Speaker 1: Let's take a walk. On my fourth day at the
Speaker 1: Cassadeca Spiritualist Camp, I take a walk around Colby Alderman Park,
Speaker 1: sprawling affair that's now a nationally recognized historic district and
Speaker 1: added in the waterproof historical markers to match. Today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the decline of the Fox Sisters
Speaker 1: and one of my most significant readings at Cassadeca. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take a stroll through Cassadeca, beginning at the intersection
Speaker 1: of and I'm not getting Mediumship Way and Psychic Road.
Speaker 1: I know, and I took a lot of audio as
Speaker 1: I was just wandering around this neighborhood for consecutive weeks,
Speaker 1: so to give you an idea of the vibe. There's
Speaker 1: no side box here. Feels very npr of me to do.
Speaker 1: It feels very this American life. I feel like a
Speaker 1: fucking dork. When you get to Cassadega, you pass these
Speaker 1: white cement pillars on Cassadeca Road, and to your left
Speaker 1: is the Cassadega Hotel where I'm going to be staying.
Speaker 1: It's this big, haunted looking building that got rebuilt in
Speaker 1: the twenties after burning down, but has been out of
Speaker 1: the hands of the Cassadega camp Proper for many decades now, which,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed before, has led to a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion and drama in the community because there are readings
Speaker 1: done at the hotel, but not ones that are sanctioned
Speaker 1: by the Spiritualist Proper. In many ways, having this hotel
Speaker 1: bought out from under them due to their own kind
Speaker 1: of chronic brokenness is one of the hardest hits Cassadega
Speaker 1: has ever taken. The hotel is really important. It shares
Speaker 1: a name with the community and has the only amenities
Speaker 1: and restaurant, which you need to know is called Sinatra's Restaurante,
Speaker 1: where karaoke nights get a little too loud for the
Speaker 1: proper mediums across the street's taste. On the days the
Speaker 1: restaurant isn't open, you can either survive on chocolate bars
Speaker 1: from the bookstore or walk to the nearest gas station
Speaker 1: half hour away. I opt for both of these at
Speaker 1: multiple points in my trip, and as we've heard several times,
Speaker 1: the mediums who were trained at Cassadega don't have the
Speaker 1: highest opinion of the mediums and tarot readers who work
Speaker 1: out of the hotel. Across the street is a more
Speaker 1: sanctioned area, the Andrew Jackson Davis Building, this white, one
Speaker 1: floor wooden structure that serves as both DeCamps, bookstore, administrative office,
Speaker 1: and activity center where I've already been to message services
Speaker 1: and a table tipping class, and sat in on a
Speaker 1: class called Healing one oh one with Reverend Dr Phil.
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to record this class, but they
Speaker 1: were very welcoming and we learned all about our chakras
Speaker 1: and Eastern concept not originally associated with spiritualism. We love it.
Speaker 1: And I spoke to a particularly gossipy student who told
Speaker 1: me that she knew that spiritual healing wasn't a substitute
Speaker 1: for medicine, but the healers at Cassadega had done more
Speaker 1: than her physical therapist of her had. Let's keep moving,
Speaker 1: as I learned from the bookstore manager selling a green.
Speaker 1: The bookstore is a moneymaker for the camp. It's one
Speaker 1: of the few places where the mediums can capitalize on
Speaker 1: the average tourist's interests, selling rarer spiritualist texts for the
Speaker 1: true student, but also overpriced crystals T shirts declaring Cassadega
Speaker 1: where Maybury meets the Twilight Zone. Two references that make
Speaker 1: it no wonder. They're struggling to recruit younger members. They
Speaker 1: sell candles and magnets and those chocolate bars I was
Speaker 1: telling you about. This is where the spiritualists make good
Speaker 1: on people seeking mediumship as comfort and self help. The
Speaker 1: walls are lined with tarot cards that their religion doesn't
Speaker 1: technically endors. There are self help guides, relationship manuals, guides
Speaker 1: to the phases of the moon, one local book about
Speaker 1: a boy who died of rabies. I don't know did
Speaker 1: not look into this. Further on the other side of
Speaker 1: the pillars are non camp sanctioned crystal shops, stores that
Speaker 1: have prices is jacked up into Los Angeles territory. These
Speaker 1: unsanctioned shops are even more low ceilinged affairs with ten
Speaker 1: dollar clear courts, crystals and tarot reading rooms with walls
Speaker 1: so thin that you can hear the college girl crying
Speaker 1: about why her boyfriend won't take her back while paying
Speaker 1: seventy five bucks for a twenty minute reading. Walk down
Speaker 1: a little further and you'll hit Sea Green's Ghost Museum
Speaker 1: ten dollars for admission, a business originally called the Cassadega
Speaker 1: History museum, but was then rebranded into a Haunted House
Speaker 1: due to lack of interest in history. And my favorite,
Speaker 1: the tiny post office in Cassadega, one that at every
Speaker 1: point seems to be barely holding onto its justification for existing.
Speaker 1: I walked back into the camp. Down Stephens Street. You
Speaker 1: pass a few double decker houses and apartments. A big
Speaker 1: one is called Harmony Hall. It's a ten apartment ramshackle
Speaker 1: structure with a big sign out front. Some of the
Speaker 1: mediums live here, others just actice hear. What I do know,
Speaker 1: because I know you're wondering, is that people fuck in
Speaker 1: Harmony Hall, or at least they have fucked, because I
Speaker 1: received roundabout word of at least two babies that have
Speaker 1: been conceived within its walls. I walk all the way
Speaker 1: up to the biggest park on this side of the
Speaker 1: camp called Seneca Park, named for who founder George Colby
Speaker 1: claimed was his indigenous spirit guide who led him to
Speaker 1: the stolen indigenous land he bought and converted into Cassadega,
Speaker 1: a likely story that will be unpacking next week. I
Speaker 1: try to meditate and be present, but it's hard because
Speaker 1: all I can hear is the sound of roosters in
Speaker 1: the distance. There are so many roosters at this camp.
Speaker 1: I've run out of things to explore, and I realized
Speaker 1: that I'm kind of killing time. I'm nervous because I'm
Speaker 1: about to get a reading with the Reverend. Dr. Lewis,
Speaker 1: a medium raised by mediums, who doesn't just encourage you
Speaker 1: to record your reading. He records for you, handing me
Speaker 1: a high quality c D ram upon payment. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I had to go through so that you
Speaker 1: could hear this audio? Have you hand the met before? Kay? Uh?
