3: The Tables Are Tipping

you have a medium present, communications are promised conditionally. If you come with candid minds and a desire to know the truth, the spirits will endeavor to communicate with you. Third, let one among you be appointed to repeat the alphabet. Fourth, your meetings should be opened with singing, and clothes with singing, and all should pray, ferishing an inward desire to have

good spirits with you or those who are the most progressed. Five, in the absence of a medium, the circle should be formed with the same harmonious feelings, and the spirits be with you and impress with truthful thoughts. Six. Those who unite with the circle must not indulge in inharmonious feelings, strife, or bitterness, but follow the example of Christ in doing good seven all strive to live cheerful or happy, and there will be a corresponding harmony between you and the

spheres unquote. Now, obviously, the mid nineteenth century wasn't the first time that people had tried to make contact with the dead in human history. They had been at it first centuries. Ancient mythology and history is full of accounts of contact with the dead through necromancy, which shares qualities

of the seance, but is not the seance. Necromancy, unlike the mediums who are inspired by the Fox Sisters of Hydesville, New York in the forties, often involved violence in its early history, featuring a combination of ritualized words spells if you will, and an action, often a sacrifice. Necromancy appears in some of the most famous early stories we have.

So just kick it back to your middle school brain for a second and think of Odysseus, who talks to a witch who is able to conjure the spirit of a crewman in odissease his mother and even the mythic hero Hercules for him to get advice. And yes, they all drink the blood of sheep it's the whole thing Orpheus. This whole story involves going down to the spirit world to rescue his wife from the underworld, and Hercules himself goes down there too. In ancient Rome, the stories were

even louder and more violent. One of my favorite is when a witch screams, do I ever jet? These spells out consuming human and trails incredible energy. Let's let's bring up back. Some Roman emperors actually employed necromancers, most notably Emperor Nero, which is interesting because I feel like he was a pretty chill guy. Otherwise, there's also records of necromancy and killed the history and myths. It is featured throughout the Middle Ages in early Christianity, where some of

the earliest cautionary tales exist. One that comes right to mind is King Saul outlawing the practice of necromancy and then seeking out a spirit guide anyways, and action that leads to the loss of a huge battle as well as the life of him and his son. These appear alongside uh good Christian ghosts, which are different for reasons. I mean Easter ghost holiday Phononically, there's actually a lot of ghost holidays. There is Dia de los Muertos in Mexico.

So when in the Celtic tradition the Hungry Ghost festival or Yulawn in China, Oban in the Japanese Buddhist tradition gaid in Haiti or Easter where Jesus is famously dead. But there's one important element that distinguishes the seance from virtually all of these holidays and many of these myths. In these holidays, the ghosts come to us. We are on their schedule. In a seance, we are the ones

calling them. In these stories, the person who seeks out contact with the dead for their own personal comfort as opposed to the interest of others or to serve their own God are usually punished in seances. That's the whole point. It's a small distinction, but an important one. The seance, as spiritualists use it was one of the first major

innovations of the faith. But the history of spiritualist rituals came to be so much more, some of which has fallen by the wayside, and other practices that are still used in Cassadega today. Today is all about turning it up to an eleven. We're going to go to Cassadega to check out the colossic spiritualist ritual of table tipping, and check in with the Fox Sisters who invented the practice of the science on their first national tour, and

see what happened during their first brush with public backlash. So, okay, we're starting our science. Now, let's get this going. Step three, let's get singing. Somebody once told me the world is just kidding. Start the theme song wore. All right, I'm back in Cassadega, Florida, and I'm waiting for a friend. Yeah, I have friends. I'm walking around looking for snacks, of

which there are none to be found. But on my walk around the neighborhood, I do spot this beautiful candy colored lavender house, four bedrooms and a small gazebo on sale for a kind of stunningly reasonable price. But it's a nonstarter. You need the approval of the Southern Cassadega Spiritualist Camp to live there, due to its status as a protected official campgrounds home. This approval process is referenced extensively on the Cassadega, Florida and lily Dale, New York websites.

Sure you can live in a gorgeous house for a low price, But you first need to prove that you are worthy and involved with the community, and in a move that is a little exclusionary but makes sense to me in the circumstances. Mediums who have completed the equivalent of a three or more year university course slash unpaid internship to live there will get preference. But I let myself have the fantasy for a minute. Anyways, a friend and I come down to Cassadega. We learned to immune

with the dead. We live a minute's walk from a gorgeous public park and community, and well, I guess we would need to get a car because the only place to get food in all of Cassadega is a place called Sinatra's Restaurante, and it's open five days out of the week. But the ear here smells so fresh, and it's attempting idea. But to quote the man who I am taking today, is able tipping class from the reverend doctor. I know another reverend doctor, the reverend doctor Lewis Gates.

He will say to me in a reading I get from him a couple of days later, you have no business in Florida. Okay, he's probably right, but that's a little harsh but I don't know he's going to say that yet. At this point, Reverend Doctor Lewis Gates is little more than a name on a website to me. But unlike most reverends and mediums at the camp, he's got deep roots here. He's a third generation medium, raised

by a medium mother and a Baptist priest father. And he'll tell us that he still uses the deck of tarot cards that belonged to his grandmother. Now, one of the defining traits of modern spiritualism is its seemingly intentional lack of central figure. But for my money, if Cassadega at present has one defining figure, it appears to be Reverend Dr Lewis. He's virtually everywhere during my time there.

