Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism [Hardcover]

Barbara Weisberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2004

March 1848. Mysterious knocks are heard in a little house in rural New York, throwing the community into turmoil. Are the children who live there -- Kate and Maggie Fox, sisters aged eleven and fourteen -- making the raps to trick their parents? Or are the girls mediums for otherworldly messages? From a battery of strange sounds and the excitement they create, modern Spiritualism is born.

Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism follows the remarkable story of the Fox sisters, who were catapulted to fame after word spread that they communicated with spirits. Within a few years, tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to seances. An international movement developed. Yet forty years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by denying that they had ever been in contact with the dead. Shortly after, in another stunning reversal, they changed their story again and reaffirmed their faith in the spirit world. Were the Fox sisters con artists who had taken a childhood prank too far? Or were they really in touch with "voices from beyond"?

In this riveting biography, Barbara Weisberg traces not only the lives of Kate, Maggie, and their family -- including the girls' shrewd and charismatic sister, Leah -- but also the social, religious, economic, and political forces that helped shape the Spiritualist movement. A vivid, compelling overview of a remarkable period in U.S. history, Talking to the Dead provokes questions about belief systems, the power of celebrity, the wish to reconcile faith and science, and the timeless quest for knowledge about life after death.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Is it really possible to talk with the dead? As much as modern America is familiar with mediums--think bestselling authors John Edwards and Sylvia Browne--this question still generates passionate opinions from believers and skeptics alike. So one can only imagine the stir that the Fox sisters created in 1848 when they claimed to hear a ghost rapping on the wall of their Hydesville, New York rental house bedroom. The sisters soon discovered that the ghost would tap answers to specific questions. Within days neighbors and travelers were showing up at the house, wanting to converse with the dead rapper. The Fox sisters--Maggie and Kate--went onto become a national phenomenon, holding séances and making their livings as celebrity mediums. They were also the leaders of a new movement called the spiritualists. New York-based filmmaker Barbara Weisberg assembled this fascinating and expertly recounted biography. Beyond trying to prove whether the Fox girls were legitimate, Weisberg wrote a study of how two young girls could shape a new spiritual movement in mid-1800s America. "The more I thought about the Fox sisters, the more it seemed to me not only that Kate and Maggie sparked a movement, but that their lives epitomized the conflicts and urges that helped fuel its blaze. The question of the other world aside, the girls' appeal surely stemmed in part from the ways they embodied—and intuited—their culture's anxieties and ambitions." Ironically, in not trying to prove whether these two were frauds, Weisberg has created a more satisfying human story within a rich historical context, not unlike the tactics used for the bestseller Seabiscuit. And likewise, this could and should easily translate into a dynamite major motion picture. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

When the Fox family moved to Hydesville, N.Y., in 1848, they were confronted with strange and unexplainable noises coming from their bedroom. After an evening of listening to these raps and knocks on the walls, the Foxes' youngest children, Maggie and Kate, discovered that they had a gift for communicating with the spirits that made the sounds-when one of the girls knocked on the wall, the spirits would knock back. In her engaging study, Weisberg, a former documentary filmmaker, sets the case of the Fox sisters into the context of a 19th-century America that was developing a fascination with the world of spirits and the paranormal. The two Fox sisters began making public appearances in which they would talk to ghosts; along with their older sister, Leah, they eventually developed a traveling psychic show that took them across America and to Europe, leading tens of thousands of Americans to attend seances. While many clerics accused them of working for the devil, they cultivated a huge following, who, Weisberg says, needed to allay the anxieties of the modern age. In 1888, however, Maggie announced that the sisters had been engaged in deceptive practices. Her announcement shook the world of spiritualists. Although Maggie recanted one year later, the question had been raised: do spiritualists really speak to the dead? Weisberg refuses to judge the Fox sisters, saying only that it's plausible that they were deceptive, in this lively tale of a little-known slice of American history.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1St Edition edition (April 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060566671
• ISBN-13: 978-0060566678
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #721,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > New Age

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Above and Beyond., September 14, 2005

By 

Yiannis Psaroudis "divastation.com" (soho, ny) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (Hardcover)

Though the early accounts of the Fox sisters' encounters with spirits from beyond left me wanting more, as their renowned grew, so too did my interest. Weisberg does an amazing job of situating the rise of Spiritualism within the social climate of the time, touching upon evangelicalism, suffrage and abolition. I was not expecting to walk away from this book feeling that I'd gained a greater understanding of mid-century history, but I certaily did. As a New Yorker, Weisberg also made life in 1800s' New York come alive, for me, by her frequent inclusion of actual names and addresses.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, January 28, 2005

By 

A reader (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (Hardcover)

Barbara Weisberg has created the first must-read nonfiction title of the year. This is an assured and satisfying work which vividly brings to life a remarkable episode in the cultural history of the United States. In March, 1848, mysterious knocks are suddenly heard in a small house located in rural, upstate New York. No one is certain who or what is creating the strange sounds, but they recur night after night. Are Kate and Maggie Fox, ages 11 and 14, playing an elaborate trick on their parents and the other members of their small community? Or are the girls really able to channel messages from the dead?
Talking to the Dead charts the saga of the Fox sisters, and the birth of modern Spiritualism. From a small house near the Canadian border Maggie and Kate are catapulted to nationwide fame. On a series of tours across the heartland, tens of thousands of Americans rush to experience a series of readings and seances.
Weisberg's straight-forward yet evocative prose fully engulfs the viewer in the period. Like Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, this is nonfiction so seamless and compelling that it reads like a novel, yet Weisberg's skills as a scrupulous and careful researcher are evident in the pages and pages of notes that conclude this riveting story. Or does it? For the story really has no definite conclusion, and the ramifications of the Fox sisters' experiences are still with us today. Perhaps they always will be. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Book, June 3, 2004

By 

Lavinia Whately (PA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (Hardcover)

I really liked this book. It is the first book I am aware of that discusses the Fox sisters, Maggie, Kate and Leah, as distinct, individual human beings instead of as some historical curiosity or side-show act. The personalities and the trajectories of the lives of each woman were distinct. Business, romance, family and religion entwined in their lives like they do in ours.
One thing I appreciated is that the author leaves it up to the reader to make a conclusion about the Fox Sister's mediumship. The truth, I think, is that all we can know of them is filtered through the perceptions of other, now distant, people. And while it is true that people who want to believe in the supernatural can "see what they want to see", what is often overlooked is that the same is true for people who do not want to believe.
The Fox Sisters had a major effect of American Culture in the 1800s. They should be remembered, and this book is a great contribution.