Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: It was six blocks from Amy's house to the publishing office.
Speaker 1: In the morning, she and Isaac would even walk together.
Speaker 1: His pharmacy was only one block farther. I like to
Speaker 1: picture them walking side by side, Isaac's neatly trim beard
Speaker 1: worn in what today might be called an Amish style,
Speaker 1: and with a winter as cold as the one in
Speaker 1: February of eighty eight, Amy no doubt would have worn
Speaker 1: a heavy rap when they reached Buffalo Street, today's main
Speaker 1: street in Rochester. We might imagine Amy holding a gloved
Speaker 1: hand up to wave. As Isaac continued on to open
Speaker 1: the pharmacy, where he filled prescriptions from Rochester's doctors and
Speaker 1: sold oils, paints, dyes, salves, and various instruments. Amy would
Speaker 1: have stepped into the publishing office for the North Star.
Speaker 1: There was plenty of work to do. Through the doors,
Speaker 1: Amy passed the office where Frederick Douglas and his business
Speaker 1: partner William c Nell were preparing the print the next issue.
Speaker 1: The summer before, Douglas had traveled west through Pennsylvania as
Speaker 1: far as Ohio, where he had been mocked attacked and
Speaker 1: run off stages by white mobs. But across the Midwest
Speaker 1: he had also been welcomed by black communities, and Douglas
Speaker 1: knew he needed to continue supporting them. Rather than retreat
Speaker 1: to Boston, Douglas moved to Rochester, the point between the
Speaker 1: coast and the frontier where the message could fly out
Speaker 1: to a nation. When Amy stepped into the printing office,
Speaker 1: she could have asked Douglas how his family was doing.
Speaker 1: His wife, Anna had just arrived in Rochester with their
Speaker 1: three boys. Isaac had even helped them move into their
Speaker 1: small apartment downtown, where they would live until they found
Speaker 1: a suitable house. After a chat with Frederick, Amy most
Speaker 1: likely climbed the stairs to the second floor and unlocked
Speaker 1: the new reading Room, an office for the Western New
Speaker 1: York Antislavery Society. It was part library, part consignment shop,
Speaker 1: where Amy worked with friends to plan meetings, supply local families,
Speaker 1: and raise funds for anti slavery projects. Because she supported
Speaker 1: Frederick's cause at every turn, and he supported hers as well.
Speaker 1: You see, while Amy was working with the Anti Slavery Society,
Speaker 1: she was also on the cusp of something new. She
Speaker 1: and her friends like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth County Stanton
Speaker 1: were about to put out a call for a convention
Speaker 1: to discuss equal rights for women. Frederick Douglas would immediately
Speaker 1: print their announcement in The North Star. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: the papers front page carried the declaration that right is
Speaker 1: of no sex, truth is of no color. God is
Speaker 1: the father of us all. The North Star embodied the
Speaker 1: fusion of movements at the center of Rochester life, and
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas and Amy Post both knew that they were
Speaker 1: working at an amazing time. Thanks in no small part
Speaker 1: to their efforts, the year would leave its mark on history.
Speaker 1: Here's historian Molly McGarry. In the year alone, revolutions ignited
Speaker 1: across the world, from France to Brazil, but also from
Speaker 1: Sicily to the Austrian Empire, and revolutions swept the globe
Speaker 1: during that year. Also in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Speaker 1: published the Communist Manifesto, opening with the line a specter
Speaker 1: is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. And in that
Speaker 1: same year, two young girls heard communicates from a very
Speaker 1: different sort of specter, giving rise to great different revolution.
Speaker 1: Had been a year full of surprises for many people,
Speaker 1: but there was still one more on its way. This
Speaker 1: is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mankey. It started as a small
Speaker 1: frontier village. In fact, the majority of its first settlers
Speaker 1: were black when it was founded by Nathaniel Rochester and
Speaker 1: the twelve people he kept in slavery. In fact, less
Speaker 1: than two decades before Amy and Isaac arrived, Rochester had
Speaker 1: been home to just over one thousand people, surrounded by
Speaker 1: fertile land. Though Rochester was a bread basket, grain mills
Speaker 1: popped up in clouds of fresh flower, and by eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, when it was officially chartered as a city,
Speaker 1: Rochester had become home to thirteen thousand people. The city
Speaker 1: was booming, and that was due in large part to
Speaker 1: the Erie Canal. Here's author and journalist Nancy Ruben Stewart
Speaker 1: Upstate New York in particular, it was a very prosperous
Speaker 1: area because the every canal had opened, and so all
Speaker 1: the produce and all the furs and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other things that were coming from the north could now
Speaker 1: come down through the canal into the Hudson and down
Speaker 1: to New York City. The farmland in the region made
Speaker 1: it ideal for communities like the Quakers who wanted a
Speaker 1: place where they could live on their own. So as
Speaker 1: Rochester shipped out new tons of flower, the radical ideas
Speaker 1: growing in that same soil traveled with them. Here's Molly
Speaker 1: McGarry once again. Douglas's North Star Circle in Rochester was
Speaker 1: a key center in a global movement for freedom, and
Speaker 1: that newspaper is crucially important. Douglass organizing was important, but
Speaker 1: there are also figures like Harriet Jacobs, who went on
Speaker 1: to write Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Speaker 1: who landed in Rochester. At the same time, while Isaac
Speaker 1: and Amy worked with Frederick Douglas at home in Rochester,
Speaker 1: Isaac's brother served as the North Stars reporter on Long Island.
Speaker 1: Through growing networks of friends, family, and correspondence, the cities
Speaker 1: around the Northeastern United States were becoming more and more connected.
Speaker 1: Of course, boomtowns don't make for the most stable homes.
Speaker 1: When communities along the Erie Canal swelled with the ranks
Speaker 1: of new residents moving inland, it made life around Rochester
Speaker 1: difficult for families who wanted to establish farms and make
Speaker 1: a life for themselves. People like John and his wife Margaret.