He's at services, he's doing healings, he's headlining the message service as it were, he's going on walks, he's attending services, he's not even technically participating it. And he's got a big personality. He's a real animated guy and probably the best candidate to show us how tables can connect us with the spirit realm, both because he has a lot of experience and because he has this unique ability to sell a group of people mostly new to the religion

of Spiritualism on one of its more esoteric experiences. Another of these more obscure ideas that he specializes in that I find particularly fascinating is trance mediumship, a form of mental mediumship where a spirit communicates through a medium using their own voice and mannerisms. Reverend Dr Lewis writes on his website about a spirit that he channels most often, whose name is Lucerne, who he identifies as quote being

from another dimension unquote. Lucern started coming to him many years ago, so for comparison, Reverend Dr Lewis Gates, sounds like this, we have a fear of leaving people behind. I'll leaving our life behind, our vibration. We are the fear kind of what we're going to see when we open our eyes on the other side. And Locern sounds like this, when you actually despaired world to come here, you pick your place in the city and state of your bath, in the city and country of your bath,

my kingdom for a single meeting with Ucern. But unfortunately Lucern is not making an appearance in Cassadaga today. Instead, my friend and I are taking a class in the Reverend Dr Lewis's physical mediumship through table tipping. My friend is from Orlando, about a half hour away, and she is coming in completely cold, so buckle in right away. She has this combination of wonder and conviction about how the world works that is fascinating to me. I've never

actually met this friend in real life before. We met around six months ago through unionization efforts for podcasters, which listener, let me tell you worked out unionize your workplaces. But this is the first time we've actually met in a time where I sometimes forget that I haven't met people in person in a while. She parked in front of the bookstore and doesn't know whether to comment on how bizarre it is that this place exists so close to where she grew up, or to just kind of take

in the experience. She starts by telling me that I'm so much taller than she thought, which is something I get a lot. You know, Jamie, I didn't expect you to be this tall. Well, guess what, I'm six ft tall and my personality is hard five six all right, I don't have to disclose that to you. Nice to

meet you too. She comes into the gift shop with me as the class is about to start, and immediately picks up on one of the more obvious and polarizing aspects of Cassadega and of American spiritualism on the whole. It's extremely white, she says, quote, what is this? Is this white people culture? I look around nervously, already feeling like my most recent encounter with the Spiritualist had left

me a bit at a disadvantage. My goal for today is to be here, be present, try not to piss anyone off, and show that I'm genuinely interested so that the board of the Spiritualists who control public relations don't tell me to go fuck myself. But it feels weird. So I lean over to my friend and I tell her I don't really know what table tipping is, but surely Reverend Dr Lewis is going to tell us what

it is. At the beginning of the two hour table tipping session, right, I noticed a few things about the Andrew Jackson Davis Educational Room that I didn't at the message service earlier in the day, particularly this one poster sized papyrus font graphic reading proclamation beneath Cassadega's signature, some flower loco everything is significant here, and so it stands

to reason that the sunflower is as well. I wasn't able to trace the history of who decided that the sunflower was the symbol of the spiritualists, but it's one that has always symboled constancy and can be found on nearly every branded item in the camp. There's maybe about forty people at the afternoon table tipping class. Our chairs are surrounding Reverend Dr Lewis Gates and his fellow Cassadega

medium and spouse Marie Gaines. They stand in the center of the meeting room with three tables of various sciences, all of which have three legs. I'm about to learn way more about the other people in this room than I thought I was going to. Within minutes, I will know that there's a man whose father had died just weeks before, who he was desperate to make contact with in spite of his disc belief in the great beyond.

I would learn about the old woman who comes every time this workshop is held in an attempt to make contact with her dead pets. I would meet the Cassadega regulars who want to say hello to their dead relatives that they speak to on the tables all the time. I meet the curious goth girls making a day trip together after the first one of them got their driver's license. The German tourist girls on a semester abroad who gets

scared and leave in the middle. The middle aged women who are there to support their friend as she embarks on the goal of becoming a medium and maybe going to night class question mark. And I'm there with my friend too, So let me give you a feel for Louis and Marie Gates. He wears a Hawaiian shirt, more casual than the Sunday dressing of just an hour before.

And Marie, who grew up as a Quaker, and I later noticed walks of real footsteps behind her husband on their morning walks as they take their cat around in a stroller. Iconic love that for them. They both have very distinct personalities. His is booming and hers is observational and at a few choice points a little quietly sarcastic towards her husband. They act as if we all know exactly what table tipping is, which is a huge mistake, if the confused faces of most of the people in

the room are any indication. But they banter like a married couple because they are a married couple. Here's Louis Gates being introduced at a Sunday service in Cassadega the week after I left by Marie at a service where because the Valentine's Day, a number of spiritualists had just renewed their wedding vows. At this time, I would like to bring up our pastor, Reverend Dr Louis Gates, pastor, medium, healer, teacher,

an awesome husband. Yeah, I wanted to speak today about our commitment to each other, our commitment to the universe, our commitment to our own being within our lives. A lot of times we forget ourselves as we move into different situations. Today we committed our connection to the individual that we married as our renewal vows. Again, we had a few connect to their higher connection to themselves. But we always have to realize that we have to nurture

