The Truth is Out There: The Fox Sisters

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Sarah Burnett.

You can't prove that, Elizabeth, Elizabeth back again? Are you doing?

I'm good? How are you?

You know I've been good. I've been fair to Midland. How about you? You look nice?

Thank you, thank you?

I like that. What is that? A turtle on your wear on your head?

It's nice turtle turtle underwear on my head.

Yeah, it's good. Yep, good. Look you know that's ridiculous. I do sperm whales. Okay, No, no, like Elizabeth, I don't mean. It's more to it than just the words sperm whale. It's the sound, not of the words sperm whale. It's the sound of the whales.

Yeah.

Like, Okay, if you were underwater, like thirty or say thirty feet underwater right in the ocean, you could hear sperm whales singing and it would sound like they were screaming. Really yeah, because apparently, hands down, the sperm whale is the loudest animal on Earth. Like I was looking into it. A sperm whale sings at two hundred and thirty decibels. What yeah, now, for comparison's sake, an ambulance. Sorry, Okay, jackhammer that's like one hundred and thirty decibels. Fireworks gunshots

It's thirty.

Yeah, did don't you know? Everyonder? Like the other whales and dolphins are like, damn son, I'm swimming right here, right here, man, come on, now.

They have voice I modulation, they have that rare condition.

I am a sperm whale. There's something I could know about this. That's horrible, crazy, Like why do they need to be so loud? Oh? All the heather whales are like, man, come, let's go to the tropics, man. Sperm whales just got here.

That's ridiculous, right, that is very ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous?

No, I'm here for it though.

Conning people by cracking your knuckles. Ooh, this is ridiculous. Crime A pod cast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. You damn right, I'm crazy, Zarin, Crazy like a fox.

Oh that's why I can see your tail wagon.

Crazy like a fox, sister. What I'll explain myself later. So first I want to take you on a little trip down memory lane.

Oh, I love one of my favorite lanes.

Do you remember when we first started doing this show?

Okay, kind of, Yeah, totally, and you remember there? I was there.

Yeah, you remember. We did did a bunch of episodes, yeah, totally. Yeah, and we did one about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle aka Conan the Barbarian.

Oh yeah, going hard against Udini and spiritualism.

Yeah, yeah, do you remember that?

Yeah, totally. I think I told it.

We were so young back then. Yes, any Who's Spiritualism For those who haven't listened to the earlier episode or those like me with broken brain memory issues, Spiritualism is the nineteenth century movement that claimed that awareness exists even after death and that it's possible for there to be contact between the living and the dead.

Yeah. It was like the eighteen hundreds version of I'm a psychic. I can talk to the dead, but they have like a whole different like language for it. M and we basically get the spirit mediums is like the crossover point. The clairvoyant is.

A crossover Sorry, I had to take a sip of water there everybody anyway, Yes, and there are people who believe this today in varying.

Degrees to varying degrees and invarying languages.

Yeah, but we see it in a bit of a different light now today most people see seances as tricks and cons. Yes, no offense to people who are into them.

When there's a crystal ball and smoke rock on.

If you're into that. But whatever, most people think seers who can talk to the dead are full of it, unless you're poll Walnuts.

Hey, I'm dragging souls over here.

That's that's the episode of The Sopranos where poll Walnuts goes and visits a medium and is completely in a packed room of people. He's killed.

It's amazing to talk through the medium. She's like, take your time.

So you have like a made man killer. Yes, with all these ghosts falling him around.

Everywhere he's going, he's got solid dragon soul.

But in the eighteen hundreds, spiritualism wasn't like a roadside carneia attraction for Rubes.

Now the president's wife was into it.

Well, yeah, and Americans were quick to adopt it as a way to reject Calvinist doctrine of predestination. It gave them control over their own salvation, and they could communicate directly with spirits who had already passed on, who could kind of tell them how to Yeah, how are you going to live your life? How are you going to save your soul?

Health troubled moments.

Yeah, it was seen as a way to merge the unknowable aspects of human existence with the technology that was just progressing by leaps and bounds. So not technology like we mean today. I'm talking like industrial automation and the tellergram.

Yeah.

I used to tell my students that the stapler was once technology, and they just kept ignoring me.

Anyway, Do you ever tell him like the pencil us too, and you get that far back it.

Really at one point. Yes, there was also at this time fascination with the East and Orientalism.

Oh yes, when they were japanning every.

Yeah, and there was a sense of mystery applied to the culture of East Asia that intoxicated people.

All they knew it just opened up. I mean after the Civil War is basically you have Japan opening up and then China.

Yeah, and all they knew of these places were the caricatures that were pedaled to them by European tastemakers. So a part of that vibe that they were sold was that the mysteries of the East involved fortune tellers, mystics. People were immigrating over oceans in numbers never seen before thanks to transportation technology. Everything was new and changing and

Yeah, all the unknowables make people yearn for the noble, and then they go, I'll take this person who just says I can tell you the fuge well.