Speaker 1: When they put down stakes in the eighteen twenties, John
Speaker 1: fell in with a crowd of other men who arrived
Speaker 1: hoping to strike it rich, and he picked up their
Speaker 1: habits too, liquor cards, gambling on horse races. What little
Speaker 1: money John and Margaret brought with them vanished into the night,
Speaker 1: and soon enough John along with it. Now abandoned, Margaret
Speaker 1: had retreated to Rochester, where her sister offered her a
Speaker 1: room to stay in. She did her best to raise
Speaker 1: four children without their father, including the oldest Leah, and
Speaker 1: a son named David, but it was a hard life.
Speaker 1: Margaret's heart broke as Leah was entrapped by an older
Speaker 1: man when she was just fourteen. He only stayed long
Speaker 1: enough for Leah to take his last name Fish and
Speaker 1: give birth to their daughter, before he tossed Leah aside
Speaker 1: and traveled farther west. Eventually, John returned, arriving in town,
Speaker 1: and he had a new outlook on life. A revival
Speaker 1: preacher had swept through the countryside, and it brought the
Speaker 1: man to his knees. He rejoined his wife and children
Speaker 1: in Rochester, determined to rekindle their dream of farming their
Speaker 1: own plot of land. David and Leah stayed behind in
Speaker 1: Rochester while John and Maggie crossed Lake Ontario into Canada.
Speaker 1: This time, John was determined not to get sidetracked, and
Speaker 1: they started that new farm, but they started a new
Speaker 1: family as well. Margaret gave birth to two more daughters
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties, who they named Maggie and Kate.
Speaker 1: But the fire of John his new religious devotion couldn't
Speaker 1: thaw that cold earth. After scraping out what they could
Speaker 1: from the Canadian soil and missing their older children, they
Speaker 1: returned to Rochester's embrace in eighteen forty four. That's when
Speaker 1: they found themselves welcomed by Isaac and Amy Post, who
Speaker 1: hosted them on Sophia Street. The families became fast friends.
Speaker 1: Maggie and Kate also got to know their older sister, Leah,
Speaker 1: and Maggie bonded with Amy Post. The older Quaker woman
Speaker 1: working so hard to bring a new world into being,
Speaker 1: somehow found time in the midst of organizing to offer
Speaker 1: attention to the younger daughters of an unstable family. For
Speaker 1: a while, John was able to support the family as
Speaker 1: a blacksmith, but the lure of working the land continued
Speaker 1: to call, and by the mid eighteen forties, John and
Speaker 1: Margaret's son, David, was a man with a family of
Speaker 1: his own. After growing up in the city with Margaret,
Speaker 1: he'd inherited a farm from an uncle in Arcadia, New York,
Speaker 1: and eventually moved there with his wife and three children.
Speaker 1: A host of relatives live within only a few miles.
Speaker 1: A new center of gravity for the family began to form,
Speaker 1: and it drew John and Margaret out into the countryside
Speaker 1: more and more often. It did, not, however, have the
Speaker 1: same appeal for young Maggie and Kate. During one visit
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven, John and Margaret sat down with
Speaker 1: David to discuss life in the country. Despite all their setbacks,
Speaker 1: their eyes still lit up when they thought about living
Speaker 1: in the rolling pastures. From her chair in the corner,
Speaker 1: Maggie saw how much this dream meant to her father,
Speaker 1: but for her it only despired creeping dread those rolling hills.
Speaker 1: To her, they were crushingly dull. To her friend and mentor,
Speaker 1: Amy Post. Maggie eventually wrote, I love the noise and
Speaker 1: confusion of the city. I am like the woman who
Speaker 1: becomes so accustomed to her husband snoring that I could
Speaker 1: not go to sleep without it. If their mother saw
Speaker 1: any of Leah in fourteen year old Maggie, the girl's
Speaker 1: talk of husbands would only have made Margaret more determined
Speaker 1: and to move the family out of the city. So
Speaker 1: Maggie must have been upset when David told the family
Speaker 1: that the Hides, who owned most of the land around
Speaker 1: David's farm, needed a new blacksmith. In December of that year,
Speaker 1: John and Margaret packed up fourteen year old Maggie and
Speaker 1: ten year old Kate, alongside what furniture and tools they had,
Speaker 1: and took a wagon out on Wayne country Road, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, they left the Posts and their circle
Speaker 1: of radical friends behind for now, at least. It was
Speaker 1: already winter. There was plenty of land on David's farm
Speaker 1: to build a second house for his parents, but there
Speaker 1: just wasn't time. So John and Margaret made a fateful decision.
Speaker 1: They rented a little house from the Hides to wait
Speaker 1: out the season. It was hardly more than a single
Speaker 1: story box, but it would suit the family's needs for
Speaker 1: the few cold months. John liked that it was conveniently
Speaker 1: located near the Hides Forge and the rest of the
Speaker 1: family appreciated the two stone is that would keep the
Speaker 1: house warm. There was even a basement and attic and
Speaker 1: a buttery off the kitchen, which meant a few nooks
Speaker 1: and crannies to keep their belongings out from underfoot while
Speaker 1: they hunkered down under the New York's nose. But the
Speaker 1: girls there were also new chores, hauling water and wood,
Speaker 1: helping their parents clear the snow. Other than that, though,
Speaker 1: there was very little else for a teenager like Maggie
Speaker 1: to do besides attend the local Methodist Episcopal church and
Speaker 1: the red clabored schoolhouse in the neighborhood. Those long cold
Speaker 1: days left her dreaming of city life, dreaming of some company.
Speaker 1: Here's Nancy Stewart once again. The whole family had come
Speaker 1: from Rochester. So you have this fifteen year old board
Speaker 1: Maggie Fox. She wants to be back in Rochester. She's
Speaker 1: a teenager, obviously, uh and Katie who will a little
Speaker 1: sister will follow her. And the mother is so superstitious,
Speaker 1: and they'd live in this old farmhouse and they start
Speaker 1: thinking about, well, who lived there before? People lived here before?