our being in this lifetime. We have to nurture ourselves. We have to connect ourselves to this higher sense of consciousness. So, yeah, they're a team and they practice out of the same building around the corner. But today we are table tipping and they get right into it without explaining to you what the funk is going on. This seems to be the general practice in the area, though, these assumptions that you understand what's happening, things like yes, spirit is real, Yes,

you're going to talk to the spirit. Yes, right now, Okay, let's go. Oh this table. Yeah, it's made with the house of George Colby, the man who founded Cassadega. Yes, of course his house burned down, and of course we retrofitted the banister into a table. What question could you possibly have? It's your turn. We hope you thought about who you wanted to hear from from the great Beyond before you arrived. Louis does do us the service of

introducing the three tables he's brought with him. One of a pretty small coffee table that falls far below his I would say about six ft five frame. One is a medium sized TV dinner table that your grandma would set her coffee on, which tween episodes of soap operas.

And then there's this larger table, this pale blue George Colby table that will be using today, one that has been made specifically to Louis Gates's body's specifications, and which his wife Marie can make work as well as in use the table to get in touch with the ghosts. He says this of the George Colby table, where I, in just a couple of minutes will be speaking with my dead brother. I need one so I don't have

to stoop down, you know. Louis Gates gave a speech at Gala Day in Cassadega just the day before about an equally esoteric spiritualist practice called spirit trumpets, essentially an older spiritualist tradition in which spirits will make instruments move and play. Today, he tells us that the tables for table tipping need to have three legs for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Something about three legs just works, he says, and that any table will do, but the bigger,

bulkier ones are his personal preference. He says that he's blessed the space before we entered. This involves his saying a prayer in each corner of the room to clear negative energy, and being the one who said the prayer automatically makes him the alpha of the workshop. He is responsible for our spiritual safety. Rooms can hold onto energy positive and negative, he explains to us, So you have

to be very careful. He uses the example of the way that you can enter a space where something horrible has happened and you can somehow just feel it, feel that something isn't right, or to borrow an example of the room that we're currently standing in, a hall where there were fundraising dances during both World Wars and where mediums say they can hear music and joyful foots steps

while they're on nighttime walks. It's not that these spirits are haunting the space, he tells us, it's the energy of the event and things that happened there, which means that my virginity is haunting a dirty hotel room in Annapolis, Maryland. Actually, if you apply this rule to any hotel room, they become uninhabitable. Anyways, Reverend Dr Lewis says this, I've been doing this since I was five years old. It took me years to get in touch with all of this.

He says, this with the swagger I'll come to associate him with, as he introduces the tables, saying it takes years of practice to get them to quote unquote fly the way they do for him. Hell, he says, even Marie has trouble getting the tables going. Sometimes sometimes their own cat has more success getting the table to move than Marie, and it's like, jeez, man, she's standing right

there after all. Reverend Dr Lewis explains he's been practicing mediumship to some degree for over half a century, one of the only people at the camp to be a generational member of Spiritualism. Yes, he says he's seen tables levitate. Yes, he says he hears the tables rattle around he and Marie's house at night. He points to one table and says he found it rattling in the back of an antique store and the dealer said, I don't like that table.

Something's not right with it, and so Reverend Dr. Lewis bought it because it was jumping out at him. He's got the kind of charisma that makes you glad that Spiritualism has no interest in being a cult, because this guy could sell a cult the same way that the early Spiritualists of the eighteen hundreds could sell the religion. But we'll get back to them now that we've met the tables. The table tip in class begins. Reverend Dr

Lewis asks for six people to get up. They do and get around the big wooden table with Lewis and Marie, and everyone is instructed to put their hands on the edges of the table very lightly, no grip. The rest of us stay on the perimeter of the circle in our chairs as the group of six begin to move the table around the interior of the room, and I

don't know what to tell you. After a second, the table, which is huge, does begin to move, and it seems to kind of take the eight people surrounding it to the left side of the circle we've created as the less initiated, like myself and my friend look on kind of in bafflement. Now, I want to be clear, this isn't a table movie, as in levitating, This isn't a conjuring movie. It's not this what's going on, ladies, please remove your glove believe we're about to commuting with the spirit.

His lips are red like blood from a coop when you took his teeth, a sharp black yours when you bit a coot. And it's so cold and dark and wet like the jungle, like tears. I am crying. I am sorry. Fright, father, find me, find me, save me, Save me. Uh. There was a clip from Penny dreadful. But it is a table dragging across the floor, not lifting, but moving quickly and not appearing to be pulled by anyone in particular. And for skeptics listening, I promised to

take this class seriously. But of course I'm watching Lewis and Marie's forearms to make sure that they're not flexing with every movement that the table makes, and it doesn't look that way. But okay, they're both wearing long sleeves, and maybe I'll have a better idea when my turn around the table comes. For now, all I know is that the six not gates is are chasing the table around as it lifts towards its first victim, a woman

who has been here before. So once the table stops, it tends to tip towards one person, and it sways back in this jerky, seasick kind of way while it waits to make contact. So Reverend Dr Lewis nods at the woman the table is tipping towards, saying, that's you, sweetheart. And what takes place is this stressful game of yes or no questions that happens rapid fire. She's a little nervous, but she tries an easy question. Is this spirit a man? The table goes still, its legs go back on the ground.

