The Hydesville Rappings and Fox Sisters

Record summary

The Fox sisters’ reported communications through rapping sounds in Hydesville are conventionally treated as a foundational episode in modern American Spiritualism. The sisters claimed the sounds represented a murdered peddler, while later séances expanded the practice into purported communication with the dead. The case matters because it links a specific domestic report to a long-lived religious and séance movement. Margaret Fox later confessed to producing some sounds, then partially retracted that account, leaving a disputed transmission history involving publicity, performance, belief, and possible deception.