History of Spiritualism

This is a summarised history of modern Spiritualism;

During December 1847, the Fox family moved into a house in Hydesville New York State. Just like the previous tenants, they experienced strange noises in the house - a noise not unlike a rapping on a door. For the main part, this was considered more of an annoyance than anything else.

Then on the evening of 31st March 1848, one of the children did something nobody else had ever bothered to do - she challenged the "noise" to repeat the clicks of her fingers. To her surprise, the "noise" echoed the number of clicks exactly with a rap

Amazingly, it soon discovered the source of the noise could “see” Kate because when she clicked without sound, the raps still responded correctly.

Mrs Fox then decided to challenge the communicator by asking how many children she had - to which the response of seven came back. Initially protesting she only had six children, she suddenly remembered she had lost one child quite young, so the communicator was correct!

This now proved the communication was on an intelligent level.

News of the events quickly spread around the township and people came to the house to witness what was going on. One witness devised a simple means to use letters rather than numbers - one knock for "A", two for "B" and so on.

With this extra palate to work with, it was soon revealed the communicator was Charles Rosma , claiming he had been fatally injured in the house and was buried in the cellar. A team later went to the cellar and did dig up some bones. But it wasn't for another 56 years until the rest of the bones were found behind the cellar wall.

The identity of Charles Rosma remains a mystery as no records were ever found of anybody with that name. However a travelling pedlar did stay at the house for short period before disappearing without trace. Whether this is the one and same person remains a mystery to this day.

Kate and her sister travelled around doing demonstrations of this phenomena. However sceptics claimed it was all a hoax as they were making the noises by clicking their toes - a feat (no pun intended) nobody else was able to duplicate in the same way.

Despite agreeing to undergo rigourous testing on numerous occasion, nobody was ever able to come up with clear proof the Fox sisters were fraudsters. Nor were they able to explain how they could provide answers, though the rappings, to questions that they could not have had any previous insight into.

The result of this phenominum saw a sudden rise in the number of mediums all around the country and overseas.

And so Spiritualists recognise 31st March 1848 as the birthday of modern Spiritualism.

However, it should not be forgotten that many other great mediums preceded the Fox sisters, including Swedenborg and A.J. Davies.

For more information about the history of Spiritualism, visit the SNU.