WEBVTT - How Spiritualism Works 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.560 Welcome to Stuff You should know, a production of five 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:12.560 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.920 I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryan over there 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:21.640 somewhere in the heart of darkness. I'm in the office, dude. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:27.640 Where I hear your voice, Chuck, but I can't see you. Yeah. 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:29.920 I mean, I don't know why people need to know 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:32.640 the behind the scenes things, but home recording provides some 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.519 challenges and I was getting pretty frustrated. So I was like, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.280 you know what, I'm gonna go to the studio. Yeah, 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.600 because I know it'll sound great in here, and I 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:46.920 know there won't be dogs and children, and uh, everyone 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.320 should feel good about it because I have not seen 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:54.320 another human being. Yeah, in the building. Security didn't a 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:56.240 security guard try to run you off the road when 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.120 you were parking. He didn't try. He stopped me literally 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:00.800 in the parking lot. Was like, what are you doing here? 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:02.800 I was like, I'm going to my job, and he 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:08.920 said okay, he said stay home, save lives. But before 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:12.840 we left, I mean apparently since I left. Uh, they 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:18.600 have these. Um, there's a bottle of microphone sanitizer. WHOA, 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:24.200 there are headphone sanitized or not sanitized, but just disposable 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:29.039 headphone covers. Sweet, and I feel more safe here than 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:33.399 I do at my house. What microphone sanitizer that sounds 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.680 really made up? Yeah, it's um. We'll go ahead and 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.600 buzz market. No I won't because it smells bad, and 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:42.200 I didn't want to buzz market and then say it 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:46.080 smells bad. It's apple flavor, which would make Emily just 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.440 like turn over in her bed. It's a it's a 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.440 good um jolly rancher flavor. Not the best scent, though. 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:55.040 I hate it when they add sent to stuff that 0:01:55.080 --> 0:02:01.960 doesn't need scent. Try finding an unscented garbage back these days. Uh? 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.760 Is it tough too? Yeah? Man, every single one of them. 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.040 I even got some that said unscented and it still 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:12.359 smells like something you've missed it. In parentheses underneath it 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:20.080 says mostly we can't help ourselves one percent. Rosemary Well, 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:25.160 I don't have my over the ear headphones right now. 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:33.160 I just look one of you mas long scarves wrapped 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.240 around my head twice to keep from your audio bleeding 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:41.200 onto the track through my microphone. You either look like 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:45.120 Lawrence of Arabia or like you just wandered in with 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.119 a headed tree. Yeah, I had to kept slipping off 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.360 with the lawrence of Arabia. Look, so I had to 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:52.800 do it the other way around. So now it looks 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:57.320 like I have a nineteent century toothache. Oh, man, to 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.120 me another picture. It's not it's not very comfortable. My 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.320 Adam's apple is being pressed towards the back of my 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.080 throat right now. Yeah, what was the deal with that 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:09.320 whole toothache thing? Like? Was there ice in there something? 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.040 Or was it just like I just die their gin 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:16.160 shutting help? Knowing that era, there were probably some sort 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.960 of like razor blade and heroin concoction that would just 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:23.600 scrape the area where the tooth was and inject you 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:29.240 with dope to keep you from complaining. Doctor Dr Payne's 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.640 new chin wrap now with more leeches right from the 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:38.920 makers of microphone sanitizer. All right, let's get into this. 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:43.160 We've already been goofing around for too long. Let's just finish, 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.000 just get this over with. Let's get serious and talk 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:50.839 about spiritualism, shall we. This is a great, great job 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:53.280 by grab Stir, great idea by you, and it'll be 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:55.720 a great episode. Yeah, grab Stir, We we asked him 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:57.520 to help us out with this, so we put together 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.360 a world class article for us, and um, when we 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.800 asked him, we said, hey, how about spiritualism because my 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:06.200 brother wrote his dissertation on that should be simple and 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:11.760 I mean just afforded us that it did. It didn't 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:13.720 even like a racist brother's first name. He just did 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:19.640 a strike through and wrote ed after easy Money. So, um, 