That means no, is this spirit? Uh? Woman? The table leans towards her. Yes, that means yes, okay, is it her mother? No? She thinks harder. The other five people around the table are looking at her intently. There is this kind of pressure to perform when the table is talking to you. If you lose the rhythm of the thing, it gets less exciting. So the woman thinks fast. She says, is this her biological mother? Interesting? Now everyone in the room knows that she's adopted. The table says yes, yes,

it's rocking back and forth. That's an hiological mother. So the woman nods, as Lewis and Marie keeps staring at her as if to say, what question are you going to ask? Now? Uh? The woman gets nervous ask her a question, So the woman asks the spirit are you okay? And the table rocks back and forth. Yes. The woman says, I love you, and the table tips towards her slowly.

Louis says, that's a hook. And this woman who is talking to her biological mother via table says a little awkwardly, oh, thanks, And the table, as if sensing that things are starting to get weird, goes still. Everyone in the room takes a breath. Was that it is? That all there is to a tipping table? And after a second, the table takes off again. It moves to the left, this big fucking Quiji board, and the group of six starts to follow it again, and it starts all over. My friend

looks over at me a little confused. She mounts to me, was that real? And as I sit here, I feel more skeptical than I was wanting to. It all feels a little forced and performative. But I'm not here to decide if ghosts are real. I'm here to watch other people decide if they think ghosts are real. Many of the table tipping interactions are similar to this first one. There are people who are a little nervous and struggle

to think of questions. There are people who end up connecting with a spirit other than the one they had clearly been hoping to. There are skeptics that were brought with believers who are only taking it half seriously and kind of slowing down the proceedings. And there's a million Hi Grandma, miss She's but like the message they're resk

that took place before it. There are moments around the table that are extremely intense and even pull tears from people who came here to talk to someone who they

loved and lost. Table Tipping is something of a rarity in Cassadega and in modern spiritualism in general, and it makes sense that a legacy spiritualists like Reverend Dr Lewis Gates is the one to show it to us by in large physical mediumship like table tipping and spirit trumpets have been abandoned by spiritualists over the years, but the majority of mediums ratings in Cassadega now being done intuitively

or only with the mind. I mentioned this in our first episode, but because there is such a misconception on this topic even within Cassadega, mediums trained in Cassadega, Florida do not use tarot cards and rarely use physical tools at all. It's not that they're banned by any means. I mean, you can take an occasional table tipping class

like this. There are things like spirit photography walking tours marketed mainly at tourists, that encourage you to walk around with a camp sanctioned guide and capture orbs on camera, but these events are in the minority, and Cassadega mediums have actively distanced themselves from the tarot card readers who operate in the camp, particularly the ones who work at the Cassadega Hotel where I'm staying. Dot dot dot. That's

a drama for another day. But one reason that spiritualists on the whole seem to have distanced themselves from larger physical demonstrations over the years may have to do with the extreme controversy that surrounds some debunked methods of the

nineteenth century spiritualists. Again that dichotomy. In the world of sciences in the nineteenth century, there was often this demand for more, more contact, more proof of life after death, a demand that pushed early practices like spirit wrappings and table tipping even further towards things like quote unquote spirit hands that sitters could touch from the beyond, full on body materializations, levitation, spirit photography, ectoplasmic mouth ejaculate. I can't

talk to you about that right now. That's going to have to wait. But it's as gross as it sounds. But the more theatrical of a presentation, generally the swifter it would be debunked by skeptics, and so to protect their own religion and beliefs, most mediums today elected to tap into spirit using their minds and no clunky objects.

That is to say, it's interestingly old school that friend Dr Lewis Kates does teach physical mediumship as he does and also engages in trance mediumship, because these tend to be the elements of spiritualism that draw far more skepticism. Here's a quick smattering of early examples of physical mediums getting debunked. These examples come from Barbara Weisberg's biography of the Fox Sisters Talking to the Dead, as well as the book Calling the Spirits a History of Sciences by

Lisa Morton. Early spiritualists Ira and William Davenport, the teens seancers I call him, began as stage magicians before pivoting to spiritualist seances, where they were eventually caught performing tricks with elaborate spirit cabinets where they'd be tied up and shoved inside, only for quote unquote spirits to begin playing musical instruments while they were While Ira was said to be a practicing spiritualist, he also sat Harry Houdini down and showed him how he and his brother pulled off

the spirit cabinet illusion shortly before he died. Next up one of history's most famous mediums, the Scotsman D. D. Home, who was often referred to as a medium who never got busted, an impressive figure who was said to be able to levitate and produce physical manifestations of spirits, and he never was publicly exposed for sure, but there were several rumors and accounts that detailed things like a found fake spirit hand, or in a well circulated rumor about

a seance attended by writers Robert and Elizabeth Browning, a glowing appendage in the dark was grabbed by Robert Browning and revealed to be Holmes's own foot. And finally, the first popular spirit photographer, William Mummler, who was brought to court for fraud, although to his at it after three weeks of testimony, including P. T. Barnum testifying against him,

that's really saying something. No one could definitively show how Mumbler had created the spirit photographs, and so he went on to take one of the most famous of all time, one of Mary Todd Lincoln and what appears to be the spirit of her assassinated husband. Maybe you've heard of him. Now, Some of what I just described still does remain in the murky world of allegation. So physical mediumship, whether you