Speaker 1: Send me your stats where you just stop me? Want
Speaker 1: you get take it for you? For you? It's time
Speaker 1: We've got to talk to Reverend Dr Lewis. I'm going
Speaker 1: in so this week, not only am I going to
Speaker 1: give you a look and to listen to what a
Speaker 1: one on one spiritualist reading is like, We're also going
Speaker 1: to close out the story of Spiritualism's founders, the Fox Sisters,
Speaker 1: at the inflection point where the ideas they popularized belonged
Speaker 1: to the world and no longer to themselves. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling? I feel like we should get a theme
Speaker 1: song going. I okay, it's starting awesome. Shodakay. Welcome back, listener,
Speaker 1: we have so much to discuss. In our last episode,
Speaker 1: we took a little detour to speak with the people
Speaker 1: who run Cassadega today, from the mediums themselves to people
Speaker 1: who run the camps day to day operations. And next
Speaker 1: week we're going to take look at the camp's origin
Speaker 1: story and all of the American appropriative mess that comes
Speaker 1: with it. But before we can get there, we've got
Speaker 1: to follow the story of American Spiritualisms founders, the Fox sisters, Leah, Maggie,
Speaker 1: and Kate Fox to their stories end and take a
Speaker 1: look at how their religion didn't just outlive them, but
Speaker 1: sort of killed them too. We left off in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two and the Foxes Leah now thirty nine, Maggie nineteen,
Speaker 1: and Kate fifteen went to Philadelphia and it was there
Speaker 1: that Maggie met a boy, and not just any boy,
Speaker 1: a thirty two year old man, and so not a boy,
Speaker 1: a very rich man. His name was Alicia Clark Kane,
Speaker 1: an Arctic explorer from a wealthy Philadelphia family, you know,
Speaker 1: like one of those rich guys that's like I can
Speaker 1: have a job like like. But anyways, that was what
Speaker 1: he was doing by the time he met Maggie. Kane
Speaker 1: was a successful explorer and he took an interest in
Speaker 1: Maggie Fox. Definitely not spiritualism. He asked her out and
Speaker 1: took her on a date to his brother's grave. A
Speaker 1: little weird, but I guess a good place to bring
Speaker 1: a Fox sister, and she did become pretty interested in him.
Speaker 1: Things he did up quickly, and soon enough he was
Speaker 1: professing his love for her, vowing to end his engagement
Speaker 1: that his parents were forcing him into. All while knowing
Speaker 1: that they would never approve a match with a middle class,
Speaker 1: new money girl with no generational assets who made her
Speaker 1: living talking to ghosts. Kane kept her a secret from
Speaker 1: his family and gave her the first of many ultimatums. Yes,
Speaker 1: he loved her, but he could only accept her as
Speaker 1: his wife if she gave up the religion that she'd
Speaker 1: founded with her sisters. Of course, Leah Fox despised him
Speaker 1: to some extent. This was sister Lee protectiveness, but it
Speaker 1: could also be seen as a power struggle between Leah
Speaker 1: and Alicia Caine to retain control over Maggie Fox's life.
Speaker 1: Kane's letters, Uh will not endear you to him. He
Speaker 1: says things like this, Oh, how much I wish that
Speaker 1: you would quit this life of dreary sameness and suspected deceit,
Speaker 1: he would say to her in a series of deeply
Speaker 1: nagging letters. In another, he says this, I need hardly
Speaker 1: say that I am gratified to find that you write
Speaker 1: so ably. You have more brain than I gave you
Speaker 1: credit For just one more, I promise you could never
Speaker 1: lift yourself to my thoughts and my objects. I can
Speaker 1: never bring myself down to yours. What a dream boat.
Speaker 1: And around this time, the Fox sisters were securing some
Speaker 1: of their biggest supporters ever, including their very first president.
Speaker 1: During a trip to d C, President Franklin Pierce and
Speaker 1: First Lady Jane Pierce saw their eleven year old son
Speaker 1: die before their eyes when a train they were on derailed.
Speaker 1: Jane Pierce w later do a mediumship session with Maggie Fox,
Speaker 1: and the sisters also met with a number of congressmen
Speaker 1: and other DC locals. The religion was catching on in
Speaker 1: a huge way, in spite of charges of fraudulence and
Speaker 1: the fluctuating reputations of the sisters themselves. The next spring,
Speaker 1: Maggie's new boyfriend Kane left for another Arctic expedition, but
Speaker 1: not before Maggie gave into his wishes and agreed to
Speaker 1: leave spiritualism and get an education according to his specifications.
Speaker 1: While he was gone. Maggie's departure from the fold put
Speaker 1: extra pressure on a sixteen year old Kate Fox, who
Speaker 1: was understandably getting pretty burnt out from being worked so
Speaker 1: hard as a kid, in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: they were making more money than ever, more than seven
Speaker 1: times the annual salary of the average female factory worker.
Speaker 1: A few years passed as Spiritualism continues to expand independently
Speaker 1: of the Sisters. By this time, it was estimated that
Speaker 1: there were several hundred thousand spiritualists in the US, and
Speaker 1: many high profile spiritualists were trying to get the phenomena
Speaker 1: experienced within the religion investigated and validated by petitioning Congress
Speaker 1: for a government committee. This was at a time where
Speaker 1: many spiritualists were especially enthusiastic about the scientific promise of
Speaker 1: the religion, but most government officials were still very dismissive.
Speaker 1: A former Wisconsin governor's request for a government committee was
Speaker 1: privately mocked as a cult science and quickly dismissed. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five, the first volume of spiritualist history called
Speaker 1: Modern Spiritualism, Its Face and Fantasies, Its Consistencies and Contradictions,
Speaker 1: was published by Eliab Kaprin, and it was also this
Speaker 1: year that Kane returned to Maggie Fox. Maggie was understandably thrilled.
Speaker 1: She was pretty bored, wasn't loving school, and missed conducting
Speaker 1: sciences with her sisters, but she was determined to marry
Speaker 1: Alicia Clark Kane. But instead of doing that, he showed
Speaker 1: up at her home several days after back from his
Speaker 1: mission with the document. He wanted her to sign disclaiming
Speaker 1: any relationship they'd ever had together and demanded that she
Speaker 1: returned all his love letters. I this motherfucker came back
Speaker 1: and said, just kidding, the engagement is off. Signed this
Speaker 1: n d A like he was writing a Marvel movie
Speaker 1: or something. It makes me mad, because at this point
Speaker 1: both of them were very public figures. Kane's memoir of
Speaker 1: his most recent expedition would become a best seller that
Speaker 1: was second only to the Bible when it was published,
Speaker 1: and Maggie Fox was the founder of this on the
Speaker 1: Rise religious movement. But in Kaine's view, she was a
Speaker 1: reputational liability new money, so he gives her this n
Speaker 1: d A. She agrees to sign it, but he changes
Speaker 1: his mind and Maggie forgave him for maybe one of
Speaker 1: the meanest things I've ever heard of someone you were
Speaker 1: supposed to marry doing to you. They began to see
Speaker 1: each other again, something that didn't affect his reputation but
Speaker 1: certainly affected her as an unmarried woman who was supposed
Speaker 1: to be having sex before marriage. The Fox family was
Speaker 1: not thrilled about this, but Kate and their mother, Margaret,
Speaker 1: were said to be in attendance when Maggie and Kane
Speaker 1: were unofficially married in a private ceremony. It was a
Speaker 1: rushed circumstance. Kane was said to be leaving for a
Speaker 1: book tour in England the next day and allegedly said
Speaker 1: to the family, Maggie is my wife and I am
Speaker 1: her husband. Wherever we are, she is mine and I
Speaker 1: am hers. This ceremony's authenticity was disputed later, and that
Speaker 1: is important because Kane became ill on the way to
Speaker 1: London and died shortly after arriving. Death of a himbo.
Speaker 1: You hate to hear it. Maggie was very upset She
Speaker 1: fell into a nervous collapse when she learned this, and
Speaker 1: the Kane family was swift to cut her out of
Speaker 1: their bottom line, claiming that their marriage was not legitimate
Speaker 1: and any money that Kane had appeared to have left
Speaker 1: behind for her care was not intended for her at all.