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:23.400 it is like a really really interesting phenomena and something 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.200 I think we kind of take for granted because it 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:31.480 pops up everywhere in our world in pop culture. I mean, 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:35.400 it's just a part of everything from crystal balls to seances, 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:40.200 to Weiji boards to tarot cards, all of this stuff. Movies. Yeah, 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.520 as a matter of fact, I ran across so you know, 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:46.719 dan Ackroyd's huge into UFOs, right, I didn't know that. Actually, 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.680 he's also enormous into spirits and ghosts. It's actually one 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.200 of the impetus is Yeah, I think so of him 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:59.120 writing Ghostbusters. He's actually a fourth generation spiritualist with a 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:04.400 capital at like the Church Spiritualism. He was raised that way. 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.800 His his father, grandfather, and great grandfather were all spiritualists 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:12.000 and that's how he was raised as well, um, so 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:15.880 it does this kind of it's so permeated our our culture. 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:18.360 It's weird to think of a time when it wasn't there. 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:22.000 But there actually was this period starting and riot about 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.400 in the middle of the nineteenth century going well into 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:31.800 the twentieth century where there was a movement that basically said, 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:36.400 the spirit world is there, it exists. When you die, 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:40.680 your personality survives, and some people actually have a talent 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.839 for communicating with the spirits and the spirit world, and 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.320 we're going to start doing that. And that was spiritualism, 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:54.200 the spiritualist movement. Yeah. Um, and ed uh pointed out, 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.400 which we should as well, that ghosts and things like 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:00.640 that and ghost stories they had been around people have 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.640 been around everyone since the dawn of humankind has tried 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:06.920 to figure out like what happens after you die too, 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.720 people visit, do they take on, you know, other other 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.760 forms or whatever. So that's different than what we're talking about. 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:20.000 What we're talking about is spiritualism in that it became 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:24.760 a a big scam in way to get money out 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:27.440 of people who are in pain for my friends or 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.039 loved one's death sadly, Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, but 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:36.039 there is like a through a thread through there where. Um. 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.760 This same era, the same period, in this belief in 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.400 communicating with the spirits and the idea that you could 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:43.840 go to a seance and talk to your dead loved 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:49.120 one or whatever. It produced this other group of people 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.599 who said, yes, there are tons of fraudsters and hucksters 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.520 out there who are taking advantage of this, but there's 0:06:56.600 --> 0:07:01.560 also this real, Um, there's a the real version of 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:05.560 of it actually does exist, and we're gonna apply this 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:09.520 new fangled thing called science to investigate it. And that 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:14.760 produced that that era of people like Charles Fort or 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:19.440 Harry Price who visited the Borerley Rectory the most haunted 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:24.560 place in England. Um. Or uh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Um, 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:29.400 like those guys. I know I'm trying, not a new version. UM. 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.760 Like these guys though they they were they they believed 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.000 in this stuff and the possibility of it that they 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.080 also believed in the possibly of applying science to it, 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:41.680 and even if science couldn't explain it, it didn't mean 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.520 that it didn't exist. And then there was another group 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.560 who were what we would recognize today is like pure skeptics, 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.560 like the James Randy's of the day who all followed 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:53.880 in the footsteps of Harry who DENI is we'll see 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.280 who kind of created this. So you had hucksters, believers 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:01.040 who were skeptical and genuine pure skeptic dicks who believed 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.559 none of it was correct. Yeah, and what I mentioned before, 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.480 like all the previous attempts to do stuff like this, 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:13.000 pre mid eighteen hundreds in largely the Northeast United States, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.680 it was more religious like prophets and shaman and stuff 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.640 like that. Spiritualism was the birth of the Madame Cleo's 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:25.000 of the world. Uh Ed refers to it as a democratization, 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:27.480 and that's one way to look at it, but it was. 