believe in it or not, it's riskier. Just because there were smoking mirrors demonstrably at play in the examples I just gave doesn't necessarily mean that the people doing it didn't believe or didn't think that these things weren't possible. I mean, does the priest in a confession box really believe that they are providing divine forgiveness? Probably not always, but often when it comes to things like this, literal magic tricks, a wet glove, a slipped knot to play

spirit instruments. I mean, it's very hard to defend, but some accusations of fraud are more difficult to parse. And I also include the Fox Sisters, who we are overdue to check in on. So let's go back to the

late eighteen forties. After becoming locally famous in upstate New York for spirit rappings in their own home said to be from a famous murdered shoe peddler named Charles Rosna, the sisters Maggie and Kate Fox, both still children, moved to the city of Rochester with their older sister Leah, herself a single mother, to begin the process of becoming public religious figures. I mean, can you blame a kid for wanting to so? Where do we leave our gals?

The Fox sister oh, right, per their account, they're having the ship slapped out of them by the ghosts of Rochester in the summer of eight I mean, my God, the way that Leah Fox, the eldest, describes Slappy the ghost my nickname, not hers. I will not give her credit for my amazing ghost nickname, but the way that she describes this malevolent spirit in her book The Missing

Link is very intense. The youngest sister, Kate Fox, was in particular targeted and tormented, at one point, appearing to be slapped to the point that she was unconscious, only to come to reciting poetry saying to be with Christ is better far. This stage of the Fox sisters lives is extremely difficult to verify, in part because the presence of spirit in the world, like all things I've become hyperfecated on, pends to be pretty difficult to speak of

with any sort of jectivity. I firmly believe that this is a topic that's almost impossible to come at with any clear sort of mind, because a person's perspective on the afterlife is usually connected to deeply personal parts of themselves, how they grew up, their relationship or lack thereof, with faith, people that they've lost, and the people that they've lost beliefs. I will say that Leah Fox's accounts in particular are

tough for me. She functioned not only as a Fox medium during her career, seriously, just give her a year or so, but Leah also worked in the unofficial capacity of Maggie and Kith's manager, part time guardian, and family myth maker, who would soon be taking their show on the road. Like a book of letters that Maggie would

publish later in her life. The contents of Leah's book was heavily contested by her own sisters later in their lives, as the relationship between the three of Margaret Fox's daughters exploded both their personal lives and their religion in a very public way, a moment for Leah here. Barbara Weissberg does an amazing job in her biography of Maggie and Kate Fox of showing all sides of their sister Leah,

including the hard to deal with sides. In her day, Leo would be considered some sort of saint le mother figure in the spiritualist movement, as the public opinion of her younger sisters tended to wildly fluctuate as their lives went on, But there's indication pretty early on of Leah having some volatile tendencies. One example in particular stands out regarding how Leah treated her own daughter in these early

months of spiritualism. A local man hoping to make contact with his daughter who was thought to have been murdered by her own husband but whose killer was acquitted, met with Maggie, Kate, Leah, and Leah's teenage daughter Lizzie for a seance. So they conducted this early version of a seance with all the sisters present, but no spirit raps came, and Leah began to brate and blame her own daughter

for the raps not materializing. Lizzie began to cry and it became clear that she had expressed after witnessing her niece Kate pass out seemingly possessed by Slappy the ghost, that she wished that the spirits would go away. Oh no, she said, she didn't like when her twelve year old niece was possessed. What a bit. But in this public forum, Leah demanded that Lizzie apologize, humiliating her in front of her own family and strangers, and Lizzie sobbed quote I

was sincere. I don't know how to repent unquote. Finally she relented to her mother's verbal accosting and sunk to her knees and apologized to the spirits, and suddenly the rapping began again. Shortly after, Lea sent Lizzie away to live with her father for over a year in Illinois, banishing your team daughter, not very saintly behavior. The summer of eighteen forty eight found the Fox sisters slowly discovering their place within Rochester society, first by making an important

connection through befriending influential couple Amy and Isaac Post. There's probably a whole other podcast to be had about these two. They were radical Quaker abolitionists and feminists. They held organizational meetings for local abolition advocates. They provided safe harbor for

fugitive slaves. After the fugitive slave Act of eighteen fifty made it so that white Southerners could capture any black person on free soil and claimed them as their slave, and the federal government played a much more active role

in the recapturing of enslaved people. They were also close friends of Frederick Douglas of Susan b. Anthony of Sojourner Truth, and after realizing that the Spiritualist kids who kept popping up in the news were actually kids from their own neighborhood, the Posts became some of the first true believers in

the fledgling Spiritualism religion. Like many early and subsequent adopters, it's likely that their willingness to give it a chance was at least in part motivated by the fact that they had lost a child in the past, one that they very much wanted to make contact with from beyond the grave. Maggie and Kate, still kids themselves, were more than happy to oblige. The summer of eighteen forty eight

was huge in Rochester, New York. In July of that year, the girls lived a stone's throw from the Seneca Falls Convention, the first major women's right convention in the United States history. Amy Post was in attendance along with Frederick Douglas and Elizabeth Katie's anton. I won't rehash the event for you here. There are plenty of places where it's been done far more effectively, and I will link them in the episode description.

