The Death-Blow to Spiritualism: Being the True Story of the Fox SistersDavenport, Reuben Briggs
History
The Death-Blow to Spiritualism: Being the True Story of the Fox Sisters
Davenport, Reuben Briggs
Fox, Margaret, 1833-1893; Jencken, Catherine Fox, 1836-1892; Mediums -- New York (State) -- Rochester; Spiritualism
By the new code system of obtaining answers to queries, a mandate to dig
up the cellar and to search for something or other there was obtained, and
obeyed, the work lasting two or three days. It is stated by Leah that some
fragments of an earthen bowl, a few bones, some teeth and some bunches of
hair were found. She says that doctors pronounced the bones to be human.
Of course, the names of these doctors are nowhere to be found in her
volume, nor does any one, unwarped by prejudice, really believe more than
a very small part of this story.
That there was digging is certain.
That there had been plenty of time to hide anything that David Fox had
desired to hide in the cellar, is certain.
Yet Mrs. Kane remembered absolutely nothing about anything having been
found in the cellar that bore the slightest semblance to any portion of
the human frame. If any bones (perchance, like those found in the creek,
the skeleton of a horse) were uncovered, she denies positively that any
doctor ever gave the opinion that they were the remains of a man.
She pronounces equally false, the statement of Leah that about the time
the digging was abandoned, on account of the angry interference of a mob,
the spades of the diggers struck upon a hollow-sounding, wooden substance,
which might or might not have been a box of ill-gotten plunder, or the
rough sepulchre of the slain pedler.
The indignation of the neighbors of the Foxes in Arcadia was not so much
due to the fact that the latter persisted in pretending to communicate
with ghosts and uncanny elfs, as it was to the totally unwarranted
suspicion which had been cast through the early "rappings" upon a man
named Bell, who had formerly lived in the house, which it was now
pretended was haunted. This, as well as other evidence of the public
feeling at that time, was cleverly employed for her own benefit by Leah,
who easily foresaw how anything that might bear the semblance of religious
persecution would promote her cause, false though it was, by bringing to
it both greater notoriety and widespread sympathy.
There is no doubt, too, that if there had not been a very strong vein of
superstition in the Fox family, the first "rappings" would never have
produced the deep impression that they did on the mother and her son
David. Many strange stories, which had been handed down from a grandfather
or a great-grandfather, a great uncle or a great aunt, were told at the
fireside with such embellishment as will inevitably come from recital and
repetition to a wonder-delighting audience. There were traditions of
prophecies fulfilled and of dumb cattle behaving queerly, all of which
Mrs. Underhill has very carefully set down and magnified in her own
peculiar manner to her own unholy purpose.
CHAPTER IX.
THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN.
The public campaign of Spiritualism was now begun.
A sufficient hubbub had been made over it to induce attention from all
sorts and conditions of people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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