The Birth of the Séance Craze That Swept America
The Fox sisters’ séances began as a prank. However, they turned serious when an older sister of Katie and Maggie Fox, Leah, saw the potential for profit. So she began to book her younger siblings for sessions with people who were eager to pay for a chance to communicate with their departed loved ones. The girls’ act took off, and soon Maggie and Katie Fox began to tour America. They kept it up for decades. Other charlatans saw the Fox sisters’ success, jumped in on the act, and claimed to be mediums themselves.
Finally, in 1888, a guilt-stricken Maggie Fox confessed to the fraud, and let the world know that it was all a sham. She demonstrated to an audience just how she and her sister had produced the knocks, with her big toe against a poorly balanced stool. That should have put the kibosh on séances, but it did not. Even after the con’s originator confessed that it was a con, and demonstrated how the con had been performed, the conned continued to believe in the con. Spiritualism and seances took a hit, but quickly rebounded and became even more popular.