The Fox Sisters & Spiritualism

The Fox family reported unexplained knocking in their home. The girls, then teenagers, said they could ask questions and receive answers in raps. The 'spirit' was said to be a murdered pedlar buried in the cellar.

Managed by their elder sister Leah, the girls gave public demonstrations in Rochester and New York City. Spiritualism grew rapidly; by the 1850s there were mediums, newspapers and churches devoted to contact with the dead, and the movement found eager followers in Britain, especially among the bereaved.

In 1888 Margaret Fox publicly confessed at the New York Academy of Music that the raps had been made by cracking the joints of her toes, and demonstrated the sound. A year later she retracted the confession. Both sisters died in poverty within a few years. Whatever the truth, the Hydesville knocks changed how the Western world imagined talking to the dead.