Speaker 1: Did people die here before? Maggie's loneliness Maybe why John
Speaker 1: and Margaret decided to add one more to their household.
Speaker 1: Sometime after they arrived, they brought Leah's teenage daughter to
Speaker 1: come stay with them in Hydesville. She was only slightly
Speaker 1: older than Maggie herself, so maybe she could keep the
Speaker 1: girls occupied. And it was on one of those first
Speaker 1: nights during their cousins stay in Hydesville that the Fox
Speaker 1: family first heard the strange sounds. Creaking eaves and running
Speaker 1: mice were all sounds they would have been familiar with,
Speaker 1: but the sounds they began to hear at night were
Speaker 1: something different, something strange that they couldn't quite place. A
Speaker 1: series of thumps in the room where the family would
Speaker 1: lay down to sleep, almost as if someone was walking around.
Speaker 1: Then the sounds moved into the wall. It was as
Speaker 1: if someone was standing beside the beds where they slept,
Speaker 1: knocking on the bed frame with an invisible hand. At
Speaker 1: one point, while trying to figure out where the sounds
Speaker 1: were coming from, John stood outside the bedroom while Margaret
Speaker 1: stood inside. Suddenly the knocks rang out again, this time
Speaker 1: from the door between them. A few months later, Maggie
Speaker 1: would tell a lawyer that on the first night they
Speaker 1: heard the rapping, they all got up, lit candles and
Speaker 1: searched the house from top to bottom. The noise continued
Speaker 1: while they were hunting, always coming from the same place
Speaker 1: in the bedroom. It wasn't loud, but it was as
Speaker 1: real as anything she'd ever heard. It shook the beds
Speaker 1: and chairs too. In fact, when she held her hands
Speaker 1: against the bed frame, she said, there was a feeling
Speaker 1: of what she described as tremulous motion. But that was
Speaker 1: only the beginning. In mid March, Maggie and Kate said
Speaker 1: goodbye to their cousin, who went back to her mother,
Speaker 1: Leah in the city. Just before things exploded into action
Speaker 1: on the night of Friday, March thirty one. Margaret said
Speaker 1: that the family was determined to get a good night's rest,
Speaker 1: so they decided to go to bed early. She was
Speaker 1: anxious about the strange noises, but she set her jaw
Speaker 1: and pulled up the covers. They were all still awake
Speaker 1: when the noises began. At Margaret later described it. Kate
Speaker 1: was the first to sit up in bed, and she
Speaker 1: decided that when the knocks came, she would snap her
Speaker 1: fingers in response. Come they did, and right on cue,
Speaker 1: Kate snapped her fingers then, and this is what began
Speaker 1: to really startle Margaret, the rapping sounds replied. Maggie sat
Speaker 1: up too, and said out loud into the air, now
Speaker 1: do as I do, count one, two, three, four, clapping along.
Speaker 1: In time, the knocking sounds obeyed her, which left Maggie
Speaker 1: frozen by fear and the girls silent. And that's when
Speaker 1: their mother took over. She asked aloud that if the
Speaker 1: sound was a spirit, it should knock twice. After a breath,
Speaker 1: two knocks rang out, with the girls silent in the
Speaker 1: opposite bed, Margaret haltingly asked a series of questions, and
Speaker 1: each time the knocks answered her. Through these responses, they
Speaker 1: learned that the specter had once been a thirty one
Speaker 1: year old man. And as more and more details followed,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the panic that caught in Margaret's throat.
Speaker 1: He'd been killed just two years before, he claimed, right
Speaker 1: there in their house. When John stepped into the room,
Speaker 1: he found his daughters paralyzed by fear and his wife
Speaker 1: shouting questions to the wall. But he heard it too,
Speaker 1: her questions, the knocking sounds answering back all of it,
Speaker 1: and the couple knew that whatever they were witnessing it
Speaker 1: was beyond them, so John bundled up and set out
Speaker 1: to fetch the nearest neighbors. When he returned, he and
Speaker 1: the neighbor found the girls still in bed, still terrified,
Speaker 1: and still clinging to each other. With more witnesses in
Speaker 1: the room, Margaret asked the same series of questions and
Speaker 1: got the same answers as before. By the end of
Speaker 1: the night, a total of four families had been called
Speaker 1: to the Fox's house, including the Hides and their adult son, David,
Speaker 1: and before long they were all communicating with the knocking sound.
Speaker 1: Through their questions, they sketched out a picture of the
Speaker 1: man life and his death. The listeners crowded into the
Speaker 1: room as the spirit wrapped out that he had been
Speaker 1: a traveling pedlar, and that he had been murdered in
Speaker 1: that very bedroom, his throat cut with a butcher's knife
Speaker 1: before his body was buried beneath the dirt floor of
Speaker 1: the cellar. The information set the group in motion. They
Speaker 1: did with so many following waves of spiritualists would do too.
Speaker 1: They put the spirit to the test. John, his son David,
Speaker 1: and the Hides all went down to the cellar to
Speaker 1: start digging. But the first weeks of spring of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight had been wet. Their shovels sank into the
Speaker 1: damp cellar floor and water oozed up, making any attempt
Speaker 1: at discovery impossible. For the moment. With a story of
Speaker 1: such a gruesome crime hanging in the air, the mood
Speaker 1: that first night must have been somber. Fear and curiosity,
Speaker 1: fascination and confusion, attired and dirty circle of neighbors asking
Speaker 1: themselves if they'd really been speaking with the spirit, what
Speaker 1: had they witnessed in the middle of that spring night.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for it to become clear that
Speaker 1: something irresistible had burst forth. Word got out. Less than
Speaker 1: two weeks later, John said that hundreds had already visited
Speaker 1: the house. Among them was a lawyer who rushed to
Speaker 1: Hydesville on April eleven and started taking statements from the witnesses.
