Let me tell you a story.

Chances are you’ve come across aspects of this tale at some point in your life, whether it be for fun, out of curiosity, or from a genuine belief that there are people out there that can actually talk to the dead.

Whichever way, this is how it all began.

Tap Tap Tap

On a chilly night in late March 1848, blacksmith John Fox was huddled up in bed with his wife Margaret and two of their daughters, Margaret and Catherine. They’d been plagued by unexplained noises around their house in Hydesville, New York for weeks now, and on this particular night, had the pleasure of someone or something invisible playing knock knock around the cabin. Mrs Fox described it as someone moving a chair or tapping on furniture around the house, especially in the bedroom where they slept. They had searched high and low for the source of the noises, but could find nothing.

The Fox family had moved in to the Hydesville house in December 1847, renting the property while they were building their own house not so far away. The taps and knocks had started pretty soon afterwards and continued daily.

On Friday 31st March 1848, the whole family had decided to go to bed early, being so exhausted from the lack of sleep that the noises brought. The rapping commenced as soon as they got into bed.

Talk To Me

Twelve-year-old Catherine Fox, or Kate, as she was known, snapped her fingers to communicate with the invisible rapper, both delighted and petrified when it answered her back. She had snapped her fingers three times, getting three knocks back in return. The same with five snaps, then ten.

Older sister Margaret, or Maggie, fifteen, joined in herself, asking the entity to “do this, just as I do. Count one, two, three, four.” clapping her hands together as she spoke. The invisible force knocked one, two, three and four in response, startling Maggie, but setting the tone of their communications from then on. Even Mother Fox joined in.

Harder questions were asked: Are you a spirit? Did you live in this house? Count the ages of my children. Mrs Fox also asked it “Are you an injured spirit?” and “Were you injured in this house?” The spirit answered positively to these questions, prompting more curiosity.

Throughout the evening, through endless knocks and interrogation of the entity, it was found that the spirit was that of a man who was thirty-one years old, who had been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar. He had come visiting the residents of the house at the time, peddling his wares, and had become a victim of foul play, leaving behind a wife and five children.

They called him Mr Splitfoot. A common nickname for the devil.

The Foxs called over their neighbours to witness the spectacle and, after they’d gotten past their initial disbelief, they started asking more questions of Mr Splitfoot, to try and find out exactly what had happened.

Through a series of yes and no questions, and then a tedious rapping of the alphabet to spell out individual letters and words, they gained the name of the murderer, that the murder was committed one Tuesday at midnight – very specific – that Splitfoot had been murdered by having his throat cut. And that it had all happened for the theft of a princely sum of $500 that the peddler had on his person.

A Phenomenon Is Born

By the following day, word had spread about the spirit rapping, and the house became overrun by people curious to see the goings on. There were so many visitors inside the house that Mrs Fox took Maggie and Kate to a neighbour’s house to get them away from it all. The rapping continued all over the property after the girls had left and there were many witnesses to this fact. This will become important later on.

The visitors to the Fox house continued with their questioning of Mr Splitfoot, sometimes getting answers, and sometimes nothing. One thing that everyone who was present agreed on, was that they were definitely talking to a ghost.

With the information coming to light that the murdered man was buried in the cellar, the decision was made to dig up the floor and find his remains. After all, Mr Splitfoot had pinpointed the exact place where he was dumped, so it should have been quite straightforward. The house was built quite close to a waterway though, and the hole that they dug soon began to fill with water, hindering any progress. But even later on, when the water had subsided enough to continue, there wasn’t much to be found that resembled human remains. These were found much later on, buried in the cellar walls.

Mysterious Noises

A journalist called E E Lewis travelled to Hydesville, along with the hundreds of others, eager to witness the phenomenon for himself. He compiled and printed a booklet he called “A Report Of The Mysterious Noises Heard In The House Of John D Fox“. The booklet mostly consisted of statements he collected from witnesses who had experienced the haunting first hand.

One group of witnesses he interviewed were the Weekman family, who had lived in the Hydesville house some time before the Foxs moved in. They had experienced someone constantly playing knock and run on the front door; every time they had answered there had been nobody there. This even happened late into the night and when they were stood right behind the door to be able to open it and catch anyone who was on the other side. They had heard phantom footsteps walking about in the cellar, and Mr Weekman had heard somebody calling out his name when he was alone in the house. Their young daughter had also woken up in the night, screaming that there was someone in her room.