Speaker 1: It's around this time that Maggie became plagued with increasing
Speaker 1: struggles with alcoholism and finances. She wrote this to Kaine's
Speaker 1: brother after his passing. I know that the Doctor must
Speaker 1: have left some message for me, and know that you
Speaker 1: will not refuse to deliver it, even though it gives
Speaker 1: you much pain in recalling the name of him whose
Speaker 1: memory is and ever will be sacred. I have always
Speaker 1: held a religious faith in the deep sincerity of the
Speaker 1: Doctor's love. Meanwhile, Leah and Kate struggled with a series
Speaker 1: of blows in their religion. In June of eighteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: they participated in another highly publicized investigation, this one by
Speaker 1: the Boston Courier to prove the existence of spirit communication.
Speaker 1: Harvard Study and Spiritualism had taken down famous spiritualist adjacent figures.
Speaker 1: The Davenport brothers to be nothing more than excellent magicians,
Speaker 1: who could appear and disappear and create music from seemingly
Speaker 1: disembodied places. Leah and Kate prevail in this investigation, but barely.
Speaker 1: The results of the study said that there was quote
Speaker 1: a little rapping by the Foxes, easily traceable to their persons,
Speaker 1: and easily done by others, without the pretense of spirit,
Speaker 1: nor a table or piano lifted, or anything moved a
Speaker 1: single hair's breadth. So ends this ridiculous and infamous imposture unquote.
Speaker 1: As always, there are two sides to this. It was
Speaker 1: speculated that at least one Harvard man disliked the Fox
Speaker 1: sisters in particular because they were a friend of the
Speaker 1: deceased Alicia Kane, and thought that his involvement with Maggie
Speaker 1: Fox had led to his downfall. You know how Harvard
Speaker 1: guys are always bonding over ship that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Maggie had managed to hold on to the only proof
Speaker 1: she had of her relationship with Kane, these love letters,
Speaker 1: and converted to Catholicism in eighty eight in Kane's honor.
Speaker 1: Leah soon married a rich Quaker who was obsessed with
Speaker 1: her good for her, which allowed her to retire from
Speaker 1: public sciences after ten years of public pressure, Suddenly Kate
Speaker 1: Fox was the last sister standing to carry the religion
Speaker 1: on her back, and they were not going to make
Speaker 1: it easy for her. All Right, We're back in Cassadega
Speaker 1: to a different kind of medium carrying a different kind
Speaker 1: of spiritualism on his back. When I get to the
Speaker 1: Reverend Dr Lewis Gates's door, I've already gotten a few
Speaker 1: readings done at the camp. The first was a tarot
Speaker 1: reading at the Hotel Cassadega, where I'm staying. The camp
Speaker 1: trained mediums don't seem to have a ton of respect
Speaker 1: for the card readers at the hotel, and sure the
Speaker 1: readings are maybe a little overpriced, but there are Casadeca
Speaker 1: mediums who charged comparably, and the rivalry itself seems kind
Speaker 1: of silly. Once you actually see a medium or a
Speaker 1: psychic from both parties, they're both good. And I got
Speaker 1: to see a terror reader just inches from my hotel room,
Speaker 1: which was, for the record, tiny haunted feeling and a
Speaker 1: bathroom the size of a closet that I soon learned
Speaker 1: does not get hot water. Oh, in the best part,
Speaker 1: a sign that says do not let cats into the hotel.
Speaker 1: Our hotel does not allow animals on the premises, and
Speaker 1: beside that sign, without fail, there were always two cats
Speaker 1: mewing at the top of their lungs trying to get
Speaker 1: into my room from the outside. One of the better
Speaker 1: things about Cassadega is it has a community stray cat
Speaker 1: feeding program called can You figure cats Adega? It's called
Speaker 1: cats Adega. That is truly one of the only bridges
Speaker 1: between the Camp Association and their local counterparts. My terror
Speaker 1: reader at the hotel was with a woman about my
Speaker 1: mom's age early sixties, and like most of the psychics
Speaker 1: and mediums who work at the hotel, she had us
Speaker 1: this pretty cool sweetheart deal. They get to practice upstairs
Speaker 1: in this hundred year old haunted hotel. They're given their
Speaker 1: own hotel room to give readings in, and they get
Speaker 1: to design it as they choose. The room I walk
Speaker 1: into is covered in pastel's, there a ton of light,
Speaker 1: and I have a tarot reading that I would say
Speaker 1: is pretty solid. It's funny to me that so many
Speaker 1: spiritualists dismissed tarot cards as strictly a parlor game, not
Speaker 1: because it's technically incorrect, but you might recall the seance
Speaker 1: was considered a parlor game for many years, and many
Speaker 1: spiritualists used early versions of the talking board, which would
Speaker 1: become the Uiji board, which was also a parlor game.
Speaker 1: The modern spiritualist movements relationship with tarot cards is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to me at the camp. Formally, it is
Speaker 1: not something that is used or done, and seems to
Speaker 1: even be kind of looked down on by some mediums.
Speaker 1: My theory of why they no longer tend to appear
Speaker 1: in modern spiritualism, which is much more focused on the mental,
Speaker 1: is because of how many tools were proven to be
Speaker 1: fraudulent in their era. But it's a good reading. The
Speaker 1: terror reader pulls cards and asks me about myself and
Speaker 1: interprets what's happening. She pulls the world card, she pulls
Speaker 1: the three of sorts, the four of sorts, a need
Speaker 1: to rest after getting stabbed in the heart three times,
Speaker 1: And like any good reading experience, some of it is
Speaker 1: just weird. She says things like this spirit wants you
Speaker 1: to hear living in the past makes you dead in
Speaker 1: the present. That was by Bill Belichick, the football coach.
Speaker 1: I also got a reading done with a formal Cassadeca
Speaker 1: medium before I go see Louis Gates. I meet with
Speaker 1: a former Wall Street employee who moved to Cassadega after eleven.
Speaker 1: She has me sanitize my hands and the pen and
Speaker 1: the pad of paper she gave me to take notes,
Speaker 1: no recording allowed, and the reading is hit and miss,
Speaker 1: like many readings are. I don't think I'm going to
Speaker 1: be a fashion designer. I wear like three shirts and
Speaker 1: one pants. But she does channel my grandmother incredibly well,
Speaker 1: giving specific details down to the red scarf that she'd
Speaker 1: wear to a church on Sunday, the fact that she
Speaker 1: secretly smoked cigarettes to the point that she was only
Speaker 1: caught with them on the day she died out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: the fact that my dad was around the same age
Speaker 1: his dad was when he passed away. So by the
Speaker 1: time I get to Reverend Dr Lewis Gates, I'm a
Speaker 1: little guarded at this point of seeing him all over
Speaker 1: the camp healing it Sunday services, giving spirit messages, and
Speaker 1: teaching the table tipping class I took. He's a third
Speaker 1: generation medium, so he knows American spiritualism probably better than
Speaker 1: almost anyone practicing in the country. When he opens the
Speaker 1: door to greet me, he just starts the second he
Speaker 1: opens the door. I entered the house he practices in
Speaker 1: with his wife, Marie Gates, and he guides me right inside.
Speaker 1: Waste no time. He's got a ton of energy and
Speaker 1: he's recording the whole thing on this CD ROM recorder,
Speaker 1: which I wasn't even aware was a thing that existed.
Speaker 1: But that means you can hear it too. If I'm
Speaker 1: not looking at you, I'm not. I'm not ignoring you
Speaker 1: on where you're there. I just watched what they're doing
Speaker 1: your stuff. I'm looking over there somewhere else, not ignore you.
