The Hydesville Rappings, which took place in 1848 in the small hamlet of Hydesville in upstate New York, constitute Spiritualism’s nativity story.  In December 1847, farmer John David Fox took on the tenancy of the wooden building to live, along with his wife and two youngest daughters, Margaretta aged 15 and Catherine (Kate) aged 12.  It had acquired a recent reputation for being haunted.

Sure enough, soon after their arrival, the Foxes were occasionally disturbed by faint noises in the house during the night.  During January, the noises became distinct knockings.  First they thought it might be a local shoemaker working into the night, but this was soon discounted.  The knockings clearly originated in the house itself.  There was sometimes the sound of furniture being dragged along floorboards.  And the knockings became louder, to the extent that they were losing sleep.

The children were obviously afraid, so Mrs Fox moved her bed into their room to reassure them.  But the noises continued.  Sometimes, the bedclothes would be removed during the night.  On one occasion, there was a knock on the bedroom door.  Mrs Fox opened it suddenly, but there was no-one there.   The parents stationed themselves at each side of the door – and the knocks came from within the door between them.

Sometimes the noises varied as if someone was walking in various rooms of the house.  The sound of footsteps in the pantry, as if someone was walking downstairs.  The noises grew ever louder over the following few weeks.  Sleep became impossible.

Friday 31st March was cold and stormy – it had been snowing all day.  Mrs Fox spoke of her fears to her son David, who lived in a farm some two or three miles away.  He was inclined to smile about it.  “Well, mother, I would advise you not to say a word to the neighbours,” he said, “when you find it out, it will be one of the simplest things in the world.”

That night, they retired early, just after dusk, expecting another weary night.  Mrs Fox had retired and John Fox was about to, when the knockings commenced.  But, on this occasion, a new direction was taken.  The girls, emboldened by the presence of their parents, and beginning to treat this as a game, Kate called out:  “Here, Mr Split-foot” – a New England name for the Devil – “do as I do!”  She snapped her fingers.  Immediately, the knocker imitated her with the same number of raps.

Clapping her hands, Margaretta joined in, crying, “Now do as I do”, clapping once, twice, three times, four times.  As before the same number of raps came.  Then Kate mimed three snaps of her thumb and middle finger, without noise.  Three raps followed.  “Oh look, mother, it can see as well as hear!”   

Their mixed feeling of fear and fascination can be imagined.  There was an intelligence – perhaps a human intelligence - at work here.  Yet there was no-one to be seen.  They racked their brains for an explanation, including the fact that the next day was April fool’s day.

Mrs Fox put paid to that.  “Count to ten,” she said and the raps obeyed.  “How many children have I?” she asked.  Seven raps followed.  “Wrong,” she announced, but the raps insistently rapped seven more times.  A moment’s thought and she remembered that she had six living – but one was dead.  The rapper then gave correct answers to a number of questions.  The ages of all her children were rapped out accurately, with gaps between each.  

She was determined to find out more, but in the presence of witnesses.  The next door neighbour, Mrs Redfield, was called in.  A level-headed and outspoken woman, she definitely did not believe in ghosts, but quickly realised the seriousness of the Foxes when she saw the fear-stricken faces of the children.   More questions were answered correctly and Mrs Redfield brought her husband into the house.  He, in turn brought in other neighbours, many of whom were to sign statements in which the phenomena experienced were minutely described.

A former occupant of the cottage, William Duesler, a man of some intellect, arrived about nine o’clock and went straight to the east bedroom of the girls, which was on the ground floor.  As the rappings proceeded, he could feel them through the bedstead beneath him.  His questions teased out the story of the spirit.  He had been a pedlar who had been murdered in the house some five years before.  He had carried with him a tin pack with goods for sale and five hundred dollars.  For this he had been strangled by a former tenant and buried in the cellar.

Duesler spoke the names of the tenants who had succeeded him, but there were no knockings until he spoke the name of one John C. Bell, when a torrent of rappings followed.  At this stage, no alphabetical techniques were used – just a question, followed by a rap for ‘yes’ and mere silence for ‘no’.  So it could be said that the questions were leading ones.

John Fox, Mr Redfield and others spent the night cross-questioning the spirit, but nothing would shake him from his accusation of Bell as his killer.  Duesler left around midnight.  Attempts to find out the spirit’s name by calling out the alphabet and rappings did not get very far, but some time later David Fox succeeded in obtaining the name of Charles B. Rosna by this method.

Duesler later contacted all the tenants between himself and the Foxes.  None had experienced anything before Bell’s occupancy, but the Bells, it subsequently transpired, had been driven from the house - as had the Weekmans, who succeeded them and preceded the Foxes.

The news quickly spread and the cottage was full to overflowing the following day, Saturday, the first of April.   Dueslser, returning on that evening, estimated that around three hundred people were gathered around the cottage.  All who could get within hearing distance asked the usual questions about their children, their ages, size of families, etc.  It was claimed that of hundreds of questions, not a single incorrect answer was given.

On Sunday, the 2nd, William Duesler arrived early in the afternoon, to the sight of between three and five hundred people.  Knocks were heard for the first time during the day, but were to cease in the evening and were not heard at all in the night.  