Jane Lape, another witness, says that she had lived with the Weekmans at this time, and reported seeing a man standing in the bedroom off the kitchen, staring at her. She said he was wearing grey pants, a black coat, and black cap, which it is believed were the same clothes that the peddler wore when he was killed. There was only one door into this bedroom and it came off the kitchen, which meant that anybody going into the room would have had to walk by Jane as she worked, and she had seen nobody pass by while she was there. He had just appeared. She was so frightened that she ran to get Mrs Weekman, but the man was gone by the time they got back.

Another statement collected by Lewis was from a Miss Pulver who lived with a Mr and Mrs Bell in the Hydesville property. She mentioned a peddler calling at the house, but she hadn’t any money with her to buy anything at the time. “He said he would call at our house the next morning. I never saw him after this.”

Miss Pulver she had started hearing noises in the house shortly after meeting the peddler. She would hear a mans footsteps walk from the bedroom, down the stairs and into the cellar, but there would be nobody else in the house with her. She had also fallen over some uneven ground in the cellar, which had previously been flat but now had become indented as if it had been dug up. She had told Mrs Bell and found Mr Bell filling in the hole some days later.

Hundreds Flock To Hydesville

Within weeks, news had travelled far and wide, and hundreds of people had flocked to Hydesville to visit the house where you could talk to the dead.

This included elder sister Leah Fox, who had read about her family’s problems in the local newspaper. She was substantially older than Kate and Maggie, and was, at the time, a single mother living in Rochester, New York making a very modest living teaching piano to children.

She took it upon herself to take Kate back to her home, to take her away from all the chaos, but states in her book ‘The Missing Link In Modern Spiritualism‘ that the spirits followed them back there and became even more mischievous than ever. It was no longer just knocks and raps, but things being thrown around the room, bed clothes ripped off beds, and touches from unseen hands. This obviously wasn’t Mr Splitfoot, as he was still back in Hydesville entertaining the masses.

The Seances Begin

Maggie soon joined Kate and Leah in Rochester, signalling yet another increase in spirit activity. It was at this time that Leah started inviting people over to come and speak to their dearly departed loved ones.

The Granger family were one such group who came to visit – Mr and Mrs Granger and their daughter Elizabeth. They had had another daughter, Harriet, who had passed away under traumatic circumstances and who they wanted to speak with to find out what had happened. They were one of the first families to experience a Fox sisters seance before they became famous. The story of Harriet Granger is told in letters written by a Reverend Clark of Westford, New York.

The Grangers were old friends of Reverend Clark and he was somewhat sceptical of the tale he was told. He attended the seance with the Foxs with the sole purpose of exposing it as fraud, but was converted to a believer after the experience. The alleged spirit of Harriet came to the sisters during the seance, telling her family that her husband was the cause of her death and that he would be coming for them next. There is no research I found that would suggest this was true, but it’s certainly a juicy piece of information to pass along.

A New Way To Make Money

As the Fox sisters seances became more and more popular, Leah began to charge money for each sitting. Even when she had observed an exhausted Kate doing her thing late into the night, she carried on booking people in, charging a dollar a time, with no regard for much except the money it was bringing in. And there was no end to the amount of people who were willing to pay.

Fame and Fortune

Kate and Maggie became more and more famous, sitting for as many people that Leah could cram into a day, and becoming more and more burned out as time went on. They were still only twelve and fifteen when this all started, but they were basically rock stars of their time. Everybody wanted to meet them.

At the time, entertainment was mainly books, dinner parties, and the theatre, if you could afford it, and by 1849, the Fox sisters were hosting hundreds of people in theatres all over New York and beyond, charging 25 cents a ticket to watch them commune with the other side.

Newspapers reported on the phenomenon regularly, some journalists praising the new spiritualist movement, and others convinced that the sisters were complete frauds.

Early theatre shows by the sisters often included committees of well to do professionals who would examine the girls on stage to prove their legitimacy. One committee even went so far as to have these two young girls strip naked behind a curtain and examine them ‘thoroughly’ to make sure that there were no devices in or about their persons that could help them conjure up the noises. A hugely traumatic experience for anybody, I’m sure you will agree.

The Buffalo Report

One committee that examined the sisters as their infamy grew, consisted of three physicians from the University of Buffalo. They came to the conclusion that the rapping was a result of dislocating the leg bones, as they explained in their report.