Speaker 1: John told him that curious visitors were coming so often
Speaker 1: that he couldn't even work at the forge, and his
Speaker 1: family no longer had time to cook, clean and live
Speaker 1: their daily lives. Maggie, though, must have loved it, but
Speaker 1: John was still at a loss regarding the eerie phenomenon.
Speaker 1: After two weeks of deep consternation, and scrutiny. He still
Speaker 1: couldn't make up his mind about the sounds. He desperately
Speaker 1: wanted to view them as something natural and explainable, which
Speaker 1: was certainly the more sane path to take. The alternative, though,
Speaker 1: while a lot less believable, was also more frightening. Something
Speaker 1: supernatural was at work. Leah Fish hovered over the piano
Speaker 1: bench her students plunked out the basics that she was
Speaker 1: teaching them upright. Pianos were the centerpiece of every middle
Speaker 1: class parlor, and Leah had carved out a living for
Speaker 1: herself and her daughter by guiding the children of aspiring
Speaker 1: Rochester families through the foundational elements of music. It was
Speaker 1: a respectable profession for a single mother, one of only
Speaker 1: a few that were. On that morning in May, the
Speaker 1: music lesson was interrupted when a student's mother rushed into
Speaker 1: the room and pulled Leah aside. She was followed by
Speaker 1: a man who had just come from a visit to
Speaker 1: see Leah's parents in Hydesville. With the introduction barely made,
Speaker 1: he flipped open a fat notebook and started peppering her
Speaker 1: with questions. But Leah had no idea what the man
Speaker 1: was talking about. To answer her he introduced a set
Speaker 1: of freshly printed pages. It was a pamphlet with the
Speaker 1: headline Mysterious Noises, which reported on the various statements that
Speaker 1: he had taken in Hydesville. It was the first that
Speaker 1: Leah had heard of the uncanny visitation. Within a few hours, though, Leah,
Speaker 1: her daughter, and two friends were all on an overnight
Speaker 1: package delivery boat steaming down the Erie Canal towards Hydesville.
Speaker 1: Leah found her parents home abandoned. They had taken up
Speaker 1: shelter at David's house nearby, and when Leah arrived, she
Speaker 1: saw a ragged Margaret with a bible clutched to her chest.
Speaker 1: The family had been thrown out of the local Methodist
Speaker 1: Episcopal church. Word had gone around that Little Kate said
Speaker 1: the spirit's name was Mr. Splitfoot, and the story had
Speaker 1: shocked the minister. Blasphemy, he had said, devil worship. The
Speaker 1: whispers were flying throughout the neighborhood. The blacksmith had brought
Speaker 1: hammer and tongs to Hydesville, they all said, But he
Speaker 1: had also brought something else too, his two daughters and
Speaker 1: their bond with Satan. The church had accused the family
Speaker 1: of witchcraft before telling them to leave and not come back.
Speaker 1: Perhaps there wasn't much distance between Rochester and sale him.
Speaker 1: After all, Leah and her parents put their heads together,
Speaker 1: they all agreed that the girls should be split up.
Speaker 1: If the spirit was real, maybe he was attracted to
Speaker 1: one of the sisters in particular. Guessing that it was Kate,
Speaker 1: they decided she would be the one to leave the farm.
Speaker 1: Leah worked quickly, taking her youngest sister back to Rochester
Speaker 1: with her. Separating the sisters didn't stop the troubles, though
Speaker 1: years later Leah would publish an account of what happened
Speaker 1: when they reached the city. The girls, she said, were
Speaker 1: too scared to sleep alone that night, so Lea brought
Speaker 1: them both into her bed before she could fall asleep,
Speaker 1: though their screams of fear broke the silence. With Kate
Speaker 1: in the bed beside them, her daughter said a cold
Speaker 1: hand had passed over her face, and then another crept
Speaker 1: down her back. Leah leapt for her Bible and began
Speaker 1: to read it out loud, but as she would later recall,
Speaker 1: the girls continued to feel something unseen touch their bodies.
Speaker 1: When Leah put out the light and slid the Bible
Speaker 1: under her pillow, something pushed it back out and onto
Speaker 1: the floor. They had no peace and no sleep until
Speaker 1: the light of dawn started to filter through the window
Speaker 1: and the room fell blissfully silent. But other voices would
Speaker 1: fill that silence as the Fox family tried to adjust
Speaker 1: to their new life. That energetic lawyer wasted no time
Speaker 1: distributing his pamphlet throughout the city. He had the sense
Speaker 1: that a printed report of the rumors, full of eyewitness
Speaker 1: interviews that he himself had recorded, would fly off the shelves,
Speaker 1: and his instincts proved correct. His pamphlet, called Report of
Speaker 1: the Mysterious Noises Heard in the House of John D.
Speaker 1: Fox in Hydesville, poured fuel on the whispers, helping the
Speaker 1: news spread like wildfire. But when Amy and Isaac Post
Speaker 1: first heard the rumors about the hauntings in Hydesville, they laughed.
Speaker 1: In a letter from that November, Isaac would tell a
Speaker 1: relative that at first he and Amy paid no more
Speaker 1: heed to the news than to the old Salem witch stories.
Speaker 1: He said. Leah would write that the Posts had and
Speaker 1: I quote, no little amusement at our expense. In reality, though,
Speaker 1: Amy and Isaac were torn between two opinions because their
Speaker 1: dismissive chuckles were slowly giving way to concern. Was it possible,
Speaker 1: They asked themselves that the girls and their mother were
Speaker 1: suffering under some psychological delusion, But they changed their tune.