Speaker 1: Know you're there. I've heard on like four reces and
Speaker 1: so a little wired, and yeah, he's a little wired.
Speaker 1: I've never heard so many ideas channeled and thrown out
Speaker 1: there from a medium so quickly in what seems to
Speaker 1: be this effortless motion that felt kind of jarring and
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Not everything resonated or made sense to me.
Speaker 1: In fact, listening back to this, even less made sense
Speaker 1: to me than I thought did in the moment, but
Speaker 1: some of it felt true and resonant. You're just kind
Speaker 1: of pelt it with information and ideas, and even if
Speaker 1: something isn't making sense to you, as he looks past
Speaker 1: your head to the wooden floorboards to describe something like this,
Speaker 1: a gentleman sitting up there on the floor. I haven't
Speaker 1: figured out what he's doing yet. I just don't fear
Speaker 1: what he's doing yet. I feel like this passing was
Speaker 1: extremely suddenly, extremely quickly passed, a quick pass, but I
Speaker 1: feel like he was quite sick. He was sick, he says,
Speaker 1: his body was giving up on it. You barely have
Speaker 1: time to register it before he's moved on to something else,
Speaker 1: in which he and I'm paraphrasing, Loki says, I'll never
Speaker 1: get married. He says this a lot. If you're married,
Speaker 1: I don't see it. So if you're married, I don't
Speaker 1: see it in the path behind yourself, okay. Also, he says,
Speaker 1: I don't belong in Florida, have no business, and the
Speaker 1: state of Florida. I'm not going to kick him out
Speaker 1: and a business here? Do you live here? Thank God?
Speaker 1: It's interesting because the reverend doctor is going back and
Speaker 1: forth between psychic abilities and medium ship abilities here. As
Speaker 1: I've been told by pastor not pastor dead before, all
Speaker 1: mediums are psychics, but not all psychics are mediums. Psychic
Speaker 1: work as I understand in it is more of the
Speaker 1: prediction of the future, reading your energy, talking about the
Speaker 1: fact that you're never gonna get married. Mediumship is the
Speaker 1: guy sitting on the floor who died suddenly, not channeling
Speaker 1: something from the generalized universe, but a message from a
Speaker 1: specific individual spirit. Both of these practices line up cleanly
Speaker 1: with themes that spiritualists have followed forever, themes of self improvement,
Speaker 1: general optimism, the Golden Rule, and comforting messages from this
Speaker 1: group of spirits that are meant to be your guides
Speaker 1: through life. And spiritualists have always used this very American
Speaker 1: individualist idea that it's not just about hearing from the dead,
Speaker 1: it's about hearing from your dead personality. And all during
Speaker 1: my time with Louis, he throws a lot out there.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Don following me around. There's a
Speaker 1: lady named Helen following me around. There are several archangels
Speaker 1: with him from people in your vibrasion. You have a gentleman,
Speaker 1: two of them sitting over there. Now, Yeah, you heard
Speaker 1: that we have two guys in the room. You have
Speaker 1: a guy in your viversion. You have a guy in
Speaker 1: your vibration named don God guide for you, guide for
Speaker 1: use false people times, definitely guide for you. If you
Speaker 1: warking to Michael with you right now, to archangels, you
Speaker 1: are for you. Two guys in the room. He keeps
Speaker 1: throwing stuff out there, and he doesn't seem to care
Speaker 1: or notice if it hurts my feelings. You're not looking
Speaker 1: to do calm. You work for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: You're not Molly Homemaker. You not Florence Nightingale. But they
Speaker 1: need to know that. People may know that I'm not
Speaker 1: that I tell people something's in your life. It's not
Speaker 1: your surface, not your monkey, which you shouldn't be on
Speaker 1: the first name basis of the clowns. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of midsized dogs sitting underneath your chair walking in here,
Speaker 1: sitting underneath your chair. It's information, information information. My spirit
Speaker 1: guides want me to buy a comedy club. There's a
Speaker 1: woman in my vibration who says I swear too much.
Speaker 1: Someone's putting the Star of Day of the necklace on me.
Speaker 1: Am I Jewish? No, I'm not Jewish. Well they put
Speaker 1: that necklace on me. This is the Casadega way. The
Speaker 1: skeptics will tell you that this is a combination of
Speaker 1: hot and cold reading tactics. Hot readings being a technique
Speaker 1: where a medium uses what they could know about you
Speaker 1: before you enter the room. In my case, it's not
Speaker 1: hard to learn that I am a comedian, for example,
Speaker 1: and cold reading techniques where no previous information is known,
Speaker 1: and the psychic or medium throws a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: at the wall and either backs off or goes in
Speaker 1: further on one detail, depending on the physical or verbal
Speaker 1: affirmations the sitter gives them. And sure that will make sense.
Speaker 1: But when a piece of information hits from a medium,
Speaker 1: any of that logic goes completely out the window. In
Speaker 1: those moments, it's all real. And I mean that no
Speaker 1: matter how much you know, no matter how many times
Speaker 1: the reverend doctor tells you you're never gonna get married, Well,
Speaker 1: you meet somebody to walk the faculty. And that's me
Speaker 1: really looking for when it hits, when there's no explaining it,
Speaker 1: no amount of conventional logic is going to talk someone
Speaker 1: who believes in it out of it even a little.
Speaker 1: And this phenomenon of belief had a huge effect on
Speaker 1: the final days of the Fox Sisters. So let's check
Speaker 1: in with them. The last twenty five years of the
Speaker 1: Fox sisters Lives is at times baffling and other times tragic.
Speaker 1: While interest in spiritualism continued to rise in the US,
Speaker 1: especially when the absurdly high number of Civil War casualties
Speaker 1: starting in eighteen sixty one created this understandably increased interest
Speaker 1: in speaking with the dead, Maggie and Kate in particular,
Speaker 1: began to suffer more and more. Spiritualists in the US
Speaker 1: at this time generally accepted Abraham Lincoln's leadership, but because
Speaker 1: the religion was popularized by Rochester abolitionists, Spiritualism waned in
Speaker 1: popularity in the American South during the war, but in
Speaker 1: the North it surged in a major way. Spiritualist papers
Speaker 1: really pushed supporters of their religion to enlist in support
Speaker 1: of the Union. Spiritualist historian Emma Hardened wrote, quote spiritualists
Speaker 1: total unconcern on the subject of death made them the
Speaker 1: bravest of soldiers unquote. The spiritualists also got their second
Speaker 1: first Lady supporter after losing her eleven year old son
Speaker 1: Willie to typhoid fever in eighteen sixty two. First Lady
Speaker 1: Mary Todd Lincoln became the latest White House residents to
Speaker 1: engage with spiritualism, and was said to have held as
Speaker 1: many as eight seance as in the White House. Their
Speaker 1: interests in spiritualism and spirit photography, a physical spirit manifestation
Speaker 1: that shows you you're dead in ghost form in a
Speaker 1: compact souvenir. Pick continued after her husband's assassination as the
Speaker 1: war continued. In eighteen sixty four, one of the most
Speaker 1: significant moments in the attempts to organize American Spiritualists took
Speaker 1: place at their first national convention in Chicago. There had
Speaker 1: been some previous attempts throughout the eighteen fifties, but as
Speaker 1: with all things Spiritualists, and I'll say it most leftist
Speaker 1: groups in general, they were plagued with an inability to
Speaker 1: agree on anything, and their inherent resistance to declaring leadership
Speaker 1: and hardline rules made it very difficult to all get
Speaker 1: on the same page, which stagnated growth. The Fox Sisters
Speaker 1: did not attend this first national convention, but the Spiritualists
Speaker 1: did manage to unify on one issue, rehabilitating the image
Speaker 1: of their religion from al gations of fraud. A statement
Speaker 1: from the convention read this, American Spiritualism means something more
Speaker 1: than table tipping and trumpet blowing, trance, speaking, and size,
Speaker 1: seeing that the highest conditions it imposes are not abnormal
Speaker 1: states of beautified unconsciousness, but a vigorous, healthful working state
Speaker 1: for the practical attainment of physical and spiritual freedom, purity,
Speaker 1: and growth. In the eighteen sixties, twenty something, Kate was
Speaker 1: now the only sister who practiced in public. She was
Speaker 1: still innovating science techniques and was now working in automatic writing,
Speaker 1: a process that involved transcribing messages with her left hand
Speaker 1: in reverse script while verbally channeling as normal. It's around
Speaker 1: this time in the eighteen sixties through the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century that public demand for more theatrical manifestations of spirit
Speaker 1: came into practice. Other examples included full body manifestations, something
Speaker 1: that Kate was said to do for a wealthy banker
Speaker 1: client who had lost his wife. Again, this brings up
Speaker 1: simultaneous questions of whether Kate was responding to public pressure
Speaker 1: for larger physical manifestations, or, as spirits are often accused of,
Speaker 1: if she was exploiting the grief of a wealthy man
Speaker 1: by claiming that she could physically make is dead return
Speaker 1: who boy. By the end of the Civil War, more
Speaker 1: Americans were killed than in World Wars one and two combined.