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.960 It was the idea that hey, if you are chosen 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:33.959 and you are special, um, you could you know, it's 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:35.680 not like you have to be some religious leader. You 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.120 can just be a regular person with the gift exactly. Yeah, 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.080 which was a huge sea change. And um, there are 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.559 basically a few things that kind of came together for 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:52.199 this mentality this um this fertile kind of imagination of 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.200 this pocket of America and western New York where all 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.280 of this began to kind of take shape. And one 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:02.520 of those things was the frontier, this frontier mentality um. 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:06.680 The historian Frederick Jackson Turner called it the significance of 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:11.000 the frontier in American history, and he basically said, man, 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:12.880 the people who are living out there on the frontier, 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:16.080 they're living on the edge of civilization, the the leading 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:19.960 edge right right beyond that what they're coming up against. 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.720 And and this is highly debatable because part of what 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:27.360 they were coming up against was Native America. It just 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.760 wasn't a civilization in the forum that any European had 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:33.840 ever encountered before. But the idea was that the people 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.400 who are living on the frontier and expanding westward were 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:42.960 basically being forced just by virtue of having to survive 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:47.680 under these weird conditions outside of culture and civilization in 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.640 the European sense, that that they were having to abandon 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:53.880 that culture and basically make it up as they went 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:58.720 along and recreate a new culture from the frontier, and 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.640 that that just kind of through the rules out the window. Yeah, 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.320 this is one of my favorite things when we do topics, 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:09.800 that when you can look back at a movement and 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:13.520 point to factors that at any other time in history, 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:16.160 if just one of these might not have taken you know, 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:18.000 might not have influenced it, that it might not have 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:21.079 happened at all. There's something about that that I've always 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.600 really loved. And uh, this is a perfect example. The 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:28.080 frontier life is one. Religious fervor is another. Uh. And 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:32.000 specifically in New York in the eighteen hundreds, people were 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.840 really caught up on this religious fervor and it kind 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.959 of went from town to town and there was no uh, 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.720 there was no big religious authorities in the area. They 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.920 were out on the frontier. They had no structured hierarchy 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:49.680 of religion, and so again they could just make up stuff. Uh. 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.160 And I'm not saying that's not tied to this next sidence, 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:55.240 because I don't want to turn anyone off, but a 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.000 lot of religion sprang out from this region during that time, 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.800 like Millerism and Mormon is um and uh, Quakers and 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:07.240 Shakers kind of had a a resurgence, basically a shot 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:09.920 in the arm, just because of this fervor going on 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:13.800 at the time. And I couldn't quite put where um Millerism, 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.479 why it seems so familiar, And then I remember that 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.720 that was the woman who gave birth eventually to the 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.199 Seventh day Adventists and that popped up in the Kellogg episode. 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.800 Remember yeah, yeah, Millerism was where it all started. But 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:29.000 that was and that really kind of indicates And I 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.560 love it when things just things we talked about before, 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.200 like have even more context from something else. But that 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.040 that just kind of goes to show you, like, this 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:38.960 is the kind of place where somebody could be like 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.360 I'm in contact with the spirits or Jesus came and 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.400 hung out with me or whatever, and this is what 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:48.640 I what I know and what I've been told. So, um, 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.280 let's start a religion based on it, and not even 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:55.320 necessarily just religions too, but also like social movements, like 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.319 utopian societies where into your food twenty times, so you'll 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:03.600 poopies here exactly, um. Or you know, women have equal 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:08.520 equal rights as men, which is just completely radical. Or um, 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:11.199 how about fifty of us lived together and just by 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:14.320 the fact that we all lived together were married according 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:19.560 to this utopian society, just just whatever you wanted to 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:23.120 to do, you kind of could because the frontier through 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.480 the rules out the window, or at the very least 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:29.560 cultural traditions that most people are raised into. When that's 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:35.000 not there, people make up their own. Yeah, for sure. Uh. 