Speaker 1: A short while later, when Isaac and Amy dropped by
Speaker 1: Leah's house to check in on their young friend, they
Speaker 1: found the household in a panic. You see that piano
Speaker 1: where Leah taught her music lessons. Well, the instrument was
Speaker 1: closed and locked because it was the evening, and yet
Speaker 1: it was somehow still playing music. One sound in particular too,
Speaker 1: a low base key solemn and distinct, slowly tolling like
Speaker 1: a death kneel. It shot the Posts so much that
Speaker 1: they went out and brought back another couple to observe
Speaker 1: the scene. Close friends, fellow abolitionists, and fellow Quakers. These
Speaker 1: were the post's most trusted advisors, just kind of people
Speaker 1: Isaac and Amy would want helping out in such a
Speaker 1: sort of mystery. When they arrived, they settled in to
Speaker 1: watch the piano, and then they listened as the note
Speaker 1: continued to play. In response, they fell to their knees
Speaker 1: and started to pray, their hands opening to Leah and
Speaker 1: the girls as they said out loud, sustaining this family.
Speaker 1: Oh God, you're chosen instruments for the benefits of mankind.
Speaker 1: The dead have never really been silent. From the beginning.
Speaker 1: Spiritualists were quick to point out that miraculous visitations, spirit messages,
Speaker 1: and bedroom apparitions were nothing new. As we discussed in
Speaker 1: the first episode, the fox sisters weren't even the first
Speaker 1: people in the eighteen forties to speak with the spirits
Speaker 1: of the dead. Far from it, here's historian Kathy Gutierrez.
Speaker 1: Scholars do like to throw down about dating spiritualism to
Speaker 1: the Foxes. There are always women in transits, right. That
Speaker 1: is one of the few cross cultural truisms, and that
Speaker 1: is clearly a way for women to find a way
Speaker 1: to speak powerfully from the margins. What makes Nidsville important, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's a haunting, It's a poltergeist. There were plenty
Speaker 1: of people like the foxes own Hydesville minister who responded
Speaker 1: in their own time worn way with fear, and that
Speaker 1: was just as true in the bigger community of Rochester.
Speaker 1: As the story grew from a whispered rumor to something
Speaker 1: more persistent, local pastors continued to declare that these were
Speaker 1: stories of witchcraft and demonology. Critics who didn't know the
Speaker 1: Foxes the way Isaac and Amy did, well, they had
Speaker 1: their own reaction. They laughed off the stories as a joke.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just friendship with Leah and Maggie that
Speaker 1: made Amy willing to listen to the spirits. It was
Speaker 1: also her Quaker beliefs. Here's historian and Browdie. Quakers in
Speaker 1: particular had already a notion that the individual contains within
Speaker 1: themselves a perfect transcript of ultimate truth, so we should
Speaker 1: look within ourselves to know the mind of God. And
Speaker 1: that notion of what Quakers call the inner Light was
Speaker 1: very close to what spiritualists would do when they looked
Speaker 1: to individual mediums to hear the voices of spirits. So
Speaker 1: the seance had some commonalities with a Quaker meeting, where
Speaker 1: Quakers sit in silence to await the voice of God.
Speaker 1: That's what spiritualists are doing. Also, they're waiting for a
Speaker 1: spirit voice. In fact, you might even say that it
Speaker 1: was these particular Quakers, Amy and Isaac Post who gave
Speaker 1: spiritualism the flavor of Quaker spirituality, because in the days
Speaker 1: after they heard the death knell from Leah's p n
Speaker 1: know they may have heard the echoes of their own losses,
Speaker 1: their own grief. The friends who advised them well, they
Speaker 1: had also have been pushed out of their Presbyterian congregation
Speaker 1: for campaigning against slavery, and all of them had started
Speaker 1: to spend more time with the Fox sisters. One afternoon,
Speaker 1: when they were all gathered at Amy and Isaac's home,
Speaker 1: they tried to have a deeper conversation with the spirits
Speaker 1: or spirits that were following the girls. Amy would later
Speaker 1: recall watching her friends, a middle aged couple seated beside
Speaker 1: Maggie in rapt attention. She said, it was as though
Speaker 1: they stood before the judgment seats of God. They were
Speaker 1: asking gentle questions, and the thumps and knocks were answering back.
Speaker 1: A new form of devotion was beginning to take shape.
Speaker 1: Amy and Isaac were beginning to see things in the
Speaker 1: same way as their friends. We do not get answers
Speaker 1: without one of the sisters present, Isaac wrote in a letter.
Speaker 1: The girls were indeed the instruments of some spiritual power.
Speaker 1: So Isaac said about devising a system to link the
Speaker 1: tapping sounds to the alphabet, And that's when something even
Speaker 1: more uncanny happened. You see. Leah had started suffering from headaches.
Speaker 1: Isaac guessed that he could offer her some relief through
Speaker 1: one of the common remedies he prepared every week as
Speaker 1: a pharmacist. Amy was also known by her friends to
Speaker 1: have a knowledge of herbal and traditional medicines. But nothing helped.
Speaker 1: Leah continued to groan in pain until Isaac decided to
Speaker 1: try the new science of the mind. He decided to
Speaker 1: magnetize her. It should come as no surprise that when
Speaker 1: Isaac followed the directions for mesmerism, Leah fell into a
Speaker 1: trance in the dark. She suddenly found that she was
Speaker 1: surrounded by the spirits of the posts, dead loved ones.