And we're spinning out here on Earth while the heavens stay the same and keep scores. Kind of what works for people, I guess.

And also it's interpretive. It's kind of like the tarot, Like both astrology and the taro allow you to do the interpretation. So yeah, you're subconscious just finding a way to bubble up. So I think a lot of people figured that out.

Yeah, yeah, who knows. And it wasn't just the technological advancement of the time. There's also scientific discovery times. Yes, so like germ theory was established at this time eighteen thirty nine, mid eighteen eighteen fifty eighteen sixty, the periodic table of elements was constructed. Oh, incredible things were done with electricities eron.

Oh yes, my man Tesla.

Science was changing everything.

I gotta tell you a story about him sometimes.

Okay, I'm scared. Spiritualists saw themselves as a part of that, as a part of this science that was changing the world. They thought they were using science to prove the existence of not only God, but the afterlife. Think about it. For people learning about these new machines and concepts, none of that made any more sense in being able to talk to the dead.

Oh, if you suddenly have the gas powered lights, that's a miracle. And then you get into electricity. Now you've got things arcing and sparkan and you don't even know what's going on.

So in the telegraph you can send these messages across turn Yeah, so why not why not say, yeah, you know, this cool new stuff is happening, why not throw in spectral community.

Also, we can talk to the dead.

And so yeah, why not? Well, there are the true believers, those willing and ready to take advantage of true believers, you know, so enter con artists. They gain the confidence of an audience hungry for a connection to the next world. Who wouldn't want to talk to someone who's.

Past unless they're family? I'm kidding, but yes, so like, who wouldn't.

Want to at least know that the person or in my case dogs or dog.

Or dogs dogs, multiple dogs, all of the dogs.

Know, who wouldn't want to know that? You know, this person that you loved is happy and can like watch over you and stay with you.

Oh, if you could talk and send a message over the Rainbow Bridge, I know you would be Yes.

And everyone's lost someone, you know, even if it's like an ancestor that you never got to meet, and you want to talk too. You know, I got great great grandmas I never met. I'd love to talk to anyway. Our human hunger for that connection is what leaves us open. Yes, when you're hungry, you'll eat almost.

Anything good point, Yeah, totally.

In the rise of spiritualism came con artists who thought of really clever ways, sometimes using that new science and technology to dupe people into believing that they were a conduit to the afterlife, and they would connect you for a price, always for a price. I got a few of these jokers here for you today.

Nice.

Let me just say that I can get a little wu wu. Oh yeah, I'm not casting judgment. I think you can get Yeah, you can.

Get believes all the time ghosts.

So I got three sassy gals who swam in the wu wu. The Fox sisters.

Okay, you promised the Fox I did.

Leah was born in April eighth, eighteen thirteen. Margaretta was born October seventh, eighteen thirty three, wow, twenty years later, and Catherine was born March twenty seventh, eighteen thirty seven. So there's a huge gap between Leah and the two sisters. When Catherine was eleven and Margretta was fourteen, so this is eighteen forty eight.

She practically raised her sisters.

Well, no, I mean they had parents, I.

Know, but I mean, you know, it isn't you're an older sibling if you're that much older.

I'm yes, just like a kind of like yeah, So eighteen forty eight. They're living with their parents, John and Margaret Fox in Hydesville, New York. So, Hydesville is basically an intersection about thirty miles east of Rochester. The oldest sister, Leah, she lived in Rochester and was married. Her married name was Leah Foxfish, Leah Fox Fish, Badger, raccoon, dear stray cat. She just picked what she saw to window. So anyway, Hydesville.

Oh wow, the.

Display looks like an elementary school science fair. Oh yes, it's like it's got those three panel poster board things, and there are portraits drawn in what looks like cran I'm not kidding. And there's a dollhouse replica.

There's a third grade science fair.

It exactly looks like that.

How do I know this?

Did I fly to upstate New York for the day?

I imagining a Google tour? Yeah?

Go yes, Google Earth.

Yeah, it's amazing.

So the marker out on the lush grass that runs along Hydesville Road reads the Fox Sisters. That's in all caps. Well, the whole thing's in all caps. But I just like the Fox sisters on this site. Events of March thirty first, eighteen forty eight began. Sisters Maggie and Kate Fox's central role in the origin of modern spiritualism. Oh wow, yeah, that's pretty presumptuous using their nicknames, right.

You know, maybe maybe they preferred that.

As I was saying, the family, well, the mom, dad, and the two youngest girls. They lived in Hydesville in eighteen forty eight. It's about to go down, Saron, right, Yeah, they lived in a farmhouse, right, and legend had it at that time. Yeah, the farmhouse was haunted. Oh, March thirty first, eighteen forty eight, that was the ghost.

I knew it, right, I know, yeah? You know me, I'm like, that's a ghost.

Eighteen forty eight, March thirty first, April Fool's Eve.

