How the Fox Sisters Snap, Crackle, and Popped their Way to the Top of Spiritualism

It was an interesting time for New Yorkers in the 1840’s. The concept of spiritualism, the belief that the living can commune with the dead, had really started gaining in popularity. Many people were abandoning their association with traditional religions and trading their priests and pastors for psychic mediums. But why?

A combination of things that were happening in that place and time created the perfect storm. First, immigration was at an all time high. This led to overcrowding in urban areas and poor sanitation. Diseases like cholera and influenza were wreaking havoc on people’s health. Mortality rates were on the rise and Americans couldn’t help but notice that death was all around them. Second, factories were booming and residential areas were popping up almost over night. Material goods became readily available, more affordable, and gave people a sense of prosperity and hope for the future. The notion of living a simple life of servitude contradicted the concept of being able to do good for humanity by having more to offer. Last (and perhaps the most compelling push toward the movement), two young girls in Hydesville, NY started communicating with ghosts. Today we’ll be talking about the Fox sisters.

The Haunted Hydesville House

In 1848, the Fox family lived in a farmhouse in Hydesville, New York where fifteen-year-old Margaretta (Maggie) shared a bedroom with her eleven-year-old sister, Catherine (Kate). Though the farmhouse was fabled to be haunted, the family hadn’t had reason to believe it. That all changed; however, when they began hearing mysterious sounds such as knocking and furniture being moved around.

Night after night, new sounds would wake the Fox family. Footsteps on the staircase, rapping on the walls. On March 31, Mrs. Fox decided she needed to get to the bottom of this phenomena. She searched the entire house with a lit candle. When she arrived at her daughters’ bedroom, she found the girls huddled together on one bed. Maggie and Kate told their mother that they believed the house was being haunted by a spirit.

Before Mrs. Fox could say another word, Kate called out to it, addressing it as“Mr. Splitfoot”. She instructed “Mr. Splitfoot” to mimic her as she snapped her fingers. The spirit obliged and supplied a knocking noise in the same cadence and rhythm as the snaps. Then Maggie called out to the spirit and clapped her hands four times. The ghost replied with four knocks. Motioning for her mother and sister to stay silent, Kate held our her hand and pretended to snap her her fingers without actually making a sound. The ghost replied with the same number of raps.

Astonished (if not a bit frightened), Mrs. Fox decided to join in. She asked the ghost to count to ten. Ten knocks echoed in the room. She asked the ghost to rap out the number of children she had borne. Seven knocks came back. She asked how many were still living. Six knocks. She asked each of their ages. The knocks kept coming and were all correct.

The house was certainly haunted. Now all Mrs. Fox needed was a witness. After determining a communication system (two raps for yes, one for no), she asked the spirit if it would continue to knock if she invited the neighbors to hear it. After a long pause, she heard the two knocks she was waiting for and promptly fetched for her guests.

Though the neighbors were skeptics, it didn’t take long to convince them that there was something supernatural happening at the Fox house. They each took turns asking the spirit questions. The first set of queries were about the spirit itself. Was it an injured spirit? Yes. Was it a man? Yes. How old was he? Thirty-five. Had he been married? Yes. Had he been a father? Yes. How many children had he had? Five. How long had he been dead? Two years.

The next set of questions would prove the spirit’s real power. The neighbors began asking it personal questions about their own lives. How many children did they have and what were their ages? To their astonishment, the wraps were all accurate and they quickly left the home to tell their friends.

The next night, a crowd of people had gathered in the home to speak with the ghost. To get the most out of the knocks and raps, one of the neighbors asked the spirit to follow a code, where each of the letters of the alphabet was assigned a number. This would help it spell out words and sentences instead of being restricted to “yes” and “no” answers. Through that session, the spirit informed the audience that he was murdered and was buried in the Fox family’s basement. As a result, the family and neighbors began to excavate. Before they could get too deep, heavy rains began to fall. The pit soon filled with water and delayed the project for weeks.

In the meantime, word about the Fox farmhouse began to spread. The Fox sisters began serving as mediums and hosting seances for crowds of visitors wanting to see this miracle. Many began to view the girls as spiritual gurus. There were some skeptics; however, that tried to call them out as scammers or witches. When the news of the girl’s abilities got to the Episcopal church, the minister dismissed the Fox family from the congregation. He believed their communication with the spirits to be unholy and evil.

Investigation

When attorney E.E. Lewis in Canadaigua heard about Maggie and Kate Fox, his curiosity took him to Hydesville to conduct an investigation. After he interviewed neighbors and extended members of the Fox family, he documented their eye-witness accounts and published a pamphlet called “A Report of the Mysterious Noises Heard in the House of John D. Fox”. The document only served to bring authenticity to spiritualism and to elevate the status of the Fox sisters.

When Leah Fox (Maggie and Kate’s divorced thirty-three-year-old sister in Rochester) saw the pamphlet, she was excited to learn about the haunting taking place at her family’s home. She had been reading a book about spiritualism which gave credence to the notion that spirits were making appearances in the world of the living. Leah packed her bags and headed to the farmhouse to learn more. Once she arrived and spoke with her younger sisters, it became clear what she needed to do. She appointed herself as the interpreter of the spirits and took Maggie and Kate’s talents to Rochester.

