Today, entertainment has many faces, almost all of them related to technology. But before, in other centuries and other years, entertainment consisted of minstrels, theater, opera, television… and so on up to 2025. The fact is that back in the 19th century, stories, tales, and myths were the best form of distraction. In 1848, specifically, two sisters began telling ghost stories, and thus this trend began. The two Fox sisters, Maggie and Kate, started creating shows in which they made their neighbors believe they were speaking with spirits, thus becoming the first known major hoax related to this topic.
To combat their boredom, the sisters decided to play a prank on their family
To be precise, it was 1848, and two of the Fox sisters, Maggie and Kate, were bored at home, a modest farmhouse in Hydesville, New York. To combat their boredom, the sisters decided to play a prank on their family. The ‘prank’ consisted of making small noises, tapping on the floor, accompanied by an act that had to be flawless, enough to convince their parents that they were talking to ghosts. In this way, every night, near bedtime, the teenagers claimed to hear strange tapping sounds on the furniture and walls of their house.
The thing is, what started as a joke ended up scaring the girls’ parents so much that they genuinely believed their house was haunted. Maggie and Kate began putting on shows where they offered clients the chance to witness their connection with the dead. Their mother was the first to see her daughters’ “gifts.” The woman became convinced of the presence of spirits in the house when, upon asking her personal details like how many children she had, the “spirit” would knock, correctly answering the question. The same thing happened when they invited a neighbor to witness it. In this way, the news spread like wildfire through upstate New York, and the sisters soon began to gain fame.
Many neighbors corroborated the theory, believing the house was haunted by a traveling salesman
The charade went quite far, and the sisters, seeing the buzz their séances generated, continued the show, constantly refining their tricks to convince the public of the ‘truth’ of their communications with spirits. In fact, the girls claimed to hear the squeaking of chains dragging the spirit, as well as the muffled thump of an uneven, staccato breath. Many neighbors corroborated the theory, believing the house was haunted by a traveling salesman, rumored to have been murdered there before the Fox family moved in.
The sisters decided to reveal the truth about the lie that had been their life
The two young girls were just 11 and 14 years old when they began the show that would define the rest of their lives. The sisters moved in with their older sister and continued the charade there. Such was the movement they generated that one of their first performances drew 400 people, and they were charging up to $100 a night. Considering we’re talking about the late 19th century, this was a considerable sum. It’s important to note that a large group of people didn’t believe anything the sisters said; in fact, a committee of skeptics examined Maggie and Kate after the show and could find no evidence that it was a hoax.
The charade came to an end when the sisters, around 40 years old, decided to reveal the truth about the lie that had been their life. Many people couldn’t believe they had played with the pain and feelings of so many. Later, the Fox sisters claimed they had been forced to lie, and that their spiritualism was genuine. The Foxes blamed Catholic and religious forces for pushing them to make those statements. Many continued to defend them, while others simply coerced them into it. What is certain is that this is one of the earliest known accounts of spiritualism.