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.480 And the third big factor that UM that you mentioned 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.400 was we haven't talked about yet with science. And you 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:42.320 talked a little bit about science at the beginning, but 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.839 the idea that in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:48.520 when we're really learning a lot more than we ever 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:53.080 have about science and things like electro electromagnetism and things 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.880 that you can't see, but science is saying, oh, it's there. 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.640 This kind of fed the spiritualist movement because you know, 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.280 that's something else that you can't see that other people 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:05.520 are saying is there. So they're like, well, hey, if 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:07.920 science is saying there are things out there we can't 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.040 quite explain, but trust me it's real, then why shouldn't 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.240 I believe this stuff too? Yeah? Or well this electric 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.480 like electro magnetism, maybe that actually explains how spirit survive 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:24.320 after death. It was a really wide open time as 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:30.480 far as you know, um acceptance of possibilities rather than 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.040 no science has said this is not possible, or it 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:36.240 can't explain this, or you can't see it with your 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.360 own eyes, so it won't It doesn't it doesn't jibe like. 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:42.000 There was a lot more willingness among people who were 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:46.400 scientifically minded to say, well, maybe this is a good 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:50.640 explanation of that. Let's investigate. Yeah, the birth of science 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.880 and medicine was a really crazy time. It really was. 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:59.320 It really was. So should we take a break? Yes, 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:04.120 come on, man, Yes, I think you're you're beard holsters 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:08.360 on too tight. I haven't been able to feel my 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.400 nose for about fifteen minutes. All right, we'll go, uh 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:13.880 rub your nose and bring some feeling back, and we'll 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:43.360 talk about some of the furty ritualists. Okay, I'm gonna 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:48.840 say it's spiritualists. Nice um. And there there was actually 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.160 so there was a bunch of factors that led to 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.080 the beginning of all of this, including there was one that, 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:57.200 um that I also came across that we need to mention, 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.680 a guy named Andrew Jackson Davis who combined ideas of 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:05.680 the German hypnotist Franz Mesmer with the Swedish philosopher of 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:10.640 the soul, Emmanuel swedenborg Um. They were both eighteenth century. 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.000 He kind of brought them together, and he was a 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.640 bit of a nobody, but he emerged very very soon 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.520 after the Fox sisters became celebrities as a founder of 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.240 the spiritualist movement. Almost like he was doing it off 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.600 in isolation at the same time that all of us began. Yeah, 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.720 so the Fox sisters figure into this really quite largely. Uh. 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:33.600 And you can even pinpoint a date to what you 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.920 might consider the birth of the modern American spiritualist movement 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.320 is March thirty one, eighty eight in Hydesville, New York, 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:46.240 near Rochester, at a farm. This Fox family lived there, 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:49.880 real people, not a family of cute little red for 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:55.080 fuzzy creatures voiced by George Clooney exactly. Uh. Mr and 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:57.960 Mrs Fox had three daughters. Actually one was much older. 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:00.760 Her name was Leiah. She was nine seen in twenty 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:04.400 three years older. Whow was that funny? Because I saw 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:06.680 a picture of her, and she's like the spitting image 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:12.920 of Jeffrey Ross. You gotta look her up, Jeff That's 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.840 that's what Lea Fox looked like. I didn't see. I 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:17.080 saw the picture of the three of him, and I 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.080 didn't get a good close up. That's an unfortunate look 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:23.840 for him and her. Yeah, anybody really? Uh? And I 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:26.120 think he would admit that too. Oh yeah, but he's 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:28.160 doing all right there. What if he had really thin skin? 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.800 Ros Master he couldn't take a joke against him something. 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:35.280 Have you seen that Bumping Mike show. It's pretty good. 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.880 Uh No, is that the roast competition thing? Yeah? He 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.480 and Davidtel just sit there and roast people. It's really good. Man. 