the Fox

           This is Hydesville, New York and this is the infamous Fox Cottage. But, maybe you're not a member of the NSAC and don't know who the Fox Family were or maybe you're from another galaxy?  Well, two families lived in the cottage before the Fox Sisters and there was a traveling salesman named Charles B. Rosna who came to the town of Hydesville to sell his goods.  He came to one house and the woman was interested in his items and told him to return later so she could purchase the items. Then, the woman supposedly killed Charles B. Rosna for the goods he was selling. Then, the knockings around the house kept happening. The family tried to ignore the sounds, but after being haunted by the sounds decided to sell their home. The second family also heard the rappings and after a while sold the house to the Fox Family. 

           And, as could be expected, after a while, the Fox Family started hearing rappings, too, but instead of moving out, The Fox Family investigated and one night, after hearing rappings and being unable to sleep, one of the Fox Sisters said, “'Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do'” and the girl tapped a certain numberr of times and the rappings repeated the taps the correct amount of times. Margurrette Fox asked this Spirit how many children Margurrette had and the Spirit tapped seven times whereas Margurrette thought she only had six children until she remembered a miscarriage she had. Then, John Fox picked up a number of stones without knowing how many stones he was picking up and asked the Spirit to count the number of stones and the number of stones the spirit counted was correct. 

           Then, the family, the following day, invited their friends and neighbors over to experience the phenomenon the Fox Family was witnessing. And, as happened with Hamlets at the time, the news spread like poison ivy on a young child. Think about the children's game Telephone where each person repeats what the last person said and the messsage at the end is nothing like the message at the beginning. That's what news was like back then and there were no national newspapers, since travel was difficult. But, as there are now, there were sceptics back then. 

           Once, the Fox Sisters were giving a demonstration in an auditorium of the rappings and one of the men in the audience insisted there must be something hidden in the girls' dresses making the noise. Something like a knocker or a clicker. So, the men were invited onto the stage to investigate and they took off the girls' dresses, leaving them in their bras, underwear, socks, and shoes and the girls were embaressed, whih was normal for the 1890's. But, the men felt the girls' skin, patted around their bras and panties and discovered there was no hidden device. The girls' faces turned red. 

           When they got back to their hotel room that night, they were exhausted and getting a little sick of all the attention and today was the cusp of their performances, or so they thought. See, the Fox Sisters never said anything about Jesus Christ being the only Son of God, never said anything about the Father, or the Holy Ghost. So, many Christians thought the raps from the Fox Sisters must be the work of the Devil. It wasn't the work of the Devil, but there were a lot of stupid people in America in the 1890's and there still are today. 

           That night at the hotel, the Fox Sisters continued to hear the rapping of Rosna and other Spirits who had joined him. But, a crowd started forming outside their hotel screaming things like, Fraud, Fakes, Satan's Children, and other heckles. The Fox Sisters were used to hecklers at their demonstrations, but this was the first time they experienced it at a hotel. Then, they heard a rhythmic thump outside. Thump, thump, thump, which was softer than the rappings and someone yelled something incoherent and there was a loud crash followed by cheers. Then, thump, thump again, but quieter. What were these stupid men doing now? 

           Then, we heard something that sounded like an army marching followed by a light tap on our hotel door and then a louder tap. Kate had the courage to look out the peep hole and see a large group of unshaved men with a battering ram made from a tree aiming at our door. We shook and asked Charles for help. He told us to climb through the window to the room of the hotel. They didn't have mandatory fire escapes back then. 

           So, the Fox Sisters got to the roof in just their Pjs and waited. America tends to be cold at night.

           So, we waited, hearing them going through our suitcases, opening the bathroom door, and then one of them said we escaped through our trickery. Thank Infinite Intelligence we were able to escape. See, after an hour, the people got bored and left. We saw them walking with the log to the forest and dropping it there. Then, the all scattered, going to their homes, we presume. So, we crawled back into our room, saw our suitcases opened, our perfume bottles opened, the door opened. Everything was opened, so we closed it up again and thanked Charles for protecting us. 

           We hired a stage manager named Horace Greeley, to protect us from situations like this happening again. We interviewed a lot of candidates, but felt Greeley was the best since he, too, believed in mediumship. 

           Then, with all the pressure from the public, our names spread like seeds in the ground, we starting drinking, hard. We'd have beers, vodka, rum, and a whole lu of other things to calm our nerves at night. Or, we'd go to the bars at night for jollys looking for gentlemen. But, Barleycorn got the best of us and we started doing things like sleeping with random guys, crying and carrying on for no reason, and then the DT started. See, DT is a medical condition where alcoholics see things that aren't there, which is different then mediumship. Mediumship is real whereas DT made us see things that weren't real, so we started getting disoriented between the two. See, our father, John, was an alcoholic and our parents divorced because of that, but John got sober and they remarried.

           But, we had trouble stopping. Then, one of us got married to a Methodist who wouldn't accept her mediumship, so she renounced her mediumship in the newspaper, which hurt all of us. Why would our sister betray us for a man? Many more strange things happened in our lives, but this is just a slice of it and is fiction.