Speaker 1: President Lincoln was assassinated, and the extremely fraught period of
Speaker 1: reconstruction in the US began. According to Emma Hardinge, the
Speaker 1: war resulted in two million additional Spiritualist converts, a huge
Speaker 1: moment for the religion, although there was no guarantee that
Speaker 1: the movement would continue to align with the times. It
Speaker 1: was around this time that both of the Fox sisters
Speaker 1: parents John and Margaret, passed away, further fracturing the sister's relationship.
Speaker 1: And the loss of her mother drove Kate Fox to
Speaker 1: begin drinking to excess. Her sister Maggie was already too
Speaker 1: sick to help her, and eldest sister Leah strategically kept
Speaker 1: her distance interesting sidebar here. In an attempt to intervene
Speaker 1: with Kate's alcoholism, a doctor friend arranged to have her
Speaker 1: be checked into the facility of one doctor George Taylor,
Speaker 1: an American who would go on to invent something called
Speaker 1: the manipulator in eighteen sixty nine, essentially a huge machine
Speaker 1: designed to make women come I'm not getting it's a
Speaker 1: big old vibrator. The attitude towards the Victorian vagina was
Speaker 1: both misogynists in the expected way and kind of roundabout
Speaker 1: progressive by mistake. In a society known for litigating the
Speaker 1: bodies of marginalized people, the post Civil War era saw
Speaker 1: women like Kate, those with some of the most privileged
Speaker 1: in the nation, diagnosed with hysteria. Now we're all familiar
Speaker 1: with that, but one of the proposed cures for hysteria
Speaker 1: was quote tellific massage to hysterical paroxysm coming u so
Speaker 1: deviant behavior from the owners of Victorian vaginas could be
Speaker 1: cured by coming, although of course the procedures didn't make
Speaker 1: it sound as if this had anything to do with pleasure.
Speaker 1: In a culture that famously assumed that pussy shunned squirt
Speaker 1: without the guidance of good dick, and was predicated on
Speaker 1: the idea that women were emotionally and intellectually inferior, Thus hysteria,
Speaker 1: there were doctors whose job that was to make you come.
Speaker 1: That's just history. Dr Rachel Maine's, a sex historian and
Speaker 1: the author of the Technology of Orgasm, said this of
Speaker 1: the good doctor George Taylor. Dr Taylor advised colleagues that
Speaker 1: women would tend to want more treatment than they really needed.
Speaker 1: They would overdo it if you let them. H These scamps,
Speaker 1: these freaks, they're coming all over town. Hide your children.
Speaker 1: Kate Fox's time with Dr Taylor was by all accounts,
Speaker 1: really fun for her. He'd pioneered something called the Swedish
Speaker 1: Movement Cure, which encouraged regular vibrator stuff along with exercise, massage,
Speaker 1: and all vegetarian diet, and this worked for her for
Speaker 1: some time, but of course it couldn't cure her financial
Speaker 1: issues or her addiction. Kate would occasionally disappear for weeks
Speaker 1: at a time to conduct seances for the Nuvaux Reach
Speaker 1: of New York City, often being bribed with alcohol and
Speaker 1: going on weeklong benders. Eventually, Dr Taylor and his wife
Speaker 1: Sarah decided to protect Kate by allowing her to stay
Speaker 1: at their facility free of charge in exchange for some
Speaker 1: quid pro quo seances, once again meaning that Kate Fox
Speaker 1: was paying her rent by keeping a couple in touch
Speaker 1: with their dead children. Harriet Beetristowe, author of Tom's Happen,
Speaker 1: was also a patient of Dr Taylor's and attended seances
Speaker 1: where Kate continued to manifest more and more physical manifestations
Speaker 1: disembodied hands, twinkling lights, spirit portraits, likely influenced by early
Speaker 1: spirit photography. Still struggling with addiction that Kate would sometimes
Speaker 1: channel medium's messages that seemed to be directed at herself.
Speaker 1: Here's an example. Now, go and rejoice, Katie, and live.
Speaker 1: There are two paths, one happiness and peace, one misery
Speaker 1: and death. Choose the former, and great will be your
Speaker 1: golden reward. By one spirit, had Kate informed the tailor's
Speaker 1: that it was time for their medium and residence to
Speaker 1: go abroad via a popular spirit that Kate would channel
Speaker 1: named Benjamin Franklin. I'm serious. You might remember from a
Speaker 1: few episodes ago that I was kind of jar when
Speaker 1: finding out a present day Cassadega medium considered JP Morgan
Speaker 1: to be one of his spirit guides. But there is
Speaker 1: weirdly precedent for that kind of thing. American and English
Speaker 1: spiritualists would often channel historical figures like this, that is,
Speaker 1: ones highly glorified in their culture at the time who
Speaker 1: are deeply entrenched in these colonial and imperialist myths. It's
Speaker 1: yet another example of the spiritualist movement being generally progressive,
Speaker 1: but still majority composed of middle class white Americans who
Speaker 1: were frequently tone deaf and self centered, a major reason
Speaker 1: that the religion has not diversified much today and why
Speaker 1: as well discussed next week. Black and brown spiritualists felt
Speaker 1: ostracized from the movement and would go on to form
Speaker 1: their own churches and customs. The tailors weren't thrilled to
Speaker 1: see the prone to relapse in Kate leave, but she
Speaker 1: was now in her mid thirties and there wasn't much
Speaker 1: they could do. She left for England in late eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one and was thrilled to see that spiritualism had
Speaker 1: taken off in England significantly. By this time, England had
Speaker 1: produced a number of legendary mediums since the religion was
Speaker 1: brought to the country in the early eighteen fifties. There
Speaker 1: was a deed Home, who I've mentioned on Ghost Church before,
Speaker 1: who was known as one of the least debunked mediums
Speaker 1: of the time, although skepticism ran rampant there as well.