Oh is that important? Back then?

Here I go on, Maggie and Kate, what the heck? I'll act like I'm familiar with him too. Maggie and Kate they ran to a neighbor's house and they said, we hear weird noises in our house. All right, creepy girls. It's like, in fact, we hear these noises every night before we get out of bed.

Weird pre Victorian children.

Why are you telling us this? They told him that they were pretty sure their place was haunted and that there was like a ghostly entity trying to communicate with them. The neighbor thinks the girls are full of it. I with the neighbor, like, why are you telling me this?

Go home, Mags, you got to go.

But then he's like, Can'm going to go over and check it out?

He's bored, There's not a whole lot to do. He's like, the candle's almost out, and here I get it.

Because if it's real, he's witnessed an honest to goodness haunting.

That's true.

If it's bogus, he has plenty to talk about Over a barrel of nails at the general store.

Oh yeah, he's got the best story of the season.

Those creepy little fox sisters came over and I'll tell you what it was so weird and what he calls the fox sisters the vixens? Do you think the guy he came over it was over. Maggie and Kate jumped into bed. Their mom was standing in the room.

So wait, wait, so these two teenage girls bring a strange man. Back to the neighbor. Back to the house. They hop in bad. The mom's standing there and what are you doing here?

You know? The mom's like, well, go ahead, girls, So she says out loud, now count five, and there's a pause, and then everyone in the room hears five knocks, seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere, all at once. So they hear.

Five knocks, all right, five five.

So the neighbor looks a little freaked out.

Right, It was like, alright, what's going on here?

And he like looks around the room. He's trying to figure out what could have produced the noise. The mom then says, count to fifteen. I'm not going to knock out fifteen.

You know that's a lot.

And you know what fifteen knocks?

Pretend horse counting? Yeah, go on, So mother.

Fox then she asks the neighbor, hey, buddy, how old are you? And he goes thirty three thirty three knocks, okay, okay. So by this time the neighbor is like, well spooked, he's.

He's impressed by numbers. He's very knocking.

Numbers are knocking. So he asked MoMA Fox and the kids like, who is this injured spirit, Who's who's doing this? And the girl say, mister split foot, who satan?

Oh, mister split the cloven host split foot? I got you?

Now if I'm the neighbor.

Yeah, I'm going through the window.

I just like plug my nose and pout.

Those two pre Victorian doll baby weird children. But the devil's in their room knocking on the floor and their mom's cool. But like under they'll good, I'm gonna sell my farm. You guys want to buy, because I'm out of here.

He runs right, he takes off, he gets.

And even if there's no devil, I don't want to live next to those people who believe that the devil's there. See either way, I don't want it.

Well, guess who else left?

The dad? The family?

The whole family abandoned the house. Okay, go to Would you live in a haunted house?

Depends? Am I like living in the haunted house? That like I was the one who discovered it or I moved into the haunted house and I was like, oh man, this is haunted. Like if I was like in the house, right, I was the one who determined it was haunted and it wasn't that like Oh, everyone knew. And I've now moved into the local haunted house just to see what it's like to live in the haunted house. Now I ain't doing that.

Wait, so you wouldn't go if someone said live in this house, PS, it's haunted, you'd like never know.

But if I was in the house and I discovered it was haunted, hell, I might just, you know, keep it up, because I was like, well, maybe the ghost got something to say. It would have to get to the point that the ghost wanted me out. Then I'd be like, Okay, I'm out. Yeah, okay, fair right, that's rational. We're talking ghosts.

Well, the Fox family had no interest in coexisting with a ghost, you see, ration into it, so they abandoned the house.

Poor neighbor gotta sell it though.

Well, they sent the girls to live with Leah in Rochester. And Rochester at the time was a hotbed of religious activity, including Millerism, and that's the precursor to the Seventh day Adventist.

Oh, I didn't know Millerism.

Well, not a lot of people do, there, I didn't until I looked this up. Word about the spooky Fox sisters spread, as well as rumors about the farmhouse.

So that one's got a big mouth.

Oh yeah, he told everybody.

He went right to the.

Everybody.

Yeah he's and then you start talking. One of the rumors was that a pedlar, like a little salesman guy.

Yeah, guy shows up with a bag of stuff and unfolded on your porch. Is that you do you like to it's a dented pan.

That the pedlar had been murdered in the house five years prior.

So, so it's the ghost of the pedlar.

Yes, enter Amy and Isaac Post. All right, let's take a break and we come back. We'll learn more about this gruesome teosom. Hello, hey, Elizabeth Dett what you're doing girl, I'm welcoming the spirits. Hello, welcome fox sisters. They communicated with the spirit.

I'm still looking around. I'm like, look, Wayne, I.

Can be able to see him. Oh okay, let to start a knocking rumor of a man murdered in a farmhouse. Pedlar, Yeah, pedlar, he's on bicycle. Amy and Isaac Post they got wind of this. Who are Amy and Isaac Post, niece.

