I have found information saying Maggie died during 1895, but it seems 1893 is correct. All three sisters are buried in Brooklyn, New York. Apparently Maggie died a bitter and broken woman who was relying on the kindness of friends and acquaintances to keep a roof over her head. She was an accidental pioneer, yet her death made little impact on the spiritualist community. There was no memorial séance like there was for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and no spirit medium recieved her message from the other side. During 1893, spiritualists formed the 'National Spiritualist Association', now called the 'National Spiritualist Association of Churches'.

I have found that the original house of the Hydesville haunting burned down during 1903. This seems partially incorrect, namely regarding the year. It seems the house was still standing during 1904, and apparently by this year it had become known locally as 'the spook house'. Schoolchildren are said to have discovered the majority of a skeleton between the earth and crumbling walls. A doctor was consulted, and he estimated the bones to be roughly fifty years old. This appeared to give credibility to the sister's tale of messages from a murdered peddler, but not everyone was convinced by this. There were suggestions that the sisters were smart enough to exploit a local mystery and the 'Times' concluded the confession about cracking joints reduced the whole case to a farce.

Another doctor examined the skeleton five years later and determined it was made up of a few ribs and bits of bones, of which there were too many of some and too few of others. He also determined there were some chicken bones included in the mix. As a result, there is a rumour that a local man planted the bones as a joke. The house was moved to Lilydale during 1916, and it stayed there until it burned down on the 21st of September 1955. The foundations of the house still remain in Hydesville, and a man called John Drummond moved there and built a replica house. 'Hydesville Day' is an important day for spiritualists which is celebrated on the 31st of March to remember the initial event that seems to have started the whole spiritualism movement.

My Thoughts

Researching the Fox sisters had me wondering something I've been increasingly debating since writing these articles. It seems undeniable that the Fox sisters were frauds, and they either started or spurred on a whole belief in spirit communication which otherwise may not have gained traction without the part they played. Their popularity seems like a very right place, right time situation. The spiritualism movement is undeniably what has led to modern day interpretations of the paranormal, with increased horror media which begun during the 1970s, and the satanic panic of the 1980s.

This leads me on to what I personally view as the start of modern paranormal investigation for the UK: Most Haunted. For Americans it would likely be Ed and Lorraine Warren, or Ghost Adventures. The reason I say the start of modern paranormal investigation for the UK is Most Haunted is because many team members, including myself, say they grew up on that programme and they wanted to achieve the same results. The Most Haunted team inspired a generation of paranormal investigators, and these investigators are often inclined to use the same methods as the Most Haunted team. However, the Most Haunted team are dubious to say the least; just like the Fox sisters.

The relevance of this is I often debate if the belief in spirits has all originated from a lie, and if so then does that mean spirits do not exist? You can imagine the paranormal as a tower. The earth is the Fox sisters, the foundations are the Warren's, or Most Haunted, and the tower itself is modern paranormal investigation. If you remove the earth and the foundations, then surely the tower falls? This is the debate I find myself having when looking into the paranormal influencers of the past. It seems like there is minimal cause for the truth and validity in spirit communication, and spirit existence. At least, this is true when you look into the history of the modern day belief.

Regarding why I believe the paranormal can still exist, I think that lies in people's experiences. People can know nothing about details to the paranormal, or it's history, yet they can have the same experience within a location they know nothing about, and have never visited before, as someone else. This indicates to me that there is some truth in modern paranormal experiences, regardless of what the history of paranormal influencers may indicate. To me, people such as the Fox sisters don't indicate that spirits do not exist; instead, they indicate to me that our approach towards the paranormal and the existence of spirits is likely heavily incorrect.

As a result, I feel it's important for us to look more into paranormal experiences and to theorise around them. It's important to cross analyse these too in order to find the common details amongst stories, and the more outlandish ones which are likely made up for dramatic effect. I feel it's only through doing this that the paranormal field can progress, and we can accurately determine how spirits behave and how they can communicate with us; if at all.

Thank You!

Thank you for reading this article! It was interesting to research where our modern beliefs of the paranormal seem to have begun. I also found it funny that the techniques used to create spiritual knocking during the 1800s still seem to be used by some teams today without anyone realising. It just shows that people will remain in the same mindset of wanting to believe regardless of how many times they're told it might not be real. The next article will be a location article about somewhere in Liverpool, and the following article will be about another paranormal influencer.

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Sources I Have Used

1. The Paris Review

2. History

3. Smithsonian Magazine

4. Croydon Spiritualist Church

5. Jeff Newman

6. Britannica

7. WAMC Podcasts

8. Kat Devitt

9. Historic Geneva

10. Catholic Herald

11. Haunted History Trail