Speaker 1: My favorite example is Victorian writer power couple Robert and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Barrett Browning went to one of Holmes seances in England, ones,
Speaker 1: intriguing Elizabeth but prompting Robert to write a brutal takedown
Speaker 1: poem called Mr Sludge the medium, look at me, see
Speaker 1: I kneel. The only time I swear I ever cheated,
Speaker 1: Yes by the soul of her who hears your sainted mother, sir.
Speaker 1: All except this last accident was truth. It's really long.
Speaker 1: It's like this Victorian dis tract It's goodd Holme was
Speaker 1: also notable for allegedly introducing spiritualism to a Russian woman
Speaker 1: named Helena Blovotsky in the late eighteen fifties, who spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time defending spiritualism for years, but was
Speaker 1: off put by their fraud allegations. Eventually, using a number
Speaker 1: of ideas she'd learned via her travels in Tibet, India
Speaker 1: and all across the East, she brought concepts like karma
Speaker 1: and reincarnation into existing spiritualist rhetoric and founded her own movement,
Speaker 1: Theosophy in eighteen seventy five, a movement that was also
Speaker 1: played by accusations of fraud. Queen Victoria was rumored to
Speaker 1: have either attended or maybe even held spiritualist seances after
Speaker 1: the death of her husband, Prince Albert in eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: so it was an even bigger boon to the English
Speaker 1: spiritualist movement. When v Kate Fox married an Englishman, now
Speaker 1: thirty five years old, she met a widower named Henry
Speaker 1: Dietrich Jenkin, who didn't just believe in spiritualists, so did
Speaker 1: his parents. She had two kids with him, Ferdinand and
Speaker 1: England and Henry Jr. While visiting her sisters in New York,
Speaker 1: and her happy married life and ability to continue practicing
Speaker 1: her religion kept Kate on the wagon for a long time,
Speaker 1: but as always, things remained needlessly chaotic in America. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two there were two spiritualist adjacent failed presidential campaigns.
Speaker 1: Longtime Fox family friend Horace Greeley, who Kate had spent
Speaker 1: the summer getting an education from when she was just
Speaker 1: a kid, had failed in his presidential bid against Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant and died shortly after in a sanitarium. More interesting way,
Speaker 1: many American spiritualists were embarrassed when a medium named Victoria
Speaker 1: Woodhull became the first woman to ever campaign for the
Speaker 1: American presidency. Her campaign is considered to be pretty historic
Speaker 1: now but was treated like a joke in its day.
Speaker 1: Woodhull had as a women's rights advocate for years. She
Speaker 1: had been pro abolition, She had been a pusher of
Speaker 1: the concept of free love, which at this time only
Speaker 1: meant the right to get married, divorced, or have children
Speaker 1: without social restriction. And then there were some eccentric things.
Speaker 1: She listed Frederick Douglas as her running mate, which I
Speaker 1: guess she never told him about. All this to say,
Speaker 1: the Spiritualists did not claim her, and her public presence
Speaker 1: was considered to be an embarrassment to the movement, because sure,
Speaker 1: ghosts are real, but a woman for president, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be sick. I have to get on that big
Speaker 1: scary vibrator again. By the mid eighteen seventies, Kayton Maggie's
Speaker 1: relationship with their older sister Leah hadn't improved very much.
Speaker 1: Kate wrote in a letter to fellow medium D. D.
Speaker 1: Home that my sister, Mrs Underhill, who was more than
Speaker 1: twenty three years older than myself, was always jealous of me,
Speaker 1: and when my blessed mother died, we were not on
Speaker 1: speaking terms, but she was working on forgiveness, explaining that
Speaker 1: at times I find the shadows of her unkindness lingering
Speaker 1: in my heart. I tried to remember that she is
Speaker 1: a changed woman and a good woman, while the Fox
Speaker 1: has continued to split hairs. Loosely organized spiritualist camps began
Speaker 1: to pop up all over the country, including a camp
Speaker 1: of hundreds of tents in Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts, as well
Speaker 1: as the Cassadega Lake Free Association in upstate New York
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy nine. Don't be confused, this is not
Speaker 1: the same Cassadega that I visited this year in Florida.
Speaker 1: This is a sister camp that was later named lily
Speaker 1: Dale in nineteen oh six. Lily Dale is still considered
Speaker 1: to be the most influential spiritualist camp in the country,
Speaker 1: spanning over eighty acres and briefly being the site where
Speaker 1: the Fox is. His cabin was relocated. Of course, like
Speaker 1: all notable spiritualist buildings, it burned down under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 1: In Kate's husband died after they had a decade of
Speaker 1: a happy marriage and two kids, and Kate almost immediately
Speaker 1: falls off the wagon and begins drinking again. She traveled
Speaker 1: to Russia briefly after being invited by a bureaucrat, and
Speaker 1: is said to have held seances for the royal family,
Speaker 1: but those times didn't last very Long eight four brought
Speaker 1: another round of prominent mediums down with a study called
Speaker 1: the Seabird Commission. It was an academic study funded with
Speaker 1: money left behind by spiritualist Henry Siebert to confirm the
Speaker 1: phenomena of the religion he dedicated his life too. Conducted
Speaker 1: at the University of Pennsylvania. Maggie met with them, and
Speaker 1: while her mediumship wasn't disproven, that was once again cast
Speaker 1: on how the Fox spirit rappings were made, as well
Speaker 1: as on other physical phenomena like spirit photography and automatic writing.
Speaker 1: The sisters were thrown into conflict again when Leah published
Speaker 1: her heavily editorialized memoirs called The Missing Link in Modern
Speaker 1: Spiritualism in five, which Maggie and Kate did not like,
Speaker 1: particularly because they were struggling financially and with alcohol as
Speaker 1: their older sister lived this comfortable, wealthy life. In Everything
Speaker 1: comes crashing down that may, Kate Fox was arrested and
Speaker 1: held for three hundred dollars in the Harlem Police court
Speaker 1: on child neglect charges. When the police showed up, the
Speaker 1: boys were fined and healthy, but Kate was in fact drunk,
Speaker 1: and the boys, who were fourteen and twelve, were sent
Speaker 1: to a juvenile asylum. Once released, Kate was devastated and embarrassed,
Speaker 1: admitting to having quote intemperate habits end quote, but strongly
Speaker 1: denied that this had affected her parenting and the impact
Speaker 1: that this arrest had extended beyond the personal. For other
Speaker 1: prominent spiritualists, Kate's arrest was an embarrassment that further estranged
Speaker 1: the religion's creators from the religion itself. Maggie was able
Speaker 1: to get her nephews out of the juvenile asylum by
Speaker 1: sending a cable posing as Kate's brother in law, Edward Jenkin,
Speaker 1: reuniting Kate with the boys, but that was only the beginning.