And nephew of Emily Posts, Miss Manners.

Yes, they were Hicksite Quakers.

I was close so close up in Rochester Hicksite Quakers.

That meant that they were Quakers who followed the teachings of Elias Hicks.

Ah, so splinter Quakersah, exactly.

Elias Hicks didn't believe in original sin or the Trinity, or predestination or an external devil.

Okay, sections this is lazy about starting his own religion.

So he's a Quaker. He splits with the rest of the friends and his followers became known as Hicksite Quakers.

The Posts.

They were abolitionists, and they worked for women's rights. They created an interfaith anti slavery group. And Amy was at the Seneca Falls Convention in eighteen forty eight.

Oh so the beginning of feminism. Yeah.

And they were also early adopters of spiritualism.

All the is a lot of meeting right there. Yeah.

So Isaac and Amy they got all head up about the story of the guy being murdered in the Fox house five years ago.

Did the neighbor remember this person being with any confirmation?

No, I don't know if he started it or if.

It just where this rumor started.

Well, it's like where most rumors, You don't know where it begins.

Yeah, I was just wondering.

Well, like any good paranormal investigators, they formed a group to go and check out the basement of the spooky house.

Good.

Yeah, as you do. Unlike most paranormal investigators who only find dust flares on their film posing as spirit orbs. Yes, these guys found stuff, bone, fragments, hair.

Oh yeah.

No word on whether these were human or animal, but it honestly doesn't matter. Everyone was positive that the quote injured spirit was trying to communicate, so the Posts invited the Fox sisters to their house to see if the girls could continue communicating with spirits from another locale. Like is it just the house or is it you?

Scientific?

Yeah?

So scientific?

This was what Isaac Post had to say. Quote, I suppose I went with as much unbelief as Thomas felt when he was introduced to Jesus after he had ascended, But he changed his mind by quote very distinct thumps under the floor and several apparent answers. Well, he should have stated, not doubting Thomas.

I'm wondering, like, how hard is it to look under the floor.

That's the thing they you'll see, Okay, that knocking sound wasn't under the floor, It was their cracking joints what Kate and Maggie confessed to their older sister Leah that they'd figured out how to crack the knuckles in their toes in a way that made movement almost impossible to detect.

Oh but this, oh thirty three times.

That's my question. You're running out of joints, girls, Like, how is that happening?

I can crack my knuckles. But between the two.

Of them, you know, but still, and they're saying, it's just their toes, So maybe it's over. Maybe they've got like a loose I've have like a.

Thumb sock where you can pop it over and over again.

But that's what they're doing. So they did this with their feet resting on a wooden stool, okay, and like sometimes or on the floor. So there's nothing that anyone can see.

But it's loud enough. It sounds like it's everywhere.

Yeah, And the amplification of the cracking joint made the noise sound really like you said, it's everywhere, it's otherworldly.

Was just bouncing around off the floorboards.

And everything else, and you can't point to one specific thing that's making the noise. So with this knowledge, Leah was like, count me in. I can crack my knuckles too. Let's do this. So she convinced Isaac that she was communicating with his recently deceased daughter. Oh ethical o, she's all crack Oh, she says, hey, that's really terrible. So the Posts are believers after that, of course, of course they're hungry.

They want to eat, they want to talk to their Wow.

So they rented the Corinthian Hall, which was the largest assembly hall in Rochester, and they promoted this wonder and four hundred people showed up. This was the first demonstration of spiritualism to a paying public. Oh wow, emphasis on the paying. So after the demonstration was over, I mean, because that's the thing, like, if they were just honestly talking to the dead, why not just do it in a public space. Why do you have to charge people?

Spiritualist got to eat too.

We'll do it for the good their kids. I don't make their parents get jobs.

I'm not the best capitalist, Elizabeth, all right, I can't decide why they should be paid.

So after their little show, Amy Post took the sisters backstage. They went into a private room. She had them stripped down. Okay, she said, I don't know what I'm saying. She had a stripped down But there were a bunch of people there.

There was a group of skeptics. Okay, you're going to keep doing that.

I don't even know what song I'm trying to do. So the skeptics saw that they don't have any devices hit none of theirs.

Sure, okay, yeah, this is common we have. We saw this a bit Houdini and uh what you call out your Conan Doyle when they had they got the like strip.

Well, it's like the coronation of King Charles. Get behind the.

Screen, we got the Holy Oils. We're gonna rub on. Yeah, it's always like if you want to brew something. Yeah, they play the music because you're taking off your clothes. That's my saucy music. I'm going to do the feather dance in a second.

There wasn't any evidence, right.

Dan to the seven. Yeah, and there's a day.

They were born.

No electric devices.

Here, just two little mediums.

Well three so yeah, boy.

Eighteenth century Austrian healer Franz Anton Mesmer, he was a popular guy in eighteen forties and marriag.