Speaker 1: Their young children appeared, a son who had died in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty four, and a daughter dead since eighteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and then Amy's dead sister, And this sister had a
Speaker 1: message to share with Isaac. She wanted him to know
Speaker 1: that she was pleased by their marriage, by their love
Speaker 1: for each other. It was right and good, and we
Speaker 1: can only guess how much this meant to him. But
Speaker 1: the questions came to Amy, and Isaac wanted to believe
Speaker 1: these messages, and wanted to believe that their children were
Speaker 1: content and happy in the spirit world. But how and
Speaker 1: why were these spirits speaking now? What made it possible
Speaker 1: that in past ages spirit visitors were so rare and mysterious,
Speaker 1: while in the spirits could hold such easy conversations, and
Speaker 1: the spirits didn't mind answering. In fact, in one of
Speaker 1: the first seances, Isaac got an answer to this question
Speaker 1: from the spirits of his dead mother. A reformation is
Speaker 1: going on in the spirit world, she told him. These
Speaker 1: spirits seek the company of honest men. They had messages
Speaker 1: to deliver, and they were reaching out to reformers who
Speaker 1: would be willing to act on their plans. Amy and
Speaker 1: Isaac knew just the people. They gathered a small group
Speaker 1: of friends to meet weekly and take down the messages
Speaker 1: from the other I, Kate, and Maggie would open themselves
Speaker 1: up to the spirits, who would flood the room with
Speaker 1: knocking sounds. Leah would serve as an interpreter. Over the
Speaker 1: next two years, a host of spirits marched into Amy
Speaker 1: and Isaac's home and spoke to them. Through the Fox Sisters.
Speaker 1: They heard messages from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They
Speaker 1: heard from Quaker leaders like George Fox, and William Penn.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin even showed up too, and he filled in
Speaker 1: another piece of the puzzle. Death hadn't stopped him from inventing,
Speaker 1: he said, and he had discovered a reliable way for
Speaker 1: the dead to reach out to the living. Back in
Speaker 1: seventeen forty eight, when he was still alive, Franklin had
Speaker 1: sent electrical pulses through a wire across a river outside Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Exactly one century later, his work had bridged a deeper divide.
Speaker 1: It had only required human instruments who were suitable to
Speaker 1: carry their messages into the land of the living. Instruments
Speaker 1: like Kate and Maggie Fox. These ghostly figures the founders
Speaker 1: of the nation and the religious tradition that gave the
Speaker 1: Posts their place in the world. They brought a message
Speaker 1: and a challenge. They were dead, but not gone, because
Speaker 1: the Posts who had inherited their work still had much
Speaker 1: to do. In a time when Amy Post, Frederick Douglas,
Speaker 1: and so many others were working diligently to reform society
Speaker 1: in the material world, it somehow made sense to these
Speaker 1: radicals that they would also be greeted by a great reformation.
Speaker 1: Among those living after death. Frederick Douglas even published reports
Speaker 1: about these new spiritual investigations in his paper The North Star.
Speaker 1: Powerful news was heading out into the world. The spirits
Speaker 1: were awake, and they had something to say. The telegraph
Speaker 1: reached Rochester in eighty six. Sure, it was a system
Speaker 1: under the control of inventors and investors who had profit
Speaker 1: in mind, but to a city shaped by the religious
Speaker 1: revivals of the Second Great Awakening, well, it was as
Speaker 1: much a miracle as it was a machine. In fact,
Speaker 1: Rochester was the center of interest in building telegraph systems
Speaker 1: all across the United States, especially for stagecoach operators who
Speaker 1: lost their living with the new canal opened up. Gravity
Speaker 1: and electricity were new marvels, proved to exist but barely understood.
Speaker 1: Communication over telegraph lines came in code, a series of
Speaker 1: pulses that needed to be interpreted by operators who knew
Speaker 1: the cipher and mesmerists were revealing the previously untapped potential
Speaker 1: of the human mind. What could be better suited to
Speaker 1: these new horizons of science than the tapped out messages
Speaker 1: of the spirits. Right from the start, Isaac post saw
Speaker 1: the similarity. Soon enough, he and his fellow believers were
Speaker 1: calling the Fox Sisters their spiritual telegraph, and they didn't
Speaker 1: fail to connect the spirit rappings to the trans visitations
Speaker 1: that Andrew Jackson Davis was receiving in New York City.
Speaker 1: His book was on sale in Rochester bookshops. By making
Speaker 1: it clear that the spirit of revelation hadn't limited itself
Speaker 1: to one place. The spirits were everywhere on the move.
Speaker 1: When the news of the mysterious noises reached Andrew Jackson Davis,
Speaker 1: he was hardly surprised. In fact, he would later claim
Speaker 1: that on March thirty one, when the spirits of the
Speaker 1: dead Pedler revealed itself to Kate and Maggie, a voice
Speaker 1: had spoken to him, saying, brother, the good work has begun. Behold,
Speaker 1: a living demonstration is born. Here's Kathy Gutierres once again.
Speaker 1: When he here's about the Fox Sisters and the so
Speaker 1: called mysterious wrappings, he melds his world view with their
Speaker 1: experiential ritual, if you will, and that was the marriage
Speaker 1: that needed happening. He gave theology to their ritual, and
Speaker 1: they brought ritual to his philosophy. As the post practice
Speaker 1: that ritual new manifestations of spirit power appeared. Not only
Speaker 1: did the circle of friends hear rapping sounds, but the
Speaker 1: spirits grew powerful enough to start making the tables move,
Speaker 1: rocking and rotating as the visitors asked questions. The spirits,
Speaker 1: you see, wanted revolution, and they got it too. That July,
Speaker 1: Amy Post and Frederick Douglas joined their friends and allies
Speaker 1: like Elizabeth Caddy Stanton and Lucretia Mott at the Seneca
Speaker 1: Falls Convention, where they made a landmark declaration of the civil, political,
Speaker 1: and religious rights of women. They were just as concerned
Speaker 1: with their rights in their religious spheres as in the
Speaker 1: civic and political spheres. They cared about whether they could
Speaker 1: vote in their churches as much as whether they could
Speaker 1: vote for the school board or the Senate. That's an
Speaker 1: browdie once again. The very table they right the famous
Speaker 1: Declaration of Sentiments based on the Declaration of Independence that
Speaker 1: gives the first real statement of women's rights in North America.
