The Fox Sisters

Mr and Mrs Fox and their daughters moved into a house in Hydesville, New York on December 11, 1847. Numerous earlier inhabitants had left the house because of strange noises , initially all was well then in Mach 1848 noises and taps could be heard at night The mysterious noises continued until on March 31st, there was a dramatic increase in the phenomena, Kate the youngest daughter believed that the taps and raps reacted to sounds that the children were making, and she formed a plan to ask for a response to the snapping of her fingers, this was their first correspondence with spirit, asking it to tap once for yes and silence for no. Using this method of communication they managed to establish that they were talking to a peddler who had been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar. It was 56 years later, when work was being carried out on the property that a skeleton was indeed found buried under the cellar.

News spread of the fox sisters mainly Margaretta and Kate in the early years joined by Leah later, who became like a manager to her younger siblings and they became celebrities touring venues and demonstrating séances. Despite the fame the three girls had incredibly sad lives, finding no happiness in marriage and many reports of alcohol abuse. In 1888 there was a confession from Margaretta that everything had been staged, including the initial raps from their family home in Hydesville, this damming confession seemed to have happened in part to cause as much harm to the elder sister as possible following a quarrel earlier that year. Later the confession was retracted but it still cast doubt on the claims of the sisters and on their public work. Margaretta and Kate died a few years later both of them in poverty and were buried in paupers graves.

Despite the troubles, the fox sisters paved the way for spiritualism, a simple peddler murdered and buried in the cellar, they couldn’t have known these facts when they moved into the house, the body was found decades later which gives credence to the beginnings of spiritualism. The confession that finally destroyed their careers as mediums was probably the result of a bitter argument between the sisters. Many believe the Fox sister to have been genuine, especially as Kate Fox had allowed William Crooks to investigate her abilities and he had found no evidence of fraud, and they take their place as the founders of modern spiritualism.