Hydesville: The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism

In 1848, in a modest farmhouse in rural New York, two young sisters began a conversation with the dead that would reshape American religion. Margaretta and Kate Fox, ages 14 and 12, heard rapping sounds in their home that they tentatively identified as communications from a murdered pedlar buried in the house. What began as neighborhood curiosity became a national sensation, drawing thousands of seekers to the Fox family door and launching the movement known as Modern Spiritualism. Thomas Olman Todd, writing in 1905 when the last survivors still lived to tell the tale, reconstructs this pivotal moment with careful attention to the human drama: the terror and wonder of the Fox household, the skepticism and eventual belief of prominent investigators, and the explosive cultural aftermath as America confronted the possibility that the dead could speak. The book captures both the spiritual revelations and the societal upheaval that followed, examining the vast repercussions of the Fox sisters' experiences on personal and cultural levels.