Oh, yeah, I got a story for him for you.

He said everything in existence in the whole universe is controlled bay quote magnetic fluid.

Yeah, that's him, that's Mesmer.

And what happens if your fluid becomes imbalanced, Well, it's going to make you sick.

Yeah, you probably need leeches or probably some cocaine.

How can you be cured? You got to get balanced, and how did you get balanced? Mesmer has the answer?

What's the answer?

He said that he could restore the balance by waving his hands over a person's body and this would cause a mesmerized hypnotic state, that's the word. And when the person was mesmerized, he could fiddle with the magnetic force and boom. Healthy. Dude.

If I had a better name, that'd be my goal to have my name be turned down. Yeah, a verb or an adjective, so you like, run your nesk. I'd be cool with mesmerize, I mean martinized. There's something anyway, but Burnetti's.

Sarennie maybe sarahize something. Uh. Sometimes when people were under his spell, they said they were visited by spirits from other dimensions naturally, that's pretty cool. Yeah, you're into that sort of thing. Around the time that Mesmer was Mesmerizing, the Swedish mystic and philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg. He was coming up too. He believed the afterlife consisted of three heavens, three hells, and a middle space where every person went

Totally or on the wrong side exactly.

He was known as John the Baptist of modern Spiritualism. So he took the chocolate of Mesmer and the peanut butter of Swedenborg, and he made a delicious book. He communicated with the spirit of Swedenborg through a series of mesmeric trances. Okay, and Davis recorded these messages in a giant book called The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind. Oh wow, I see that title. I'm like, I don't know what that's books about. I'm not reading that.

So he's like the Edgar Casey before caid you write a bestseller.

Yes, So this is what he had to say. Quote, it is a truth that's the spirit's commune with one another. While one is in the body and the other in the higher spheres. All the world will hail with delight the ushering in of that era when the interiors of men will be opened and the spiritual communication will be established the dead.

Yeah, it'll be a year later.

This is what Davis wrote in his diary. I stole his diary. I'm gonna tell you what's in there. Quote about daylight this morning, A warm breathing passed over my face, and I heard a sorry it's addicted.

I know you can't.

And I heard a voice, tender and strong, saying, brother, the good work has begun. Behold a living demonstration is born.

That sounds like some ghostbreasters stuff. Okay, So like the.

Date of the diary entry March thirty first, eighteen forty eight, the same day that the Fox sisters displayed their toolence to their mother and their neighbor, a great awakening, a living demonstration was born.

Interesting for the set.

So upon hearing about the sisters, Davis invited them to his house in New York to witness their abilities himself. And once they wowed and with their wo w, it was on. The sisters went on tour. Okay, it was I got a bus merch.

They took the road.

They booked a suite at Barnum's Hotel, which was owned by the cousin of P. T. Barnum, that was on the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane. Sessions were conducted in the hotel's parlor for the admission price of a dollar, and that was done at ten am, five pm, and eight pm. They had three shows a day. They offered. You know, if you wanted to, you could book a private session. As many as thirty people would be in attendance at a time in the in the hotel's parlor.

Who are they?

James Finnimore Cooper, Oh, yes, the writer William Colin Bryant so Journer truth Wow Yeah. Journalist and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was there during a session when a spirit tapped out a message quote, spiritualism will work miracles in the cause of reform in time to a popular song.

What was the popular song? I thought, you're going to tell me it's her mother's favorite song.

You know, it's iambic pentameter. Yeah, anything in iambic pentameter.

Can be that interesting, Leah.

She stayed in New York and took callers in a sance room, and Maggie and Kate continued touring. It wasn't always glamorous life on the road, Oh yeah. Maggie seemed to be a particular target for people trying to debunk the girls. For some reason, they thought she was possessed a lot of times interesting. She was almost kidnapped by a group of men who were offended by her performance while in Troy, New York.

They were gonna like shake it out of her, I.

Don't know, put her in a pillowcase and throw her in the river.

I don't know, bag of kittens.

Who knows? Yeah, exactly. Horace Greeley founder.

And editor of the Go West young Man The New York.

Tribune began acting as a chaperone for the sisters.

Oh, this got.

Them entry into holding seances for the upper classes. And he was a mark and he was a pretty lousy chaperone. Yeah, he was really lousy. He let them drink wine. Well, you know, it's like little kids get him drunk.

You know, I'm not thinking that that was a mistake on his part.

He's like a fun mom in the suburbs.

Yeah, that's what I'm picturing.

Then wonders why there are so many single car accidents around prom anyway, So scandals started to surface. They didn't really have any supervision. What started out as a prank to mess with their mom and neighbor, what was supposed to just be a goof to fend off boredom, was now the source of incredible destructive stress for them.

Oh yeah, they're about to get in an invitation to the White House.

Totally well, mind you. This was all within a year and a half.

Yeah, exactly.