It sounds super painful. And ludicrous.

This, of course, wouldn’t explain the thundering knocks coming from beneath the cellar floor of the Hydesville property when the girls were not present. It’s also extremely difficult to dislocate your own bones. Plus, all that lovely surrounding flesh that we have covering our bones would certainly dull any sound coming from the bashing together of them, no matter how hard it was done. It most definitely would not sound like anyone knocking on wood. Even if the sisters made the noises cracking their feet or their toes against wood on a stage, it would have to be a really bony area for it to make any discerning sound.

Spiritualism is Born

The Buffalo report put an end to any more invites for people to scrutinise the sisters on stage, which didn’t really help with the sceptics. It didn’t stop people coming to see their shows, either. Nothing could stop the believers from coming to see them.

Leah, who it can be said had been instrumental in starting the whole process of charging money to see her little sisters, had become the very definition of a stage mum – or stage sister – using Kate and Maggie as a means to make a living.

She managed their affairs as their fame grew, orchestrating bigger shows and going further afield, making them a pretty fortune for the time. And why not? The girls were putting on a performance, whether you believed in it or not, and they had no husbands to support them, so they had to make a living somehow. Why not on the stage? Fans came from near and far to see the girls who had started the spiritualism juggernaut that was currently thundering its way across the world. These two teenaged girls, with their older sister, were people that everybody wanted to know, including Royalty. It is reported that Queen Victoria sought an audience with them at one point, and they had been guests at many a European palace.

The sisters carried on performing for forty years or more, even though Kate and Maggie had allegedly tried to give it all up as early as 1850. Leah had persuaded them to carry on – some say by threatening them with ruin, others say by promising them that it would be for just a little while longer. Leah was not going to give up an extremely lucrative living. She was bringing in much more than she ever had teaching piano in a small New York town.

Leah seemed to become a very rich woman over the course of the Fox sisters careers. There has been mention, by Leah herself, that she married well and this was why she was well off. But it seems like the proceeds of the shows might have had a lot to do with it. This caused endless friction between the girls, as Kate and Maggie never seemed to fare as well as Leah did. And Leah was always very keen for Kate and Maggie to host wherever and for whomever was willing to pay for it. The young girls often held seances at the homes of rich and affluent patrons, who would think nothing of plying them with champagne and alcohol. Who can say if this contributed to their later problems with alcoholism?

A Family Split

By the 1880’s, Kate and Maggie had grown apart from Leah. They believed that she had taken advantage of them to make money, while they had seen very little of the thousands that they had made.

Maggie had entered a long distance relationship with the explorer Elisha Kane, who had promised her that they would be married one day. Unfortunately for her, Elisha died before they could be officially wed, and she turned to alcohol to numb the pain.

Kate had moved to London in 1871 and had met and married a ‘good man’. She had two boys with her husband and was happy until his death in 1881. She returned to the USA with her boys in 1885.

Both Kate and Maggie continued to perform as mediums on their own. Leah also set up shop as a medium, peddling her own abilities to talk to spirits, now that her sisters had abandoned her.

“It Was All Fake”

It was a huge blow to spiritualism when, on 21st October 1888, forty years after they had started the movement, Maggie stepped out onto a stage in New York City in front of hundreds of journalists and spiritualists to say that she and Kate had lied about everything. Sister Kate backed her up. She showed everyone present how they had made the noises, by cracking the bones in their feet and toes.

The uproar that this caused could be heard across the world. Not only from journalists, but also from the mediums and psychics that had come along since spiritualism had been born. Their very livelihoods were at stake if everyone decided that they should believe that these world famous mediums were fakes.

Maggie tried to take back her confession a year later, but the damage had already been done. All three mediums carried on practicing until their deaths, but never at the same level they had been when they were at their peak.

So What’s The Truth?

The sceptic in me makes me question everything. But with this case, if the Fox sisters made the whole thing up, how can we trust that any medium or psychic that has followed them along since is the genuine article?

In a quest for answers I started with the psychics and mediums, either via email or on the phone, and there wasn’t a single one who knew who the Fox sisters were or how spiritualism started. This was both disappointing and disheartening. Surely there had to be at least one person in the actual business who knew how it all actually came to be?