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:45.920 I used to love Davidtel back in the day. He 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:49.760 has just turned into like the weird like comedy genius 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.840 friend that that Jeffrey Ross has, and it shines through 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.520 in this awesome I'll check it out. So the Fox family, 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.080 older daughter Lea was nice teen and twenty three years 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:05.399 older than younger Kate and Maggie or I guess Maggie 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.280 and Kate if you're going in that order. And on 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:13.120 that night in March eight, they heard these rapping, knocking 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.320 sounds and they didn't know where it was coming from, 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:19.320 and that kind of kick started this whole thing. In 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.159 a weird way, this led and we'll talk about the 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:25.239 more specifics, but in a weird way, this led to 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.600 them eventually saying, wait a minute, we can make some 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.320 money if we convince people that young Kate and Maggie 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.600 are a conduit to the other side. Yeah. The the 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.800 thing is is like when it went from you know, like, oh, 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.879 there's a ghost rapping or knocking like a Poulter guyst 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.959 kind of thing too. This ghost will respond to questions 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.880 from the sisters through rapping and knocking, like how old 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.439 is Maggie? And it would wrap like fifteen times or 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.560 something like that. And that that really caught a lot 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:59.960 of people's attention. And Maggie and Kate moved in with Leah. 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.639 And apparently, from what I read, it was Leah whose 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:05.760 idea it was to take the show on the road 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.199 try to scam people out of money. It was not 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.920 a super great person from from what I read. Yeah, 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.439 I just sorry. I was thinking of a rapping ghost 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:22.119 and right got sidetracked. George Washington And I'm here to 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:24.800 say I love fruity pebbles in a mate a way. 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:27.280 You know what's funny is I was going to do 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.440 that exact same thing, but for the Fox family. That's 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:32.360 like the go to rap for guys like us. Oh, 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:36.360 it totally is guys who can't wrap. Yeah, I'm here 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:40.960 to say something, something something in a something way. The 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:43.720 Zach Morris method, I think, is what that is. I 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.160 wonder if that's based on an actual rap. I guess 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.520 there was one at some point that really did that, right, Yeah, 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:56.560 I think Blondie was the popular. Um my name is Blondie. 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.080 I'm here to say I'm gonna try wrap because it's 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:05.440 popular today. Exactly. So, uh, where what were you saying? 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:08.400 I was laughing. I didn't even notice. I'm sorry, Oh, 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.840 just that it was basically I was laying at Leah's 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:16.000 feet for corrupting the younger sisters. Yeah, she kind of. 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:18.200 She ended up managing them as a unit, I think 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:22.120 later on, if I'm not mistaken, But there aren't great 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:25.480 records of everything going on at the time. But um, 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.080 the idea was that Kate and Maggie were the ones. 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.160 It wasn't really her parents, but they're the ones who 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:35.080 could actually communicate with this barn spirit. And so they said, 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:38.120 you know what, they not only can talk to this spirit. 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.880 Media starts, you know, getting ahold of these stories, and 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:44.320 obviously back then that it was a very big deal 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:46.520 with something like this coming out in the media with 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:50.000 not a lot else going on. But they moved and 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.520 would go away to other places and said, wherever they go, 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.120 ghosts are talking to them. So you guys, my daughters 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:01.800 are talented and gifted. They're not just talking to the 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:04.680 what we think is a murder victim from our previous house, 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.920 right right, which which just changed everything. And also rather suspiciously, 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.000 Leah suddenly realized that she was able to communicate with 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.679 spirits too, So all three of the sisters were able 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.800 to But yeah, not just that one murder victim in 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.080 their house that had been the original ghost, but just 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:26.879 about any ghost. And this was the beginning of the 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:31.120 spiritualist movement. Basically a trank by a couple of teenage 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:34.840 girls that got way out of hand really fast. Yeah, 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.199 and so what do they do. They start having these 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:41.159 uh private sessions where people would pay money, and they 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.800 would wear these big long dresses that were in fashion 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.600 at the time, and they would no one's exactly sure 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:48.840 the exact mechanism, but they would do some sort of 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.879 toe knocking or something where they couldn't be seen. And 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:54.879 that was the Morse code that they said was the 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.640 ghost speaking to them. So it was it's really um. 