But the short story is that the Seneca Falls Convention Hicks started the first wave of American feminism, while laying bare the inequities within this movement, particularly between white women and women of color. But another topic whispered around this convention was that of spirit communication. The Fox Sisters were not present at the Seneca Falls Convention, but they were sort of there in spirit. No I can't, I'm bailing

on the joke. The Sisters, either in a move of smart networking or smart networking from spirit, were some of the first to predict that Frederick Douglas's newspaper, The North Star would be a success, the first of many interactions with Douglas that indicate that while he wasn't a full convert to spiritualism, he was deeply interested in it and

many of the people who supported it. Barbara Weisberg describes it like this in her biography of the Fox Sisters, called Talking to the Dead quote many of those in attendance, such as Frederick Douglas and Elizabeth Katie Stanton, had also heard about the possibility of spirit communication through their Rochester acquaintances,

and others soon learned of it. Wrapped were reported to have struck the very table at which Stanton and her colleague Lucretia Mott had drafted the Conventions resolutions unquote, as it would for their entire career. The whiffs and accusations of Humbug as it were, followed talk of spiritualism wherever it went, But many progressives who were strong proponents of science were actually inclined to advocate for spiritualism in a time where it felt like with some study and some time,

anything could be proven as true. And in the late eighteen forties, negative press was no man for the public's curiosity in spirit communication, either in the interest of science or as would be true time and time again. Into the very recent past, there was a lot of death and a lot of people that they're grieving wanted to get in touch with in addition to the normal culprits.

In a time where life expectancy still hovered somewhere around forty a cholera epidemic swept Europe and the US in eighteen forty nine, bringing with it a new crowd of grieving who were eager for closure with relatives and loved ones they had suddenly lost. By the end of the decade, Hate, Maggie and Leah were notorious communicators with spirit In eighteen forty nine, Leah had promoted herself from manager Mommy to Manager Mommy Medium Live Left Love with some trademark Fox Drama.

The Spirits are said to have threatened to leave the Sisters permanently during the fall of eighteen forty nine if the Sisters didn't comply with a very specific desire of spirits that wish to take their show on the road, and after a little bit of rehearsal, they did just that. In November of eighteen forty nine, the Sisters performed in the largest theater in Rochester, New York, officially taking spiritualism

to the next level. November eighteen forty nine. Price of admittance cents fifty cents amidst one man and two ladies Good to Know. Four people attend in all, including Amy Post, lending the events some bonus credibility. Kate Fox remained in the audience for the demonstration, which was attended by both the curious and the skeptical, and Maggie came on stage in a pale blue dress. In all likelihood, those in attendants would have had some familiarity with the concept of

the supernat troll. Outside of Christianity, there were well known figures who navigated this area, people like Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish Swedenborgish philosopher turned Christian mystic from the late sixteen hundreds. There was also Anton Mesmer, the German physician and friend of Mozart, who theorized about quote unquote animal magnetism, which stated that there was a super fine, invisible fluid in

the body that could be amplified. More recently, there was the Poughkeepsie seer Andrew Jackson Davis, who had revived interest in clairvoyance in New York, and interestingly enough, the whole that the table tipping class I took in Cassadega is named after him. But these figures were all grown men, many of them well educated. None of these figures were as underestimated or disrespected as a teenage girl as ordinary

seeming as Maggie Fox. After a lecture from the journalist who had chronicled the events at the Hydesville House, Eliab Capron. Maggie entered with Leah Fox, who was now claiming mediumship herself. To the shock of the audience, the spirit raps came and the crowd was immediately split. Many were just as blown away as the people who would come to the

Hydesville House, but the skeptics organized quickly. When the demonstration was complete, and by all accounts, Maggie pulled it off, the audience grew restless and in the room demanded that there be a committee of five men assigned to investigate the phenomena, and nominated them before they let anyone leave.

The Foxes did not see this coming, understandably, but the newly formed committee demanded that the sisters submit themselves to testing the next morning, which they did at the Sons of Temperance Hall in Rochester the next day, with the committee declaring that there would be a second show at Corinthian Hall that night to reveal the results. This time, and even bigger crowd arrived. Caprine published an account of

night to along with a fellow journalist. So consider the source, they are biased in the Fox sisters favor But the long and short of it was that the committee had not been able to bust them, even after reportedly putting their hands on the feet and joints of the girls as the rappings took place, And that still wasn't enough. A second investigation was called for, followed by a third night of shows to indicate the results. This committee was

even physically harsher on Maggie and Leah. Their feet were bound and their dresses were groped, while the committee demanded that the sisters summoned the wrappings. And again the committee was unable to find fraud. So on the third night of shows, yet another committee was called for. And it's like, guys, it's eighteen forty eight. We've got bigger fish to fry here. But this time the committee called for would be only composed of women, so that the Fox sisters could be

physically humiliated even further. Barbara Weisberg describes the inspection like this quote. With the sister's reluctant consent, a subsidiary committee of ladies took them into a separate room, then stripped and searched them, examining both quote their persons and clothing unquote, in search of noisy devices such as leaden balls mortified. Both sisters wept through much of their ordeal, until their sobs reached such a pitch that Amy Post burst into

the room and brought the investigation to a halt. Unquote. Now, no matter how you feel, this is a fucking Guantanamo style physical humiliation of two women, one of whom is a minor. Maggie did not want to return to corint i in Hall after this abusive third investigation, but Amy Post convinced both her and Leah to attend in protest

of how they'd been treated. And again the committee found no fraud, and the Fox Sisters Kate included, were now considered legit enough to continue their work, but at what cost. Understandably freaked out by how the public had demanded to strip search them multiple days in a row, the sisters spent the next stretch of time perfecting their spirit rapping seances in Rochester in privately arranged sessions. An interesting shift here is that they now charged a fee for these seances.