The last medium I spoke to started out promising – they knew who the Fox sisters were, they knew that they were the birth of spiritualism, and they sounded quite normal. But then it didn’t take long for it to all fall to pieces. Everything they were saying was sounding a little bit familiar to me, and I actually managed to find the website that they were reading from so that I could follow along. And then a couple of out there statements later, it was done. They knew nothing. One more in a long line of disappointments.

I moved on to experts and authors after this, asking my question, and having much better luck.

Emily Midorikawa, author of Out Of The Shadows, said “Given the contradictory accounts of Kate and Maggie Fox over the course of their careers, it’s very difficult to buy into the idea that the sisters were wholly honest in the way that they presented themselves to the public.”

This statement makes a lot of sense if you read Kate and Maggie’s book The Death Blow To Spiritualism where they try to explain the different ways in which they made the rapping noises. They start out saying it was an apple on a string, and then it was by cracking their toes, then by cracking their ankles. It really is contradictory by all accounts.

This doesn’t explain how people were hearing noises in the Hydesville house when the girls weren’t there, though.

The last book in my arsenal was The History of Ghosts by Peter H Aykroyd. There is a lot of great information in this book about the beginnings of spiritualism and early mediums and seances and I really wanted to ask my question to the author. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us, so I directed the question to his son, Dan Aykroyd, who wrote the introduction. My thinking was that he’s extremely clued up about the paranormal himself and I had a hunch that he would have something interesting to say about the sisters. I was right.

Dan Aykroyd stated “My thought is that the sisters eventually grew tired of attacks from sceptics and doubters and were maybe just fatigued with the whole experience and wanted it all to go away.” This marries with the fact that Kate and Maggie had tried to stop it all way back in 1850, just a couple of years into the whole thing, but had been persuaded to carry on for many years afterwards.

But another comment from Aykroyd made me look at one aspect of the Fox sisters story a lot differently. He said “It seems far fetched to think that the cracking of knuckles and ankles should produce the substantial volume and breadth of sounds experienced in the big theatres and halls where they performed.”

It’s easy to just take it as read that they’d made the noises by cracking their toes be done with it. But this comment made me question it a lot more. The theatres that the sisters would have performed in back in the day wouldn’t have had great acoustics for bone cracking to be heard easily if you take into account thick drapes, padded seats and carpeting. Even in the old wooden structures that were burning down one a week there wouldn’t have been enough hard surfaces for sound to bounce off and be carried around the room. It just doesn’t sound possible.

I’m still not convinced that there are people who can talk to the dead – I’ve never met anyone who has proved it is possible – but my feeling about the Fox sisters confessing that they made it all up is this. Kate and Maggie had fallen out with their big sister Leah because she had more or less forced them to perform from a very early age and had reaped all the rewards from it. They had only seen Leah get rich from their efforts. So I think that they confessed that it wasn’t real to hit Leah where it would really hurt – in her pocket. She had also wronged Kate massively by telling child services that she was unable to look after her boys because she was a drunk. I think that Kate and Maggie had also had enough of all the pomp and circumstance, like Aykroyd said, and they wanted to just fade into obscurity.

They managed this in a small way. They all still held sittings until they died, they knew no other way of making money, but it was a quieter life than they had before.

So, with these facts at hand, it’s very much up to you to decide which parts are true. It’s very much a story worth knowing, so I hope at least you’ll look into it a little more.

You can visit the house in Hydesville Road, New York, where it all started. The cellar has long since been filled in but it is part of the Haunted History Trail of New York State and sits in Hydesville Memorial Park.

If you’d like to read first hand accounts of the events, you can download Leah’s book The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism and Kate and Maggie’s book The Death Blow to Spiritualism for free from Project Gutenberg with these links:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33506

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40485

The pamphlet by E E Lewis, A Report of the Mysterious Noises at the Home of John D Fox can be read here:

https://arquivoespiritadotorg.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/1848__lewis___mysterious_noises.pdf

For a modern take on the Fox sisters, you can order Emily Midorikawa’s book Out Of The Shadows from Amazon.

And Dan Aykroyd’s new television series, The Unbelievable with Dan Aykroyd starts on Monday 19th February 2024 on the History Channel here in the UK, so set your planner to record.

If you’d like any more information from the Sceptic, you can email here info@scepticonline.com

At some point I hope to find someone with some loose bones who can crack them loud enough to send the noise around a theatre. Until then, I have a date with 112 Ocean Avenue.

The Fox Sisters: Pioneers or Showgirls is part of the Sceptic series of articles by Belinda Greensmith.