Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "ON LATE MARCH 1848 two young sisters excitedly waylaid a neighbor, eager to tell her about the strange sounds they had been hearing at home..." (more)
Key Phrases: candid community, secret heartache, being imposters, New York, United States, Margaret Fox (more...)

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.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (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: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #790,256 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 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)

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.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars O.K., but nothing special., May 19, 2004

By	Dennis Phillips "The Book Friar" (Bulls Gap, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Man is apparently the only creature that realizes he will some day die and we have pondered since time immemorial the question of what happens after death. Many contend that nothing happens and we simply cease to exist but most people believe in some kind of life after death. This curiosity and yearning for knowledge is what made modern Spiritualism possible and Kate and Maggie Fox were its most successful early proponents. Barbara Weisberg has taken on the task of trying to make sense of this often-disorganized movement and has written an interesting but somewhat flat biography of these enigmatic sisters.

The whole story started in Hydesville, New York in 1848 when the Fox's neighbors became aware of the "spirit" rapping occurring in the Fox home. By various means, word of this phenomena spread across New York and soon the rest of the country. The Fox sisters, guided by their older sister Leah, soon became famous and were in great demand. Attempt after attempt was made to catch the girls in some fraud but they were never proven to be fakes. Over the years they held seances with the Russian Royal Family, James Fenimore Cooper, George Ripley, William Cullen Bryant, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Horace Greeley. One will note the presence of several abolitionist leaders in this group and the reform movements of the 1850s became closely associated with Spiritualism. Of course the civil war was a great boon for the movement as hundreds of thousands of untimely deaths led to like numbers of grieving families. One of the shortcomings of this book is that the effect of the war on Spiritualism is dealt with in such a backhanded manner that one hardly notices it.

As time went on, the Fox sisters went through some extraordinarily hard times and the author deals with this in great detail. Finally Maggie, with Kate's support renounces the spirits and claims it was all a fraud. Weisberg deals with this subject by giving it very little attention and then giving less attention to Maggie's later change of heart. She in fact spends far more time dealing with Maggie's great love than her renunciation of Spiritualism.

Weisberg has completed a great deal of research for this book and has certainly added to the study of this movement. She never captures the souls of her subjects however and the book seems to drag in several places. Being very interested in the subject and in ghostly phenomena in general I did enjoy this book but I was never completely absorbed by it. I don't know if it was the writing style or what I perceived as a lack of depth but I really feel that this book could have been much better. In short, if this subject fascinates you then you will enjoy this book and will learn from it. If, on the other hand, this subject is just of passing interest you may want to look elsewhere.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, January 29, 2005

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

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