Speaker 1: At this point, Maggie and Kate Fox had been synonymous
Speaker 1: with spiritualism for forty years, beginning when they were about
Speaker 1: the same age as Kate's sons. Spiritualism had changed their
Speaker 1: lives completely, for better and for worse. They had become
Speaker 1: some of the most prominent women serving as religious figures
Speaker 1: in the world, but had become so at the expense
Speaker 1: of their privacy, their youth, and the majority of their
Speaker 1: personal relationships. They were predisposed to alcohol is m via
Speaker 1: their dad, but these issues were exacerbated by the stress
Speaker 1: and pressure of constant investigations and their status at different
Speaker 1: times in life as unmarried or widowed women definitely did
Speaker 1: not help. By this time, Maggie had returned to occasionally
Speaker 1: conducting seances for financial purposes, while maintaining that she was
Speaker 1: technically a Catholic okay Messi. But forty years on, the
Speaker 1: world still wondered did they really believe in what they
Speaker 1: had spent their lives doing. Maggie Fox published an answer
Speaker 1: via a column in the New York Heralds called The
Speaker 1: Curse of Spiritualism, in which she said that it was
Speaker 1: all a lie. She explained that she and Kate had
Speaker 1: been reassured by Leah as children that their fraudulence was
Speaker 1: okay and in service of something greater, that spirit communication
Speaker 1: was real, and that she had proved it by having
Speaker 1: spirit rappings that Leah her self produced assure her younger
Speaker 1: sisters that they were doing the right thing. Her Maggie
Speaker 1: Leah had exploited a prank that they'd played as board kids,
Speaker 1: convinced them it was real, and spun it out into
Speaker 1: a religion that had made her rich and respected, while
Speaker 1: her kid's sisters remained deceived and increasingly destitute. Maggie takes
Speaker 1: pot shots a lot of people in this column, particularly Leah,
Speaker 1: but also the general public who were enthusiastic about spiritualism.
Speaker 1: She indicates that she felt the public pressured mediums into
Speaker 1: fraudulence with increasingly ridiculous demands. From her column, spiritualism is
Speaker 1: a curse. God has set his seal against it. I
Speaker 1: call it a curse for the vilest miscreants make use
Speaker 1: of it to cloak their evil doings. Fanatics ignore the wrappings,
Speaker 1: which is the only part of the phenomena that is
Speaker 1: worthy of notice, and rushed madly after the glaring humbugs
Speaker 1: that flood New York of Lellah. Maggie indicated that she
Speaker 1: felt it was Leah who had gotten Kate arrested in
Speaker 1: the first place. When she was interviewed in a follow
Speaker 1: up by The Tribune in September, she went in, we
Speaker 1: were but innocent, little children. What did we know? We
Speaker 1: get to know too much. Our sister used us in
Speaker 1: her exhibitions, and we made money for her. Now she
Speaker 1: turns upon us because she's the wife of a rich man,
Speaker 1: and she opposes us both wherever she can. Oh, I
Speaker 1: am after her. You can kill sometimes without using weapons,
Speaker 1: you know. When asked how the Foxes had produced the
Speaker 1: wrappings all these years, Maggie promised she would show the
Speaker 1: world at an upcoming lecture. And what gets me the
Speaker 1: most out of this whole story is Maggie saying that
Speaker 1: she never believed that her older sister was lying to
Speaker 1: her about spirit communication being real until her own husband
Speaker 1: died and never came back to talk to her. Maggie continues,
Speaker 1: why I have explored the unknown as far as human
Speaker 1: will can. I have gone to the dead so that
Speaker 1: I might get from them some little token. Nothing came
Speaker 1: of it, nothing nothing. Kate fully supported Maggie, saying that
Speaker 1: the majority of Leah's book was fiction, and at a
Speaker 1: public showing in October, Maggie showed the world how she
Speaker 1: and Kate had been producing the wrappings all these years,
Speaker 1: confirming a lot of speculation from the past four decades.
Speaker 1: She says, at night, when we went to bed, we
Speaker 1: used to tie an apple on a string and move
Speaker 1: the string up and down, causing the apple to bump
Speaker 1: on the floor. Or we would drop the apple on
Speaker 1: the floor, making a strange noise. Every time it would rebound.
Speaker 1: As people have been speculating since the early eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Maggie said the raps were produced with their knuckles and joints,
Speaker 1: fingers toes. Knees. Oh my god, that's so cruel. These
Speaker 1: women's knees were just destroy roy. They were for sure
Speaker 1: double jointed, but over time developed incredible control over the
Speaker 1: motions of their bodies. It's pretty fascinating and kind of
Speaker 1: grotesque to think about. It's not like athletic, but that
Speaker 1: kind of mastery of your own tiny bodily movements is
Speaker 1: just wild. Uh. Maggie said that no one ever caught
Speaker 1: on or mistrusted them when spiritualism began, because they were
Speaker 1: just kids, and that they were led on by my
Speaker 1: sister intentionally and by my mother unintentionally. She called several
Speaker 1: physicians to the stage and showed them how she did it.
Speaker 1: She moved around her joints, and just as always, the
Speaker 1: spirit raps sounded around the auditorium. The news called it
Speaker 1: the death blow to spiritualism. Here were the two girls,
Speaker 1: now women who had started everything, publicly stating that it
Speaker 1: had been a lie, and they regretted it. All Spiritualism
Speaker 1: should have ended right there and then. But that's not
Speaker 1: really how believing in something works is it? By this time,
Speaker 1: spiritualism was in some ways too big to fail. In
Speaker 1: addition to large followings in the US and Europe, a
Speaker 1: movement called a Spiritismo, which will discuss next week, had
Speaker 1: combined with other spiritual traditions of enslaved African people in Brazil, Cuba,
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico, to name a few. So spiritualists did
Speaker 1: what you might expect, once again, discredit and smear the
Speaker 1: Fox Sisters by any means necessary. Maggie was accused of
Speaker 1: disclaiming spirit for financial reasons, of being abandoned by spirit
Speaker 1: by lack of faith, that she wasn't even relevant enough
Speaker 1: to the movement for her opinion to matter. That Kate
Speaker 1: was just falling into line with her lie, just as
Speaker 1: she had fallen into line with Leah all those years.
Speaker 1: Prominent spiritualists turned on them as they continued to tour
Speaker 1: the j K spit Ritualism Is Fake lecture series. They
Speaker 1: stuck by this for a good year. But here's the
Speaker 1: part that's wildest of all. A year later they took
Speaker 1: it back. Maggie apologized forever having said that spiritualism was
Speaker 1: a lie, now saying that quote would to God that
Speaker 1: I could undo the injustice I did the cause of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: She said the Catholics had made her do it, and
Speaker 1: certainly not that the wealthy spiritualists had pressured her to
Speaker 1: recount her statements. Maggie implied that she would do another
Speaker 1: lecture tour the j K. The JK spiritualism is fake
Speaker 1: lecture tour is fake lecture tour. It didn't work. Leah
Speaker 1: passed away peacefully at home in eight nine and her
Speaker 1: late seventies, the child abuse accusations never really affecting her,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the backlash against her younger sisters only
Speaker 1: elevated Leah's status among long time spiritualists. Kate redacted all
Speaker 1: of her denied aisles of her religion as well, and
Speaker 1: once again started doing sciences for the Vibrator family the Tailors,
Speaker 1: but would still disappear on drinking binges before passing away
Speaker 1: mid binge at only fifty five in July. Shortly before
Speaker 1: she died, she channeled the spirit of Benjamin Franklin for
Speaker 1: the Tailor's one last time, saying there will be no loss.
Speaker 1: God bless you now and forever. Maggie was poor and
Speaker 1: living at a friend's apartment when she grew sick in eight,
Speaker 1: dying in her sleep at fifty nine. There was no
Speaker 1: money left, but a friend arranged for Maggie and Cake
Speaker 1: to be buried beside each other. And that's the story
Speaker 1: of the Fox sisters. They are tough cultural figures to parse.
