SupernatFoxSisters217(Edwards)

Incredible as it may seem, the spiritualist movement which swept the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century and endures today had its beginning with the experience of two young girls hardly into their teens.

In March 1848, Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville, near Rochester, in New York state, were disturbed by strange knocks and raps which were eventually put down to the spirit of a dead peddler who was trying to contact them from 'the other side.' The neighbours soon started to come around to take part in the question and answer game the children had going between themselves and the spirit and life in the Fox household became intolerable. The family moved out but to no avail...the raps and the knocks moved with them.

Leah Fox, an elder sister, took the two young girls in hand and hired a hall in town to give demonstrations of their powers. Soon they were conducting seances and producing new phenomena. Objects would move of their own accord, musical instruments would play, and people felt themselves being touched by spirit hands. Committees were set up to investigate the girls claims as not everyone was satisfied that the phenomena were genuine. Despite the stringent controls imposed even to the point of having the girls stripped naked, no evidence of fraud was discovered.

In 1851 Mrs Norman Culver, a relative by marriage, claimed that Kate Fox had confessed that she and her sister made the rapping noises by clicking their toe joints. While sceptics nodded knowingly, the girls' supporters pointed out that Mrs Culver had had a bitter quarrel with the sisters' parents and that she had acted in spite, in any case this could not account for the other phenomena.

While Kate and Margaret were responsible for the seances it was the elder sister Leah who gained the reputation and became wealthy. After two tragic marriages Margaret faded into obscurity and Kate continued to make her mark as a medium. In England she was investigated by the scientist Sir William Crookes, who considered her to be a remarkable medium, and was tested jointly with England's most distinguished medium Daniel Dunglas Home.

Following the death of Kate's husband both the women turned to drink and their psychic powers came to an end. Then one day in October 1888 in front of a packed house at the New York Academy of Music, Margaret confessed to being a fraud and demonstrated how she produced the raps and cracks with her big toe. Explaining why they had taken such drastic steps the sisters said they were penniless and that their appearance had earned them 1,500 dollars. A few days later Margaret retracted her confession, saying that desperate for money, she had agreed to collaborate with a journalist in order to provide a story and material for a book.

While sceptics were satisfied that spiritualism had been dealt a death blow the incident seemed to give it greater impetus. The Fox sisters became history and ended their lives drunk and destitute, dying within months of each other in 1895. Today the old house where it all started is gone and a museum stands in its place, on a plaque outside are the names of the Fox sisters and the declaration, The Birthplace and Shrine of Modern Spiritualism’.