Duesler went to the cellar with several others, ensuring no-one went into the sisters’ bedroom, which was above it, separated by only a single board’s thickness.  By question and affirmative raps, they hoped to find the location of Rosna’s body.  The moment the question was asked, a single rap was heard from the ceiling, like a short stick about a foot by half an inch being dropped.  There was no rebound at all.  Stephen Smith was sent up to see if anything could have fallen, but discovered nothing.  There was no-one at all in that part of the house.  This was repeated, with the same result.  On Monday the 4th, Duesler paid his last visit but came away forced to admit that this was a mystery which he was unable to solve.

The events of that weekend were first put on record just a week later on the 11th April, when a Mr E.E. Lewis of Canandaigua, New York, interviewed the Fox family and about 20 neighbours, who had witnessed the events.   They provided signed statements.  The pamphlet was published the next month.  Events were being chronicled even as  they were unfolding.

It is doubtful if any religion has ever been so rigorously documented from its earliest days - before myth and legend began to romanticise the events – as Spiritualism was.

But there were discrepancies in the story.  Firstly, Charles B. Rosna – the name claimed by the knocker – was never traced, despite the nationwide publicity.   Possibly highlighting the shortcomings of leading questions – and the undoubted flaws in spirit communication. Secondly, the absence of a skeleton.   

The first attempt to excavate the cellar was unsuccessful, due to the ground being waterlogged just a few feet down.  Digging commenced in the summer when the winter rains had subsided.  On this occasion they found a plank, covering a hole, some broken bits of crockery, some charcoal, traces of quicklime, some bones – certified by a surgeon as being human – and a portion of a human skull.  Whilst a human body had been buried there and the charcoal and quicklime suggested someone had tried to dispose of a body, nothing that could stand up in the legal sense was found.

However, in these first few weeks, an epidemic of spirit communication broke out as people from all walks of life came to discover spirit communication in their own homes.  Within ten years, 10million people in the US claimed to be Spiritualists – at a time when the population was only 25million.  This was, according to Professor G.K. Nelson in ‘Spiritualism and Society’, the fastest-growing religious movement there had ever been.

The first public demonstration of mediumship took place on 14th November 1849 at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester.  Margaretta, by then living in the town with her elder sister, Leah, was the medium. Kate was living with a relative in Auburn.  Leah, who also had mediumistic powers, would later join them in their mission.   At the meeting, the raps came through loud and clear;  on the table, the  chairs, the floor and on a wooden wall behind the seats of the scrutinising committee.

The committee, appointed to ‘expose this trickery’, searched her clothing, including her shoes socks and under-garments, but could not explain the phenomena, much to the disappointment of the crowd who had come to witness an exposure.  There were three more such evenings, where Margaretta was subjected to all kinds of tests, including one which involved her

standing barefooted on non-conductive materials, such as glass and a pillow, to exclude the possibility of an electrical explanation.  Ventriloquism was ruled out by a Dr Langworthy – a member of the committee - who used a stethoscope on her chest during the raps.  (Another committee, some years later, attributed the raps to the sisters cracking their toe joints – an absurd explanation of the events of 1848 and, indeed, of the Corinthian Hall events.  This was to have a sequel.)

The fourth demonstration was broken up by rowdies who distributed fireworks. A gang tried to rush the platform, but were thwarted by George Willetts, a Quaker, who sprang forward declaring that they would only reach the platform over his dead body!  Such meetings were to be their lot and they endured much, but flinched little from their task – martyrs to the Cause.

Unsurprisingly the Foxes proved to be lesser role models than the movement might have hoped for.  The consequences of what they suffered their early years and beyond was little understood in those days and they both became alcoholics and led troubled lives.  

It was in that state that the Roman Catholic, Cardinal Manning, always anxious to discredit Spiritualism, extracted a ‘confession’ from Margaretta on what was said to be the promise of a glass of gin.  She explained the raps by ‘the cracking of her toe joints’, presumably hoping the absurdity of that would signal a different message to her supporters.  She quickly withdrew the confession, but the damage was done.   ‘A lie can be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.’  And cynics don’t need a credible confession – any confession will do!

They became an embarrassment to the movement they had given birth to, and when a medal was struck to commemorate the movement’s golden jubilee in 1898, it was Andrew Jackson Davis, Spiritualism’s leading philosopher, rather than the sisters, whose face appeared on it.

However, in 1904, over a decade after the deaths of both sisters, the New York Times, reported that a skeleton had been found in the cellar of the Hydesville cottage – not under the floor, but behind a false wall, which had fallen away when some children were playing in the now-derelict house.  The owner, Mr William Hyde, whose father had rented the property to the Foxes in 1847, announced a press conference to present the remains to the public.  Present-day Spiritualist historians have been unable to find any published material of this event, so the mystery of the bones remains.  And the claims can no longer be sustained.

Whatever the later reputation of the Fox sisters, Spiritualism’s own credibility does not rest purely on them.   Rather it rests upon the millions of people who have followed in their earlier footsteps and found out for themselves the truth which was so well attested and documented after that momentous weekend in Hydesville in 1848.      

            

Geoff Griffiths, precis from the w0rk of:

A.T Connor, with recent research by  Paul Gaunt and Lis and Jim Warwood