Speaker 1: On one hand, I'll be honest, Leah Fox feels like
Speaker 1: a pretty standard girl boss of her era, a single
Speaker 1: mom in her thirties, barred from most lines of work
Speaker 1: and certainly most lines of power. She was a single
Speaker 1: woman who couldn't even vote. When her little sisters stumbled
Speaker 1: onto this local phenomenon, she saw an opportunity and exploited
Speaker 1: it to create space for herself that didn't exist. But
Speaker 1: Maggie and Kate Fox, that's a little harder. They were kids,
Speaker 1: and it's much harder to understand what they believed and
Speaker 1: what they didn't and for how long. To this day,
Speaker 1: people generally cast Maggie and Kate as knowing that their
Speaker 1: seances were a fraud the whole time. Here's a drunk
Speaker 1: history clip to that effect. Spiritualism has taken off of
Speaker 1: that point. And so basically, when Maggie Fox is done,
Speaker 1: made her and her sister's irrelevant. So after Maggie realizes
Speaker 1: that her life is nothing when she's not a meeting him,
Speaker 1: she just drank a bunch of boost as she dined.
Speaker 1: But I I don't know. I do believe that they
Speaker 1: were playing a prank on their parents that got way
Speaker 1: blown out of proportion. But I also believe that if
Speaker 1: you're much older sister tells you something is true when
Speaker 1: you're a child, you will probably believe it. Faith has
Speaker 1: skull fucked so many people, often because of what they
Speaker 1: internalized as true when they're very young. And if I
Speaker 1: were an eleven year old told that not only did
Speaker 1: a prank I pulled on April Fool's Day have accidental
Speaker 1: religious significance, but that that significance made me a prophet
Speaker 1: that was going to help my family, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Every what would you do. I don't know what I'd do.
Speaker 1: And however far down the line, when you learn that
Speaker 1: things are not as you've been told, whenever that is,
Speaker 1: and it seems like Maggie and Kate had those moments
Speaker 1: throughout their lives. By that point, this deceit had determined
Speaker 1: every area of their life and stood to rob people
Speaker 1: of the comfort that they had previously felt morally confident
Speaker 1: in giving. If Maggie or Kate truly knew that they
Speaker 1: were fraudulent, that's up for criticism, and it should be
Speaker 1: in particular. I don't think that any grieving parents should
Speaker 1: be misled. But there's too much gray area from me here.
Speaker 1: I'm a grieving person doing way too much of this
Speaker 1: ship right now. I'm making a wholes show about shades
Speaker 1: of gray and skepticism as it pertains to spiritualism. But
Speaker 1: I still went to a medium last week, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if I went for the truth, but I
Speaker 1: do know that I went for comfort and I got that.
Speaker 1: And if that medium has a crisis of self three
Speaker 1: weeks from now and contacts me and says it was
Speaker 1: all a hoax, I would say I still got what
Speaker 1: I paid for. But I don't know. Everyone's different. Maggie
Speaker 1: and Kate Fox were not perfect baby angel religious profits
Speaker 1: that they were often framed as, But I think they're
Speaker 1: worth empathizing with. Well, not so much on THEA for me.
Speaker 1: She lived till eighty off their backs. As far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, who cares faith is fucked up when you're
Speaker 1: a kid and being lifted as a prophet while propping
Speaker 1: up your older sister's fraud probably doesn't help. Over forty
Speaker 1: five years after two sisters had heard wrappings in Hydesville,
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters were gone, but spiritualism was just getting started.
Speaker 1: And just a year after that, the Cassadega Lake Free
Speaker 1: Association decided it was time to open up a new
Speaker 1: camp that would stay open year round in central Florida.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, let's see how the good referend Dr
Speaker 1: Lewis lands this plane by September this year. Not think
Speaker 1: you're in a relationship. I think you could be in
Speaker 1: a very extremely powerful friendship. Yeah, he's still telling me
Speaker 1: that he doesn't think I'll ever be in love my
Speaker 1: entire life. But it's fine. We finish our session and
Speaker 1: I pay him forty bucks for forty five minutes. And
Speaker 1: for those not plugged into the going rate for mediumship,
Speaker 1: this is low, about half of what the other Cassadega
Speaker 1: medium might visit charges. That's another way that Reverend Dr
Speaker 1: Lewis is old school. Past generations of Cassadega mediums never
Speaker 1: won it to charge for their work at all, Implying
Speaker 1: to do so would be to cheapen their gifts and
Speaker 1: make spiritualism less generally accessible. Today's mediums do charge different
Speaker 1: rates and a showing of respect for each other's labor,
Speaker 1: although it still is a controversial issue. As I'm heading out,
Speaker 1: I asked the Reverend doctor what the rest of his
Speaker 1: day is like, and he tells me he has a
Speaker 1: session coming up this afternoon he needs to get ready for.
Speaker 1: It's a family of middle aged siblings who are looking
Speaker 1: for buried treasure that a dead father said might be
Speaker 1: buried somewhere in their house. Delightful. So no of the
Speaker 1: three readings I have at Cassadega, two of which from
Speaker 1: long time certified mediums, nothing completely blew me away. And
Speaker 1: that's fine for people who come here. That's a calculated
Speaker 1: risk you take. I think I saw them out and
Speaker 1: not the other way around. Where the situation can get
Speaker 1: predatory is when mediums and psychics work with the police,
Speaker 1: for example, an issue we'll talk about in a future episode.
Speaker 1: That's a hard line. If a medium is seeking you
Speaker 1: to give false affirmative hope, run the other way. After
Speaker 1: I leave my reading with Reverend Dr Lewis, I walked
Speaker 1: past the library, around the corner, past the shop where
Speaker 1: they charged ninety bucks to talk to you behind a
Speaker 1: thin sheet and back to my hotel room where there's
Speaker 1: no hot water. It's funny because I've walked around boast
Speaker 1: of the camp at this point, around the parks, the
Speaker 1: ferry trail, the huge Floridian forest where there's a few
Speaker 1: marked bamboo poles that memorialize where either a hotel or
Speaker 1: a sanitarium burned down, depending on who you ask, And
Speaker 1: I've definitely been to the gas station. But one element
Speaker 1: of the camp always stands out, something that's visually and
Speaker 1: verbally referenced all the time because it is a critical
Speaker 1: part of the founding myth of Cassadega, and that is
Speaker 1: the Indigenous spirit Guide. But for all the talk of
Speaker 1: respecting and referencing Indigenous culture, this is not a history
Speaker 1: that's available in Cassadega any more than the tragic side
Speaker 1: of the Fox Sister story is one that's ever referenced.
Speaker 1: So next week we're going to tackle the next spiritualist myth,
Speaker 1: the tangled colonial Mess, and we'll take a detour to
Speaker 1: the world of espiritismo. All that and more on next
Speaker 1: week's post Church. Ghost Church is a cool Zone Media production, created,
Speaker 1: written and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by Sophie Lichtman, edited by Ian Johnson. Our theme
Speaker 1: song is by Speedy Ortiz, That's Sadie Duplead, Andy Loholt,
Speaker 1: AUDREYSI Whiteside and Joey Dubeck. Music is by Zoe Bade.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to guest voices this week Ian Johnson, Sophie Lichtman, Sharene,
Speaker 1: Lonnie Units and Caitlin Drante