Speaker 1: That table, which is now in the Smithsonian, had been
Speaker 1: rocked by spirits at the convention. Frederick Douglas was the
Speaker 1: only black attendee and the only black signer of the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Sentiments. He published a report on that convention
Speaker 1: in The North Star, probably declaring that winning equal rights
Speaker 1: for women would be simple justice. It was news that
Speaker 1: drew more and more new neighbors to Rochester who wanted
Speaker 1: to serve the cause, including a young woman named Harriet Jacobs,
Speaker 1: who had escaped from slavery in North Carolina. Here's Molly
Speaker 1: McGarry in Harry Jacob's moved to Rochester to help run
Speaker 1: the anti Slavery Reading Room, which was located above the
Speaker 1: offices where Frederick Douglas published The North Star and at
Speaker 1: that time and probably in that place, Jacobs also be
Speaker 1: gan a lifelong friendship with Amy Post. In fact, Harriet
Speaker 1: had recently left New York City when word reached her
Speaker 1: there that mercenaries were on the way to recapture her.
Speaker 1: When she arrived in Rochester, she was welcomed into Amy
Speaker 1: and Isaac's home, and she joined them around the table
Speaker 1: both for meals and for spiritualist seances. At Amy's urging,
Speaker 1: Harriet began working on her memoir. When it was published,
Speaker 1: her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl would
Speaker 1: be a landmark in American literature and a boost to
Speaker 1: the abolitionist cause. But the Rochester circle also shared the
Speaker 1: conviction that the living and the dead were working together
Speaker 1: to launch a new age of spiritual reform. The Spirits
Speaker 1: agreed with them. If they were going to really make
Speaker 1: a change in the world, though, they needed to address
Speaker 1: the public. It started small. Isaac and Amy helped to
Speaker 1: organize sittings with the Fox Sisters, filtering out the unsavory characters,
Speaker 1: of course, but also keeping the setting harmonious and the
Speaker 1: attendants limited. At demand kept growing. More and more seekers
Speaker 1: were making their way into Rochester, all while other religious
Speaker 1: experiments were falling flat and communities along the canal were folding,
Speaker 1: looking for guidance, for connection and for the next step
Speaker 1: to take in their lives. People knew to the city
Speaker 1: were open to something that could be seen and heard,
Speaker 1: something that could be witnessed. After a year of closed sittings,
Speaker 1: the Spirits spoke up. They were ready for a wider
Speaker 1: audience in a private seance just for the Posts. The
Speaker 1: Spirits spoke through Leah, telling Isaac to rent Rochester's Corinthian
Speaker 1: Hall for a whole three nights for the first time ever.
Speaker 1: They were going to throw the doors open wide to
Speaker 1: a paying crowd. It was time for the Spirits to
Speaker 1: take the stage. They had no trouble getting the word out.
Speaker 1: When November four arrived, over four hundred people crowded into
Speaker 1: Rochester's Corinthian Hall. They'd come to hear for themselves whether
Speaker 1: the mysterious noises were a divine revelation or just a
Speaker 1: back country ruse. The first person to take the stage
Speaker 1: was Eliab Caprin, another excommunicated Quaker as well as a
Speaker 1: friend of the Posts, a utopian socialist, and a fellow
Speaker 1: member of the anti slavery movement. It was his task
Speaker 1: to describe in full what had happened around the Fox
Speaker 1: Sisters from Hydesville to the Post's home, and to prepare
Speaker 1: the way for Amy and the girls. Amy Post waited
Speaker 1: in the wings while he spoke. It was a time
Speaker 1: when women still couldn't speak in public without first being
Speaker 1: introduced by a man, and I can imagine the words
Speaker 1: of the Declaration of Sentiments echoing in her mind. Compelled
Speaker 1: to submit to law in the formation of which she
Speaker 1: had no voice, Amy was doing everything she could to
Speaker 1: change that. After Eliob finished speaking, Amy Post stepped to
Speaker 1: the front. She was no stranger to crowds in that city,
Speaker 1: whether hospitable or hostile, and Moments later, Leah Fish joined
Speaker 1: her with her sisters Kate and Maggie Fox in tow
Speaker 1: Then they took their seats around Eliob and began their demonstration.
Speaker 1: Here's Nancy Stewart, the press is there, one of Horace
Speaker 1: Greeley's reporters there from New York. There are other reporters
Speaker 1: there from the Rochester papers an elsewhere upstate New York.
Speaker 1: And there's a committee appointed to examine the girls, particularly
Speaker 1: Leiah and Maggie at this point, to find out they're
Speaker 1: making these sons with their body. The audience themselves selected
Speaker 1: their own skeptics for the committee. They included doctors, lawyers,
Speaker 1: and even a judge who had attended the meeting. The
Speaker 1: panels would observe private sciences in the afternoons and report
Speaker 1: back to the audience in the evening. One group committee
Speaker 1: of ladies was chosen to take the Fox sisters into
Speaker 1: a room where the girls were stripped and subjected to
Speaker 1: minute examination, like a jury of seventeenth century Salem women
Speaker 1: looking for witch marks. Even as the girls were bundled
Speaker 1: and bound in various uncomfortable positions, the knocking sounds continued
Speaker 1: to fall on the floor all around them each night.
Speaker 1: The panels announced that they were and I quote, unable
Speaker 1: to discover any fraud or trick by which the girls
Speaker 1: produced the raps. In fact, they began to witness even
Speaker 1: more unsettling things. Once, when the committee had gathered around
Speaker 1: the table with the girls, it started to turn beneath
Speaker 1: their hands, just as Isaac and Amy had witnessed before.
Speaker 1: One of the men, thinking that it was a simple trick,
Speaker 1: asked everyone to leave the table and stand against the walls.
Speaker 1: Then he asked the spirits to turn the table again.