The Spirits Followed

To Leah’s delight, the knocks and raps began in her home as soon as Maggie and Kate moved in. Leah wasted no time in inviting her friends, including Amy and Isaac Post. When Leah told the Posts about the haunting, they laughed and asked if she was feeling alright. The Fox sisters conducted a seance in which Leah was able to translate extremely accurate and personal messages from several of the children her friends had lost. The Posts were instantly convinced and spread the word about the Fox sisters’ special ability to others.

It didn’t take long for Leah’s home to be booked with requests for seances. Some of them were with Maggie, some with Katy, some were with both, but Leah was always there to provide her interpretations. Guests were asked to form a circle at the table, join hands, and sit in silence as Maggie and or Katy went into a trance and the audience was treated to the sounds of raps.

The Fox Sisters are Tested Again

By 1849, Leah was dragging Maggie all around Rochester to perform. On November 14, the two of them conducted a seance at Corinthian Hall, the largest auditorium in Rochester. The audience was expecting to laugh at a pathetic act that was obviously a hoax. They listened to the soft raps of the ghost and, though they could not tell where the noise was coming from, they demanded an investigation. A committee of trusted citizens inspected the young women the next morning, but walked away with more questions than answers.

Further tests were ordered. The sisters were asked to commune with the spirits while standing on glass, then again while standing on pillows. They were even inspected for hidden machinery beneath their dresses. Nothing was ever found. The Fox sisters continued to perform night after night as their act gained in popularity.

By June of 1850, Leah and Maggie had toured Albany and Troy. They made their way through New York, providing seances for esteemed members of the media and other authors and poets. The spirits accurately described the death of their loved ones, turning them all into believers. They began to write articles which supported the authenticity of both the Fox sisters and of spiritualism. Other newspapers who had previously criticized the sisters published retractions. One even stated that the sisters were not capable of an “intentional deception”.

With the newspapers validating the Fox Sisters’ abilities, the girls became overwhelmed with requests for seances. Spiritualism had become recognized as one of the leading faiths. People were gravitating to this new belief system because it implied that people had control over their own salvation. If we could communicate with the dead, they could offer us perspective into what happens to a soul once it leaves the body.

Divide and Conquer

Leah’s reputation in New York kept her knee-deep in seance appointments, freeing up Kate and Maggie to continue on their American tour. They went to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, where Maggie met her soon-to-be husband, Elisha Kent Kane. Though Kane never believed in Maggie’s ability to speak with the dead, he remained mystified by the source of the knocking sounds. After they married, he convinced Maggie to quit her tour as a medium and go back to school. This left Kate to continue on her own. Sadly, Kane died in 1857, only five years after their marriage. Maggie began to drink. And while business boomed for Kate, the pressure of performing every night also prompted her to begin consuming copious amounts of alcohol.

The End of the Fox Sisters‘ Fame

By 1888, Maggie Fox had had enough. She had become angry at her sister, Leah, for publicly turning on Kate about her drinking and her claims that she was unfit to take care of her children. She wanted to put a stop to it. In fact, she wanted to put a stop to it all. How? Maggie agreed to publicly denounce Spiritualism. That year, Maggie Fox accepted a payment of $1,500 for an exclusive interview with New York World where she confessed a shocking and long-kept secret. Neither she, nor her sisters, had ever spoken with a spirit. Their entire act was a fraud, including their very first performance for their mother in their farmhouse bedroom.

She told reporters that the thing that went “bump” in the night at her parent’s house in Hydesville was nothing more than an apple tied to a string. She and Kate would move it up and down or just let drop with a thud. As for the knocks, that took a little more talent. The sisters had learned how to snap their toes in the same way people could snap their fingers. They could also manipulate their knuckles to make the rapping sounds. They got so proficient, they could do it even while wearing stockings and shoes. She even provided the reporter with a demonstration, placing her foot on a wooden stool and rapping out a series of knocks.

While her mother was unaware of the deception, Leah knew that her younger sisters were fakes. She tried to learn how to manipulate her toes in the same way and when she was unsuccessful, she claimed her role as “interpreter” and took her sisters on tour so she could benefit from the profits.

And just like that, it was done.

One year later, Maggie recanted her confession. She explained that her spirit guides begged her to return to the practice of Spiritualism, though the Spiritualist community turned her away. All three sisters passed away within three years of Maggie’s confession.

A Strange Twist

In 1904, a group of children were playing in the abandoned Hydesville farmhouse, now nicknamed “the spook house”. While in the basement, they found human remains between the earth and the crumbling walls. Authorities were called and specialists examined the bones. They concluded that the bones were around fifty-years-old, which lined up with the young Fox sisters’ first seance with their mother and neighbors.

Did the girls have a real premonition that spun out of control or was it just coincidence?

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_sisters https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-fox-sisters-and-the-rap-on-spiritualism-99663697/ https://www.historynet.com/the-fox-sisters-spiritualisms-unlikely-founders.htm