John D. Fox moves his family from Canada to Hydesville, New York in the winter of 1847 to try his hand at peppermint farming. His two youngest daughters, Margaretta “Maggie” and Catherine “Kate” drudgingly helped their father but were understandably very unhappy with their dull, poverty-stricken lives.
Then only excitement the two girls had was the reputation of their tiny, one-bedroom cabin. It was supposed to be haunted. In March of the next year, the family was awoken by strange popping noises in the house. Every evening, the knocking noises became more and more insistent and the family began to think that perhaps there was something to the story about a ghostly inhabitant in their cabin. The girls had even given the alleged spirit the affectionate nickname, Mr. Splitfoot.
At the end of March, the family went to bed early and the rapping noises began to torment them again. Then, the younger of the two girls, Kate, snapped her fingers and called out in excitement, “Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do!” To their amazement, the rapping answered with the correct amount of rapping noises.
Soon, the neighbors were visiting and the whole town was abuzz with the gossip that there was a ghost in the Fox cabin that could answer questions about the past, present and even the future. They began frequenting the cabin and asking the spirit questions.
They worked out a code so that the spirit could communicate better. They discovered that the spirit was the ghost of Charles B. Rosma, a peddler who was murdered in the house by the previous houses owner five years before the Fox family moved in. In order to verify this, the neighbors dug in the cellar and found a few pieces of human bone, but it wasn’t into 1904 until the full human skeleton was unearthed.
This talk made its way to reporter E. E. Lewis who wrote a booklet titled A Report of the Mysterious Noises Heard in the House of Mr. John D. Fox.
The eldest Fox sister, Leah, was living in Rochester, New York. When she got her hands on a copy of this booklet, she saw dollar signs flash in front of her eyes. She quickly made arrangements to move her family in with her and began holding “sittings” with her younger sisters, for a fee.
When their popularity grew, Leah booked the girls at the large meeting hall, Corinthian Hall. By three days the girls were examined by so-called expects and skeptics alike as the rapping sounded throughout the hall.
After this public display of spiritual powers, Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, perhaps motivated by the loss of his son, set all three of the sisters up in the Barnum Hotel, and it was reported that the girls were attracting very wealthy people to the hotel. They were brining in at least $100 a night; a staggering amount in 1850!
For some reason, Maggie and Kate fell out of popularity and Leah continued with the sittings, somehow finding the same gift to communicate with the spirit world like her younger sisters. Both of her younger sisters began drinking heavily and went their separate ways and lived with separate men.
Perhaps Maggie resented Leah’s wealth that had doubled when she married wealthy banker, Daniel Underhill, because her next step was to try to rip her older sister’s elite world apart. At the New York Academy of Music, Maggie displayed in front of a large audience how she could produce the mysterious popping noises by cracking her toes.
Even though she later recanted her confession, saying she old did it because she needed the money, the Fox Sisters would forever be known as frauds. However, there was something more positive that came out of it.
One reporter described those who communicated with the dead and their followers as spiritualists. This set off a new philosophy of life after death, and the possibility that spirits can communicate with the living.