November eighteen forty nine, they gave a performance that ended with the visiting spirits tapping out. We will now bid you farewell because they're like, let's just stop.

This other knuckle o feet just swollen.

How are they talking?

And I imagine this is Morse code or unless they established some like you know code on the on the floor, like one is a two is bag.

I feel like in Star Wars when someone can talk to one of the droids who's just beeping because they have someone who's like, oh yeah, they said, now bid you farewell. That's what they said.

Yeah, I've been I've been to all the shows.

So they make that farewell message and for two weeks there are no spiritual visitations. But Leah wanted to get that money, so she made.

Like Gus the oldest one. She got real life problems, she made.

Like a true stage mama, and she just worked through the pain. The show must go on, Zaron. So four years on.

The gar letting her way through spiritualism totally.

Four years on. More and more doubts are being cast on their abilities. During a performance four years during a performance in Buffalo, New York, pillows were placed beneath the feet of the sisters and then that night's performance was awfully quiet. Saren hm, No ghosts came and knocking.

Yeah, because they couldn't get the breast off.

The Yeah, whenever it looked like the sisters would be exposed as frauds, Leah would pull up this like stock defense card. You guys, the negative, doubtful energy in the room is keeping the spirits away her.

You don't believe it won't happen.

Only the peer of heart who truly believes can experience what my sisters are doing.

Coincidental Yeah.

Eighteen fifty one, a relative of the Fox family, missus Norman Culver, She signed a confession. She said that she had helped the Fox sisters by touching them to indicate when the rapping sounds should be made. She said they used their knees, ankles, toe joints to make the sounds. Hm, I can I can crack pretty much anything, can you.

Yeah?

Sure, just snap my bones. That's hilarious to me. They're just running, running through all the joints.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I got some ricketty joints. But like, I don't think I could reliably do three shows a day for four years.

I got to busted up ankle. Yeah, but when when I move it a lot of times it'll just yeah.

No, imagine doing that every day for like you gets so swollen. Yeah, and then like when it rains, i'd want to cry.

But I think I could be a medium. I love popping my joints.

Okay, there you go, let's let's get you. I'll be your agent.

Not like you enjoy popping joints. I enjoy popping my joints. Anyway, the girls were still on the road. They were still practicing that early hustle culture selling vibes. The next stop had some unexpected twists. When we come back from this break, I will tell you all about.

Them, Zarin.

Yes, Elizabeth, it was eighteen fifty two, oh you, oh yeah, that's right it was, and Maggie was seventeen. Maggie when their travels took them to Philadelphia. It was there that she met thirty year old Arctic explorer Elisha kent Kin.

That's a heck of a name, isn't it.

Cain was convinced that the sisters.

Were frauds, got on Elisha.

He did his best to debunk them.

However, he fell in love.

He came up empty. He said, after a whole month's trial, I could make nothing of them. Therefore they are a great mystery. So if he can't figure it out. It must not be able to be sold.

I mean, he's an Arctic explorer, he can't do it.

But you're right, he did find love. He and Maggie fell in love.

I was wondering.

He was thirteen years his junior.

Okay, how old is she?

She's what seventeen and he's a thirty year old Arctic explorer. He was controlling, but I would say in a good way. All right, Well, he convinced her to give up spiritualism and go to school.

Oh that is yeah, I wouldn't call that controlling. That rational advice.

He was genuinely in love with her.

Yeah, reasonable, I'd like you to become a real person and enjoy things.

Like stop your your spiritualist child star gig.

Stop cracking your bones for bucks. Baby, he loved her.

His family did not. Oh they were Philadelphia blue bloods.

Oh so he's wealthy. That's why he could go Arctic explorers.

How can you be a thirty year old Arctic explorer and like you come out of the.

Story would either be the one holding the rope or you're the one paying for the rope. But yeah, so uh.

They thought that she was like an ignorant heretic bumpkin. Yeah, I bet certainly not good enough for their boy. No, no, no, he vowed to marry her anyway, So he's getting ready to go on this expedition. Before he left, they had a ring exchange ceremony, and the idea was that they would have an actual wedding when he got back and make it legal. Unfortunately, they never got to walk down the aisle because two years later he got sick in Cuba and died at the age of thirty six.

Huh.

His funeral was the largest in American history until Abraham Lincoln's. Why a lunar crater Cain was named for him? What the waterway between Greenland and northernmost Canadian Islands, previously named Peabody Bay was renamed Caan Basin in his honor? What did he do be rich his family? You know? I mean, I guess he was he did. I shouldn't, I shouldn't diminish his So.

He explored up around the greens.

He wrote volumes on you know what he saw and Arctic geology.

Explorers are people who are out where nobody is. How did he have the largest funeral at such a young age when it seems like. Most of his time was spent out where nobody was. So was his family like super like everyone wanted to go to the boys funeral like got for him.

A lot of it had to do with the family. The family was wealthy and influence and they went off, oh yeah, and they refused to let Maggie attend this mega funeral. They denied their common law marriage and their ring ceremony, which meant that she was not in the will.

