The Fox Sisters: The Michael Jordan's of the Spiritualist Movement

               I thought I would take a step back to the beginning of the Spiritualist movement this week and speak about the" founding sisters" and first mediums of Spiritualism. Margaret, Kate, and Leah Fox were the starters of the movement.

Margaret Fox Kate Fox Leah Fox.

These three sisters grew up in Hydesville, New York. They moved into their home there in the middle 1800's and not long after mysterious noises started to occur. There were loud banging noises and "rappings" that occurred late at night and woke up all of the family members. Like many other people the father, John Fox, passed the noises off as the house settling. This all changed whenever Kate and Margaret Fox started to divulge their experiences. Kate woke up saying that a cold hand had touched her face and Margaret said that her bed sheets had been pulled off of her bed. After Kate made contact with the "spirits" and they showcased the ability to mimic her rappings on the wall John Fox became even more afraid. Several other events occurred and John brought in neighbors and friends to witness said events.

An artist depiction of the Fox homestead.


It was said that while some neighbors where at the Fox household the maid unearthed a dark secret. That she had discovered some disturbed dirt in the basement. It is said that the family began to dig in that spot and found the remains of a peddler that was said to have disappeared at the home when the first occupants of the house the Bell Family lived there.

After this startling discovery the Fox sisters fame grew immensely. Margaret and Kate's medium like characters and their ability to communicate with the deceased spread rapidly and they became very popular in the Spiritualist world. By 1849 they were both giving public performances and the mania of Spiritualism swept the nation and took the Fox sisters along with them. The eldest sister, Leah, did not join the movement until later and acted as their manager.

Like many other mediums the Fox sisters credibility was question several times throughout the movement. The main critic of the Fox sisters was that the story of the peddler's disappearance and discovery in the cellar was fake. Critics said they perpetuated this story to help ad credence to their supernatural abilities.

Another drawing of the Fox House

The Fox sisters seances became more and more extravagant with tables levitating and spirits appearing. Several other mediums arose during this time including P.T. Barnum and James Fenimore Cooper.

 P.T. Barnum       James Fenimore Cooper

Like several other young stars who grow up in the limelight things didn't work out all that well for the sisters. Margaret married a young Arctic Explorer Elisha Kent Kane. Elisha died in 1857 and left Margaret broke and she turned to alcoholism.  Much like her sister Kate turned to alcoholism which had a detrimental effect on her performances. After several other trials and tribulations it is said that Kate drunk herself to death in 1892 and Margaret died a year later, penniless.

An illustration of the Fox Sisters being examined by Dr. Austin Flint


*http://www.prairieghosts.com/foxsisters.html
* http://www.prairieghosts.com/spiritualism.html

I would like to make a note that these websites are not scholarly by any means and don't offer a lot of contextual information but did an excellent job of giving a run down of just how important the Fox Sisters were to the movement. Later on I will discuss the Fox sisters using more scholarly materials but I just wanted to provide my readers with a background on who they were since I knew they were going to be mentioned quiet a lot.

Quick History on Spiritualism via Youtube

I thought this video did well explaining what spiritualism is and its history. There aren't any pictures but I wanted to give my readers something to watch instead of read. I personally think that this woman does an excellent job of giving a simple background into what I am researching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ui-E74GhaE

I would just like to make a statement that this video is one person's thoughts, understandings, and and opinions of one person. She is not necessarily an expert by any means but she does an good job providing some insight. This video is largely opinion based and showcases personal feelings on the topic.

Diving In: First Article Synopsis

           From the title of this post I can only assume that my readers will have some idea of the overreaching arguments of the first article that I chose to read for my research. In Enchanted Spaces: The Seance, Affect and Geographies of Religion Holloway opens up stating that the article calls for "geographies of religion and belief to attend to the sensuous, vitalistic, and effectual forces through which spaces of the religious, spiritual, and the sacred are performed." (pg. 182). This article searches to fit seances and spiritualism in general into the commonly accepted religious beliefs.

            The article starts out with a background of the spiritualist movement and the effects of seances. I found out that spiritualism was popular between 1848-1855 but had its true golden age in the 1870s. Spiritualism was an interest of all the classes of society for citizens common bond that spiritualism would allow them an avenue to communicate with the spirit of loves ones.

            Spiritualism transformed cultural norms in three ways, according to the article.  Firstly, spiritualism and the church formed a some what ambivalent relationship. In some ways people believed that spiritualists helped to confirm the word of the Bible. Spiritualism was a half way point between the separate God of "hellfire" doctrine and the bare materialism of secularism/atheism.

             Secondly, The space of seances interacted with discourses and practices of science. According to Holloway spiritualism could be verified by scientific experimentation and controls. This process was conducted through test seances and controlled investigations of mediums by the Society for Psychical Research.

           Thirdly, the seance paradoxically put women in their "place" as docile passive creatures while simultaneously allowing them to speak out and have a say that they wouldn't have otherwise. Seances helped to add to the separate gender spheres of thinking. Holloway makes note that some believed that women made such good mediums because their passive nature allowed them to be possessed by spirits, sometimes even willingly. Men were not good candidates to be mediums because of their strong, impassive nature.