Frederick Douglas was said to frequently attendees. He once got so frustrated that it was taking so long for the ghosts to show up that he called the display atrocious and apologize to Amy Post about it in a letter written later. Good stuff, And yeah, that's a really funny story, but it lends itself to the predicament that the Foxes and the newly minted mediums who were beginning to crop up all around the country and even overseas, found themselves in.

People sitting with mediums wanted instant ratification, They wanted to talk to specific spirits, and in some cases it seems like more than anything else, they wanted a bit of a show. And depending on your perspective, no one could put on a show or a ritual white like a spiritualist medium could. All right, we're back in Cassada, back in the Andrew Jackson Davis building. Yes, that Andrew Jackson Davis,

the Poughkeepsie seer himself well spotted. Group after group are going up to the table in our table tipping class, and I feel so self conscious waiting again, wondering if there's any chance that Lewis and Marie Gates already know who I am, And does that mean that they could just take a stab at who I would want to contact.

That's a classic fraudulent medium technique the hot reading, meaning that a medium would research who you are before they arrive and then miraculously bring through relevant information across the room and around the table. One old man connects with his father and surprises himself by starting to cry. Another woman comes in with a very specific agenda. She connects with her father's spirit and then launches into a hyper

specific line of questioning. She says she loves him and misses him, but she's still mad at him about that thing, and tells him on the table that she still doesn't forgive him. She then goes up a second time a little later on to speak with her mother's spirit and seems to connect, bursting into tears and asking if she was wrong not to forgive her father. It's intense, it's specific, it's technically cheaper than therapy. And then finally it's my turn.

I go up with a group and have a vague plan of what I'm going to do, try to make contact with one of my dead grandma's and hope for the best. I'm pretty nervous at this point because not only is this something I very much want to believe in, I also feel very aware of wanting Louis and Marie to like me. I'm being appraised here to some extent observed by the mediums of Cassadega, and so I'm both

interested and performing being interested. It's like being on a date, except the means to the end is the great beyond and the approval of a small community of aging mediums and healers. So we stand around the table, me right next to Lewis. He's huge and feels huger when I'm next to him, And so when the table takes off, I kind of hope that it will all suddenly become clear, something like I knew it. He's dragging the table or Marie is dragging the table. Something very obvious is going on.

But it doesn't seem that way at all, And in fact, the gates Is seem to intentionally keep their touch on the table pretty light. But Lewis narrates the experience like a sportscaster as the table takes off and leaned to the mom across the table from me. Standing around the table is a completely immersive experience. It's nothing like watching from the perimeter. You smell everyone, smell everyone's breath. You feel very self conscious about how tightly or not tightly.

You're gripping the table like am I dragging it? Am I a part of the problem? Are we confirmation biasing this table around? Or is this real? But I don't have time to think about it because suddenly the table is tipping towards me. So I start to speak to the dead. Are you a woman? Please say you're a woman. I don't know what to do if you're not a woman. The table goes still, that's a no, it's not a woman. I'm fucked. I'm so fucked. So I asked, is this

not a woman? Because yes or no questions can be really gendered. But the table moves again. The answer is yes, it's a male spirit talking to me, a dead man. I'm pretty lucky. I haven't really lost many men in my life, Is it, Papa? No? Is it will no fun? I'm blowing it. No one has gotten this many nose in a row in the entire time this has been going on. So I panic and I ask, is this Matthew? And the table starts to nod yes. And that's really

weird because I don't technically know Matthew. My mom had two miscarriages and we were raised to think of them as is our siblings, and to talk to them. Even our middle names are their names, Matt and Beth, and I used to like draw these weird pictures of what I thought my cool teenage siblings would look like if

they were alive. They're not people I've actually met. They're kind of like these characters to me, I guess, but it made my parents feel better that me spoke life into an experience that have been so painful for them. But I ask is this Matt? And the answer comes back as yes, which leads me to what would I say to someone who I've never met and is mainly the object of my weird child fan fiction. So I think for a second and I asked, are you good? I sound like a total dumbass, but he says yes.

The table rocks back and forth, and I swear to God, I'm not touching it. I ask is he with bethany my other siblings who passed away? The answer is yes. Has he been watching me? Yes? And I feel Louis gates his eyes on me and he says, there's a man from your work here too. He says, you're funny. This kind of stops me in my tracks because this doesn't really track for me at all. I can't think of a man who I've worked with who's died that i'd be close enough with to say that I'm funny.

But Louis Gates does know that I'm a comedian. You know, it's not inconceivable that he could be taking an educated guess on something that I would want to hear. But I shift my focus back to the table. I'm talking to Matt, and I'm really feeling the pressure to stick the landing on this conversation. But I can't think of anything, and I hear myself blurting out, were you upset about what grandma did? And look, listener, what my grandma did

or did not do is none of your business. But I was curious if I could communicate with him what he thought. But the table goes still. The answer is no, and Marie Gates looks at me and says, they don't bring anger into the spirit realm. They really don't. And then the table takes off again. My turn is over and my friend begins a stilted, nervous conversation with her grandfather she only met a few times as a kid. And that's my first experience speaking with the dead maybe.

