What happened
In the spring of 1848, in a small wooden house in Hydesville, a hamlet in western New York, the Fox family heard mysterious knocking at night. On 31 March 14-year-old Maggie and 11-year-old Kate began answering it by clapping; Kate reportedly called out, “Here, Mr Splitfoot, do as I do!”, and the “spirit” replied with the same number of raps. Using an agreed alphabet, the rapper identified himself as a peddler supposedly murdered in the house and buried in the cellar. Neighbours flocked to listen. The girls were sent to Rochester, but the raps “followed” them. Their eldest sister, Leah, took charge, and on 14 November 1849 the sisters performed before a paying audience at Corinthian Hall. Within a few years séances with rapping spirits had swept America and Europe – the Spiritualist movement was born.
Witnesses
Their parents John and Margaret Fox, Hydesville neighbours, and later crowds of séance-goers in Rochester and New York.
Explanations and hypotheses
On 21 October 1888, on the stage of the New York Academy of Music, Maggie Fox confessed that the raps had been a fraud – the sisters produced them with the joints of their toes and knees – and demonstrated how. A year later she retracted her confession, but for historians the matter is clear: it began as a childish prank that adults took seriously. Reports of bones found in the cellar wall in 1904 are considered unreliable. The cottage was moved in 1916 to the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale and burned down in 1955.
Hoax A proven or admitted hoax.
Sources
- Reuben Briggs Davenport, The Death-Blow to Spiritualism: Being the True Story of the Fox Sisters (G. W. Dillingham, 1888)
- Frank Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, vol. 1 (Methuen, 1902)
- Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research) – Fox Sisters
- Skeptical Inquirer – A Skeleton's Tale: The Origins of Modern Spiritualism (2008)
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