Oh yeah, I guess that part.

To honor his memory, she granted his wish to convert to Catholicism. He was not Catholic. He's be Catholic for me. He was a Presbyterian.

If I could, I'd be Catholic.

He thought that the iconography and the mysticism of the Catholic Church was like right up her Alley's Christian.

There's there's bleeding gods on the wall. You'll love it. It's gonna be great.

She was broken, though, and she was ashamed at the rejection from his family, so she hit the bottle. I mean, she's been drinking since she was a little kid.

Yeah, I imagine at this point.

Well yeah, and she vowed to quote Holy and Forever abandoned spiritualism, so she also got back at his family in the best way a criminal knows how.

Wrote a book.

It was called The Love Life of Doctor Caine.

It was.

Its evolved in.

Bouncing. Sorry, go on, it's like the rockets.

Producer said, it's kind of like a morning show Sanford and Son. It was a collection of the love letters. Meanwhile, Kate, she went the exact opposite way. She married a devout spiritualist and they had two kids, and she shot to the top of the spooky charts. As a medium, she had a trick where she would communicate two messages simultaneously. She would write one while saying the other out loud. It's like when I'm typing and talking to someone on the field at the same time.

Big whoop.

I'm in the audience.

I go big, big whoop. Huh.

She would also transcribe messages in reverse script.

So he right backwards.

Yeah, which, okay, that's a good one. I'll give you that one.

Sure, So you got a memory and you can write backwards.

She would hold demonstrations where blank cards would like spontaneously reveal words that weren't previously there.

Oh you got some like some lemon.

That's a good one though. Here's the best though. One of her children, Ferdinand, he was also a medium, and when he was only three, he would be possessed by spirits. That's cool, Yeah, I like that.

I'd think if you'd like maybe like a caught fire, like the human torch, that'd be impressive.

No hold on, the spirits would communicate through him. And how did people know this was happening. He had quote an unearthly glow that wouldn't radiate from his eyes.

There you go, he went dark. Brandon, Now you're talking my language.

Yes, I love it.

So we want to get into that comic book, realm. I'm like, forget spiritualism, give me Cyclops.

During a session with Charles, the Cyclops of Greek mythology. During a session with Charles Livermore, who was a wealthy banker, she summoned up his deceased wife and then also the spirit of Benjamin Franklin.

That's a fun one to draw.

So ben let everyone know that he was in the house by writing his name on a blank card. Just gave an autograph. Here you go. That's kind of The Civil War was big business for Kate. Grieving family members they would go to her, I need to commune with my lost loved.

One, my brother, my daughter, my brother, my mother.

This surgeon popularity meant that spectators they wanted miracles. They're like, I need a miracle two fingers up. They wanted it every session. I need a miracle every day, is what they would say. That took its toll on Kate. Like her sister before her, she started drinking heavily.

It's nineteen hundred, the nineteenth century, eighteen hundred, so that's what you did. It was like, look, I don't have any good water. I got nothing to do. Let's drink about it.

Drink, let's drink about it. Things went from bad to worse for the sisters. Leah attacked Kate publicly for her drinking problem, so she just aired their laundry. She accused Kate of being an unfit mother to her two young children. They're getting nasty. Kate was humiliated, and Maggie was pissed. She did not like this. She was so mad she made her own public announcement. She let it leak that the Fox sisters quote unquote abilities had been a hoax

She broke kay feb.

The New York World paid Maggie fifteen hundred dollars, which is a lot of money, then to publish an interview. They this would be the lead up to a public announcement that she was going to make, and Kate would be in the audience to support. In the New York World interview, Maggie stated, quote, my sister Katie was the first to observe that by swishing her fingers she could produce certain noises with her knuckles and joints, and that

So looks like making a Chinese gymnast. Yeah, you start very We train these bones well.

And like like when they say that they they would make raps with their feet, that they're just like their feet are just her holding.

Yeah, exactly, do a quick sixteen bars. Who's turning?

The toe just grows the mouth all. Hey, my name is Toe, and I'm here to say I got a I love spirits in a major way. Zaren close your eyes. I want you to picture it. It's October twenty first, eighteen eighty eight. You're a young man in New York City, working days as an apprentice tailor. You consider yourself a curious citizen of the world. Went off the clock. You like to get out and about. It's the big apple baby city that never sleeps. You're in a crowd at

Quote.

When I began this deception, I was too young to know right from wrong that I have been mainly instrumental in perpetuating the fraud of spiritualism upon a two confiding public. Many of you already know. It is the greatest sorrow of my life. My sister Katie and myself were very

I like it.

Yeah. So Maggie then went on to show how they did this. She just like, you know, showed her ankle when we gasped, and then she's like, crack.

Alac alecs dropped the boss.

I just want to wrap. She took off her shoe and she put it on a wooden stool. And this is what the New York Herald reported quote, there stood a black robed, sharp faced widow working her big.