Speaker 1: At his request, it began slowly to spin, as if
Speaker 1: it were being moved by unseen hands. Naturally, it all
Speaker 1: made for quite a show. Reports were splashed across the
Speaker 1: regional papers. Elliot Capron began begging Margaret Fox to let
Speaker 1: him take her daughters on the road and share their
Speaker 1: revelation with the world. When the spirits were asked, they
Speaker 1: knocked their approval. For years, the news from Rochester and
Speaker 1: the Frontier Farms had reached New York with the latest
Speaker 1: on radical organizing and new arguments for women's equality in
Speaker 1: black freedom. Now, though the political and intellectual reputation of
Speaker 1: Rochester rested in the hands of three young women and
Speaker 1: a new phenomenon that demanded attention at the crossroads of science, spirituality,
Speaker 1: political philosophy, and not least of all, entertaining spectacle. If
Speaker 1: they decided to travel with Capron purely because he had
Speaker 1: a flair for the dramatic, they didn't choose wrong. Under
Speaker 1: his guidance, the Foxes rented rooms at A. S. Barnum's
Speaker 1: Hotel in New York City. Then he launched the marketing blitz,
Speaker 1: peppering New York's streets with advertisements for public demonstrations, which
Speaker 1: would be held three times a day, and the price
Speaker 1: for admission just one dollar. Aidan Blue rejoiced. He welcomed
Speaker 1: the arrival of spiritualism to his utopian community, Hopedale. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's not so much that spiritualism became a movement, but
Speaker 1: rather that it came into one. The first groups to
Speaker 1: get word of the revelations were the Quaker communities in
Speaker 1: Long Island, Nantucket, Philadelphia, and across New York State. Elliot
Speaker 1: Capron's Auburn Circle, for instance, had long been home to
Speaker 1: an interest in mesmerism and magnetic healing. In the years
Speaker 1: before those spiritual instruments recruited him as a stage manager.
Speaker 1: The other early adopters across the US were other utopian communities,
Speaker 1: North Star subscribers, and others who had already had connections
Speaker 1: to Rochester through speaking tours, newspapers, and abolitionist visions. But
Speaker 1: that was only the beginning. News of the spirit contact
Speaker 1: in Rochester spread along the channels between like minded communities
Speaker 1: of reformers, disaffected ministers, and religious innovators in the United States,
Speaker 1: channels that have first been opened by Andrew Jackson. Davis's
Speaker 1: transvisions of divine harmony were quickly spread west, reaching towns
Speaker 1: in Indiana, Ohio, and beyond from his home in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: In Hopeedale, Aidan Balu tracked this progress. He was still
Speaker 1: writing those sermons and essays that rallied others to his cause.
Speaker 1: Any and every subject that fell in front of the
Speaker 1: radical x universalist received a lengthy treatment, and in time
Speaker 1: spiritualism was no different. It offered his community a fresh wind,
Speaker 1: a new source of truth, and a beacon fire around
Speaker 1: which the hungry souls of his flock could gather. Among
Speaker 1: them were a couple named David and lo Denzis Scott,
Speaker 1: who had been charmed by Aiden's vision of living out
Speaker 1: a practical Christianity. They were in Hopedale when the community
Speaker 1: started to experiment with trance sittings and attempts to contact
Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead, and strange things started to
Speaker 1: happen when the believers gathered together at the same time.
Speaker 1: Though Aiden came to David with an idea, Hopeedale, you see,
Speaker 1: was full. In fact, they were running out of land
Speaker 1: for all the new peace bolt trickling in. So the
Speaker 1: two men drew up a plan to launch a new
Speaker 1: branch of Hopeedale farther to the west in the state
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin. It was rich with oak groves and well
Speaker 1: watered meadows, so they had heard, and David and Lodenza,
Speaker 1: along with their children in tow, would serve as Hopeedale's
Speaker 1: advance party. When winter finally cleared in early eighteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: they boarded a steamer called the Globe and headed toward
Speaker 1: the town of Waterloo to put the plan in motion.
Speaker 1: That plan, though it was about to change. You see.
Speaker 1: David and Lidenza's children were along for the ride, including
Speaker 1: their youngest daughter, Cora, and her life was in many
Speaker 1: ways like those of the Fox girls. A ten year
Speaker 1: old who had been carried from town to farm and
Speaker 1: then back to town as her parents had tried to
Speaker 1: find their place in the American landscape. But in the
Speaker 1: fall of eighteen fifty one, a visitation would strike her
Speaker 1: like lightning, an unexpected power that would transform her into
Speaker 1: something new. Going forward, she would be a guiding voice
Speaker 1: and a central figure in the world of spiritualism, and
Speaker 1: would be for the rest of the century. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this
Speaker 1: short sponsor break for a preview of what's in store
Speaker 1: for next week. Next time on Unobscured, suddenly the table
Speaker 1: started to turn beneath their hands. Some of the guests
Speaker 1: were startled and ducked under the table to see if
Speaker 1: anyone was pushing it around. Even though the table was
Speaker 1: large and heavy, it rotated smoothly until the group lifted
Speaker 1: their hands off of it, and then it stopped. William Hayden,
Speaker 1: convinced it was a trick, gripped the table with his
Speaker 1: hands and tried to turn it using his own strength,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't budge until he let go. That is, then,
Speaker 1: even though no one was touching it anymore, the table
Speaker 1: resumed spinning, this time faster than before. William tried to
Speaker 1: grab the table to make a stop, but when that
Speaker 1: didn't work, he climbed underneath it and wrapped his arms
Speaker 1: around the table legs. It dragged him in a slow
Speaker 1: circle across the floor. Unobscured was created by me Aaron
Speaker 1: Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh
Speaker 1: Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing
Speaker 1: for this season is all the work of my right
Speaker 1: hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed
Speaker 1: the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians,
Speaker 1: source material and links to our other shows over at
Speaker 1: History unobscured dot com and until next time, thanks for listening. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unobscured is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Menkey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H