This session continues for two hours, and it's strange but not unpleasant, except for this one moment that sticks out to me. A man who was sitting across the circle from me had a tearful yes or no conversation with his father about an hour before on the table, and he hadn't said much sense, even as most of us were whispering with our friends or the regulars to the camp laugh and catch up with each other. But this guy has been keeping to himself, looking down at his

hands that are kind of shaking. He wants to believe that he's talking to his dead father Bade, but he clearly has doubts, and finally he breaks and looks to Louis and makes a proposition. He asks them, can the two of them get on the table, one on one and have a conversation with his father. He's half desperately wanting to make contact and half wanting to reassure himself that there is some chance that all of this might

be real. He tells us all that he was with his father when he died, and breaks down here for a minute because it was just a couple of weeks ago, then bounces back. He continues, saying his father was extremely Christian when he was alive, while he was more open to alternatives like spiritualism. That's why he wanted the one on one on the table. He wanted to ask his dad what he thought about the afterlife and whether it's squared with what he very firmly believed when he was alive.

And now I'm watching like a sports commentator, like how is Lewis going to handle a request this direct? These interactions can be difficult to watch because here is a man who is clearly in pain and seeking out answers that could very well be unknowable, and it's one person's job Louis Gates to assure us that they are knowable.

Is this okay? I I don't know. It depends on so many things, On if you believe in it, on if the person is profiting from it, which it doesn't seem really like this camp is on whether the medium believes in what they're doing. Louis definitely does not take the man up on the one on one table request. Instead, he says that there is a period of adjustment in the spirit realm in a way that almost sounds matrix e, but he says that people in spirit go to a

place where they feel comfort and acceptance. He says, it's possible that this guy's father is able to attend Christian ceremonies in the spirit realm, and enough time hasn't passed for the deceased dad to understand the real truth of what being in spirit is. The guy doesn't know what

to say. He doesn't push Reverend Dr. Lewis further, and Louis takes the opportunity to share a personal anecdote, revealing that his father was a Baptist priest who firmly believed in what he preached, and that his mother was a spiritualist and that's whose path Lewis decided to follow. Louis continued saying that even in the spirit realm, his father retained his Baptist beliefs, but that they spoke together often.

He even goes on walks in Cassadega with his deceased father and at this the man seems comforted or maybe he's just stumped, and that's the whole class. Lewis releases us through the gift shop, but tells us before we go that you don't need to buy a lot of stuff to be a spiritualist. And actually, you shouldn't buy a lot of stuff to be a spiritualist. All you need is a couple of courts crystals, he says, and

a lot of practice. And then he laughs and he gestures to the door and says this by whatever you want, though, and we do, and so ends my journey in the art of Cassadagan table tipping. After we leave, my friend wants to provide me with a true, authentic Floridian experience, so we get subs from Publics, which is a grocery store for the uninitiated. It's a go to that she coaches me through ordering, and we sit and we talk

about the tables. I asked her how she felt about the whole experience, and she says, she isn't really sure what to believe, but she was deeply affected by the people who really felt they'd made a connection to a recently lost loved one and expressed some embarrassment and asking her dead grandmother if she should text her ax again.

It was like the table was screaming, don't do it, and its legs like clattered to the ground, and it was incredible comedic timing on the part of spirit or the table, or Reverend Dr Lewis, or some kind of combination of the three. She had a good time, but she has no idea what to make of it, and I share the story of the Fox Sisters with her because as I've been putting this show together, I find myself telling my family and friends the story of spiritualism

pretty often, because that's what most religions are. It's a series of stories. Stories you believe in, stories you attach moral significance to, and so on. But after a while of doing this, I realized that I was doing something a little bizarre. I was always sharing the same story, the story of the Foxes. There's the story of my experience in Cassadega, But the way that I was framing it very much dependent on the person I was talking to. The people I knew who had faith as a part

of their lives. I tended to frame the story of the Fox Sisters as a religious story, and they reacted to it with more reverence. But if I told this same story framed as something a little weird that got popular in the nineteenth century also true, people reacted very very differently. It was funnier, it was more bizarre, but

it's the same exact story. So far, Ghost Church has been a lot of me taking you through my early experiences in spiritualism through my eyes, and to be quite honest, after this table tipping class, I found myself kind of struggling more than ever on how much I was willing to believe, which was a surprise to me. When I arrived in Sadega, I honestly thought I would become more and more secure in feeling connected with the spiritualist faith.

But a couple of days in and I was very much struggling, and more than anything else, I wanted to know how the mediums who practice at the camp now were able to find faith like that. So next week we're going to hear from four members of the Cassadega community and get a feeling for how they became the modern spiritualists, as well as learning tragic ending to the story of the Fox Sisters, the first to be faithful to the religion or were they next week on Ghost Church.

Ghost Church is a Cool Zone Media production created, written and hosted by me Jamie Loftus special thanks to Robert Evans for voicing the Reverend Dr Lewis Gates. The show is produced by so E Lichterman, edited by Ian Johnson. Our theme song is by Speedy or Tease That's CD Klea, Andy Loholt, Audries, Whitesides and Joey Dubeck. Music is by Zoe Blade m hm hm