Toe wow and solemnly.

Declaring that it was in this way she created the excitement that has driven so many persons to suicide or insanity. One moment it was ludicrous, the next.

It was weird.

That one moment it was ludacris, the.

Next TI was weird journalism. I really told the story. I feel like I was I learned everything I needed to know the heart.

Of the matter. Maggie finished up her demonstration by saying that Leah knew from the beginning that it was all a prank, and that she decided to exploit the situation for cash. So at first, the little girls are just like, watch, we're going to freak out these people.

Rememb We're going to freak out the adults like.

There's some money to be made. She stared at the audience. Then she thanked God for being able to expose spiritualism, and then walked off the stage. There was now a split in the spiritualism movement. Samuel B. Britton he was the former publisher of the Spiritual Telegraph, which was the first spiritualistic newspaper published in the US. His ghost supposedly made an appearance at a seance, okay, and he popped in to defend Maggie.

Spiritualism. He's at a paper founder shows up at a seance, his ghost to say that spiritualism is a fraud.

No, no, no, yeah yeah yeah.

Right, so yeah, I wonder as sure I got that right? So no, he's said Maggie.

No, he said she's authentic.

Oh, he's saying she's she's wrong, she's wrong. So okay, it would have been better if he shout out.

To say that his spirit is crackrec and they're like, oh, he's saying that Maggie doesn't know what she's talking about. This is what he said. Quote the band of spirits attending during the early part of her career had been usurped by other unseen intelligences who are not scrupulous in their dealings with humanity.

Oh so the first one's are real. Everything else after.

That, that's a long ghost message.

That's a long that's a lot of tapping and cracking.

It's a lot of backwards right. And other members of the spiritualist movement saw Maggie's declaration as a mercenary move They thought, well, she's failed as a professional medium.

Now she's the one. Well, now she's going to.

Get authority as a detractor. And a lot of people thought that the fifteen hundred dollars check she got for that interview just went right to the drink.

She just drink herself.

So they have opinions, Well, she started going by the pseudonym missus Spencer, and she began to reveal tricks of the trade. Mediums would use their teeth or feet to write messages on those blank cards. How are you using your teeth? Maybe in prints, I guess, hiding under the table.

I don't know.

I suppose if the room's dark enough, like you can get away with all sorts of stuff. A year later, Maggie recanted her confession.

Wait a minute, Mags, and she said.

The spirits told her to do it.

Wait, so the spirits told her to say that it's all bunked. And then she came back a year later and said, the spirits changed her mind. I gotta be truthful of y'all made to it.

She torpedoed her only source of ind But come on back in the game, she went. The sisters never reconciled.

I bet not.

Leah passed away in eighteen ninety.

She's like the WWE wrestler breaks a character and script. They can't let her back in like you're out.

Kate died two years later, eighteen ninety two, mid drinking binge. Oh, and then eight months after that, Maggie died. The year Maggie died, Spiritualist formed the National Spiritualist Association, which is known today as the nationals Spiritualist Association of Churches.

It's still around.

Sure is nineteen oh four, a group of children were playing in that haunted Fox family farmhouse. They found the majority of a skeleton, which I feel would be traumatic, and this led to a brief probably resurgence in believing that the Fox sisters were right along. Yeah. However, a doctor examined the bones and it turns out they were chicken bones, most likely planted as a joke. There did they do? Like an oline them a little bit? There are at least ten books.

Chick he was a very short mass.

There are ten books, at least ten books about them. Sure, multiple websites. Weirdly, no movie seems ripe for.

It, right, Yeah, I can totally do that.

You just get one actress who can crack them knuckles.

Yeah, and Sophia Coppola.

Hit film perfect. What's your ridiculous takeaway?

Oh, my ridiculous takeaway. I mean that the older sister I would like to know more about her because of like, she doesn't have these younger sisters, like they're not as obviously the younger sisters seem a little tighter, right, and then she comes along and you guys got this thing going, Oh, let's go exploit that. Then she exploits it. Then she like basically flips. So it feels like it's not even

She's an exploiter. Yeah, I want to know more about her. Creepy little boy with the glowing eyes.

Ferd Man, that's my jam right there, dude, Like how did they pull that off?

I don't know, and how and how.

Much did those eyes really go? I mean obviously they weren't shooting beans out, but I mean, like, what were they doing? Well, if you want to get technical, if you're bouncing light photons and yes.

You're gonna be talking about Yeah, maybe that's all I have though.

That's good.

You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime to Do we have all sorts of fun stuff happening over there, a lot of dogs and sunglasses. We're also on Ridiculous Crime at both Twitter and Instagram. You can email us ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave us a talkback on the iHeart app. Just reach out and tune in next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Medium to the Stars Dave Cousten. Research is by Ghostly spector Marissa Brown and

Dus Clime Say It One More Time cry.

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