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:01.560 They they had like a little wooden stool under the 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:05.199 table with them and they would take off their shoes surreptitiously, 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:11.640 and from what I can gather, they could pop their 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:16.080 knuckle of their toe up and down with enough force 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:23.240 that it would make a thud on that wooden stool. 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.639 It was. Yeah, they should have just been like, forget 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.560 all this spirits stuff, but this weird thing, um. But 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.719 that that was that was the phantom knocking. And we 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:37.200 know that because Maggie later on confessed to the New 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:40.880 York Tribune maybe or the Post one of them, um 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:43.680 and and said like, this is how, this is how 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:46.320 we did it actually in an effort to take her 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:50.679 sister Lea down. UM. But it ended up taking the 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:55.240 spiritualist movement down in large part. But that was it, 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:59.120 like thumping your knuckle on a wooden stool. They did 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:04.480 this for forty forty years. They made a living around 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:10.480 the world doing that and created a new religion from it. Yeah, 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:13.800 and the UM. By the time the spiritualism fad sort 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:17.159 of died away, the two younger sisters were and she 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:19.840 recanted that confession, by the way, but everyone's like, yeah, 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:23.120 you already said it could try, um. But the two 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:27.280 younger sisters uh and Maggie especially were in pretty bad 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:30.840 shape with alcoholism. And they died sort of in a 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:34.600 call your brother's sq way, very quietly and uh, fairly 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:37.840 destitute in New York City in the eighteen nineties, trapped 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:43.040 under newspapers maybe, but now they they had very interesting 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.880 but also very sad lives like Um, I think Maggie 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:51.880 married a skeptic and he not not a good move, 0:22:52.359 --> 0:22:56.280 right he died. He talked her out of doing spiritualism, 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.159 but she went back after he died. Kate married another 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:03.439 spiritual since she had a huge career um touring the 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.720 world as a spiritualist, made a lot of money, um, 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:10.520 but but apparently lost it all. And Leah again was 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:12.920 just kind of I guess, a bit of a villain 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:16.880 in this story. Where's that movie? Man? I was wondering 0:23:16.920 --> 0:23:19.440 the exact same thing. It's crazy it hasn't been made 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:22.399 fifty times already, you know, Yeah, that would be that 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:24.080 would be pretty cool. I couldn't even find a good 0:23:24.119 --> 0:23:28.240 documentary on it. Oh yeah, on them at least. I'm 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:30.480 sure there are plenty on that they're featured in. But 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:36.160 and no matter how you look at it too, whether 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:39.480 you look at it from the aspect of a believer 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:42.600 who thinks like this is where it all started, these 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:45.959 two sisters, and there's plenty of reasons to believe if 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:50.240 you're a credulous person or um confiding, as Mark Twain 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:54.399 would put it, that, you know, like the the Andrew 0:23:54.520 --> 0:23:57.560 Jackson Davis guy who who kind of started this thing 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:02.160 on his own, supposedly wrote on March thirty one, eighty eight, 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:06.120 that spirit came to him and said, the work has begun. Um, 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.240 we just started something over here, and then later found 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:11.480 out about the Fox sisters. Like, there's all sorts of 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:14.960 stuff you can believe, and so it's interesting from that respect. 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:17.480 But also if you're just a pure gied in the 0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:20.439 Wold skeptic who do not believe in any kind of 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:24.600 afterlife or soul or anything like that, it's equally interesting 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:28.959 in a totally different way that this whole like almost 0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:34.200 century long movement started from that. You know, Yeah, I 0:24:34.320 --> 0:24:37.920 just love it. I love this whole story. So it's 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:40.720 sweeping the nation at this point by the eighteen fifties, 0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:43.520 and uh, we're gonna go over some of the different 0:24:43.560 --> 0:24:45.399 things that they would do, some of the methods that 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:48.159