SPIRITUALISM HISTORY

On March 31, 1848 two young girls went to bed early in the family cottage in Hydesville, New York. Rapping had been occurring for the past few weeks in the house, and the Fox family was exhausted. This evening was no different, except this time Katie, the youngest, jumped out of bed and clapped her hands a few times. The raps answered back the same number of times. The girls played this way, then their mother decided to carry this further. She asked the rapper how many children she had. The raps came back correctly, including one child who had died. Then she asked the ages, and again the responses were right. Neighbors came and had similar experiences. Eventually, they discovered that the rapper was the spirit of a peddler named Charles B. Rosna, and that he had been murdered for his goods, worth about $500. He said a previous tenant of the cottage had done it, and buried him in the cellar. Digging in the cellar at a later time uncovered bones, hair, and a peddler's tin cup.

The discovery that it was possible to communicate with spirits, or those who had died, was the beginning of modern American Spiritualism. The rappings encouraged the sisters to begin public meetings, saying their work had only begun. Communications and manifestations came rapidly, and were more orderly. Katie and Maggie were joined by their older sister Leah, and in November 1849 they gave their first public demonstration in the largest hall in Rochester, New York. Interest in the phenomenon spread rapidly, and many celebrities came to see them and to receive messages from the spirit world. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, was one of their early supporters.

The Fox sisters continued their demonstrations until the early 1890s in spite of being accused of fraud, trickery, ventriloquism, and cracking their joints. They were studied by eminent scientists, but were also subjected to humiliating experiences by investigators. Both Maggie and Katie had extensive personal and financial problems, and became alcoholic. At one point Maggie denounced Spiritualism, and said the raps were produced by cracking the knee joints. A year later, however, she retracted this and blamed her personal situation and the influence of those who did not believe in spiritualistic phenomena. Katie died in 1892, and Maggie followed a year later, just before the first meeting of the National Spiritualist Association.

The Fox sisters' mediumship was the beginning of a widespread interest in Spiritualism and its phenomena. According to Lindgren (1994), there were more than ten million followers of Spiritualism in the latter half of the 1800s. The number of physical and mental mediums continued to grow, in England as well as the United States. Physical mediums produced a variety of phenomena, for example:

- teleportation - the moving of an object for one place to another

- apports - the producing of an object out of thin air

- levitation - the rising of an object, such as a table, or a person

- rappings - such as those heard by the Fox sisters

- automatic writing and painting - written messages or works of art produced by the writer or artist simply holding a pen or brush

- materialization - the method by which a substance called ectoplasm is produced from a medium and then forms into a recognizable spirit.

The most famous physical medium was Daniel D. Home (1833-1886). His manifestations included levitating massive tables, the playing of an accordion in a wire cage with no visible hands, teleportation, and levitating himself out of a third story window, and back in another window. He was studied extensively by scientists of the time, most notably Sir William Crookes. Although physical mediumship can be, and often was, fraudulent, Home was never found to be so.

There were thousands of people practicing mental mediumship in the late 1800s. Mental mediums communicated with the spirit world usually by holding seances. Unlike Home, whose manifestations were produced in daylight, most mental mediums performed in darkened conditions. Messages were given, through the medium, from those in the spirit world to those present. Many people were absolutely convinced of their authenticity, and felt that information was given that was unkown to anyone but themselves. Again, there was opportunity for fraud, but many investigated mediums were found to be genuine.

Spiritualists, convinced that there is indeed life after death, were prominent in social reform movements of the time. Braude (1989) parallels the Spiritualist movement with that of women's rights. She credits the mediums who spoke in public, an activity previously open only to men, with paving the way for the speakers of the women's suffrage movement. Spiritualists were also active in children's rights, health and labor reforms, religious freedom, and the abolition of slavery. In fact, Abraham Lincoln admitted that he was led to sign the emancipation proclamation under the guidance of spirit through the mediumship of Nellie Maynard. (Grumbine, 1917).

Spiritualism as a movement began to decline in the early 1900s, especially in the United States.