You may remember my article on the Fox Sisters at the beginning of my sceptical journey. Just for a quick recap for those who may not have read it (and why haven’t you?), in late March 1848, young girls Maggie and Kate Fox began to communicate with what they believed to be the spirit of a murdered man that was trapped in their house in Hydesville, New York.

The girls became rock stars of their time, travelling the world and showing audiences of hundreds how they communicated with the dead.

But 40 years later they said they faked it all and had made the noises by tapping and cracking their toes against the floor to make the familiar knocking sounds that they had attributed to spirits.

You can read the full article here:

https://scepticonline.com/2024/02/17/the-fox-sisters-pioneers-or-showgirls/

I had reached out to Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd for his thoughts on the Fox sisters, seeing that he’s a huge believer in the paranormal, and something he said had been niggling me ever since. He said that he didn’t believe that the sound of someone cracking their toes/bones could travel with any volume across a theatre and that he believed that they had just had enough of the fame and wanted it all to go away.

I agree with the hypothesis in this, but as a true sceptic, I needed proof.

So I set out to try and replicate the night when Maggie Fox stepped out onto a stage in New York to show journalists how she and Kate had made the noises.

First, I needed to find something similar to the theatres of the day. I asked around at the little old independent theatres in my area. They were brick built but small and filled with velvet seating and drapery which would have helped prove the theory. Unfortunately, whether it was because they thought I was mad or because they didn’t want the likes of me in their theatre, none of them were prepared to host my experiment.

But as luck would have it, very close to my home is a large hut that would be similar to the wooden buildings built at the time. It was also available to hire and was somewhere where I could hold a controlled experiment to scratch my itchy brain.

On Sunday 27th April 2025 I gathered friends and family to help me with the great toe cracking experiment.

It wasn’t as large a sample as I would have liked, but it was large enough to get the data that I wanted.

As you can see above, we had no chairs or tables, or drapes on the windows. So this would help the experiment somewhat, because the sound would be able to travel easily around the space. There was nothing to dull it apart from the people in the room.

I got everyone to stagger themselves from side to side and front to back, and made them face the rear of the space, so they couldn’t see or be influenced by what was happening.

First, we knocked on the wooden floor as one would knock on a door. No surprise that 100% of people heard the knock.

Next, we tapped on the floor with a soled shoe. Again, 100% of people heard the tapping.

Then came the toe cracking inside the shoe. Not enough traction to make a noise against the wood so 0% heard that noise.

If the Fox sisters were cracking their toes or knees underneath heavy skirts or inside shoes, there is no way that would be heard across a theatre. Not even in the front row.

The same can be said for toe cracking from a foot inside a sock. It made no sound on the wooden floor and when we tapped the foot directly against the wooden floor only 75% heard the noise. It didn’t travel to the back of the space. So 0% for the toes and 75% for the foot tap.

Bare footed we did the toe cracking again. There was no way of making this noise against the floor to make a good tap. Tapping the bare foot on the floor got half way across the space and 50% of people heard the noise. But it wasn’t a knock and didn’t really represent the knocking sound of a spirit answering questions.

Lastly, the lovely Hannah took to the front of the space and cracked her knees to see if that sound could replicate a spirit knocking. 100% of people heard the crack of the knee so that sound travelled to the back of the space. It didn’t sound like a knock though and could most certainly only be interpreted as a cracking joint.

So Dan Aykroyd was right. There is no way that this noise could travel across a theatre to all patrons as Maggie Fox had said. She must have been sick of the fame and how Leah had taken advantage of them, and did anything she could to make it all go away. And she was very successful, because it all disappeared very quickly.

Now, all of this doesn’t mean that I think that the Fox sisters were genuine spiritualist mediums who communicated with the dead. Noises could have been made in a number of ways to bring the spirits alive. There could have been someone hiding under the stage to make the knocks. There could have been a tack under a heel to help make a knock. Hell, there could have been multiple people in the audience knocking for the sisters and in on the act.

But they definitely didn’t do it by cracking bones. This I am sure of.