         The dark, dim lit seance room allowed people to break with acceptable cultural relations between men and women. Seances were performed in close quarters. This close proximity allowed a deferral of polite society's codification of respectable bodily practices. From reading this article I was struck with the idea that perhaps those ghostly hands gripping mediums were just attendees getting a little handsy?

        A second large part of Enchanted Spaces: The Seance, Affect and Geographies of Religion talks about the performance and affect of the seance. Holloway tells readers how seances started with a prayer or singing of a hymn, a perfect connection to the previously made statement that spiritualism was a half way point between strict religion and secularism. Central elements to seances were the linking of hands and stillness of participants. This inter-connectivity allowed the participants to feel, witness and recoil at the levitation of the seance table or other events. It was also customary for the medium to be tied to a chair in the rooms so as to help prevent fraudulence. The seance room created a space " of corporeal interaction between living bodies and the spirit bodies of the dead." (pg. 184). Through automatic writing mediums represented a form of possessed and passive embodiment.

      All in all I found that this article provided some information to my research question:  "What role did seances and mediums play in early American Spiritualism? This article helped me to see the societal implications of spiritualsim, the role women played in the movement and how the atmosphere of the seance helped to create an environment that could have been caused by actual communication with the dead or simply could have been caused by the physical characteristics of the setting. 

I have attached a link to this article if anyone would like to give it a read:

 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3694153

Hello everyone in UI 453!

I want to begin by introducing my research question:

“What roles did mediums and séances play in early American Spiritualism?”

           For my research I really wanted to have a topic that I would enjoy. I have always had a morbid fascination with the afterlife, ghosts and the paranormal. It was hard for me to narrow either of those down to a manageable research topic. I began my research even before I had a research question. I didn't know which avenue to take in regards to communication with the dead or the afterlife and ghosts. I flipped back and forth from doing cemetery art on tombstones to the Egyptian belief in the afterlife. All of which I felt to be somewhat broad for this class. With the help of a fellow classmate I was the phenomena of American Spiritualism was brought to my attention. I immediately jumped at the chance to do a research assignment on this topic. After all it combined a lot of my interests. I wasn't too sure on how to narrow down the topic still so I sent in two research questions to Dr. Hosselkus. I was unsure if I wanted to research American Spiritualism in general or the role of mediums and séances so Dr. Hosselkus recommended that I combine the two a brilliant idea!

        It has been argued in texts throughout the ages that mediums and séances are just a hoax. Séances and mediums are just criminals who fake supernatural powers to rob the innocent. Through my research I want to look at the psychological, economical as well as other effects of séances and mediums. I am really striving to search for some sort of truth. With my deep belief in communicating with the dead I want to find, at least for myself, that there is some fabric of truth to mediums, clairvoyants and those like them. I am not saying that I do not realize that there are scammers out there I just hope to find some evidence to the contrary.

       Spiritualism and séances were extremely popular in the early American time period. I found evidence of this in Spiritualism in Antebellum America by Bret E. Carroll and in The Heyday of Spiritualism by Slater Brown. These are just two of the text from Kent Library that I plan on using for my research. Just from browsing these two texts I can already tell just how influential séances and mediums were to the early American people. Some arguments are that is was the break in the Catholic Church that sparked this revolution while others aren’t so sure.

       After I had my research question finalized I began to look for resources. I actually have started to print off articles that I used to help me choose the topic of spiritualism. I have five articles thus far that I am planning on starting to go over to see the role that mediums and séances played in each. The articles I have chosen thus far are Enchanted Spaces: The Séance, Affect, and Geographies of Religion by Julian Holloway, Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence by Peter Lamont, Spiritualism and Crime by Blewett Lee, Early Investigations in Spiritualism by John Townsend Trowbridge and The Spiritualist Medium: A Study of Female Professionalism in Victorian America by R. Laurence Moore. I also have a few books in mind that I am going to read over as well. I am extremely cautious about using internet sources for papers. All of my life it has been drilled in my head to not use the internet because anyone can alter the information that is presented.

            I have also attached a website that has some interesting pictures of séances and short stories attached to them. I have not backed up the information presented with more reliable sources but I just wanted to give people the opportunity to put an image in their heads towards my research question. Plus who doesn’t love looking at vintage photos!

Resources

Enchanted Spaces: The Séance, Affect, and Geographies of Religion by Julian Holloway http://www.jstor.org/stable/3694153. Accessed 09/10/2013

 Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence by Peter Lamont http://www.jstor.org/stable/4091661. Accessed 09/10/2013

Early Investigations in Spiritualism by John Townsend Trowbridge http://www.jstor.org/stable/25106220. Accessed 09/10/2013

Spiritualism and Crime by Blewett Lee http://jstor.org/stable/1112490. Accessed 09/10/2013

The Spiritualist Medium: A Study of Female Professionalism in Victorian America by R. Laurence Moore http://jstor.org/stable/2712342. Accessed 9/11/2013

http://mentalfloss.com/article/12824/12-weird-vintage-pictures-s%C3%A9ances