American Spirits: The Famous Fox Sisters and the Mysterious Fad that Haunted a Nation

by Barb Rosenstock Narrated by Sophie Amoss

Overview

CAN THE DEAD TALK TO THE LIVING? Discover the astonishingly true story of Maggie, Kate, and Leah Fox-the Civil War-era sisters and teen mediums who created the American séance.

A real-life ghost story for young adult readers interested in the supernatural, American history, and women's rights!

Rap. Rap. Rap. The eerie sound was first heard in March of 1848 at the home of the Fox family in Hydesville, New York. The family's two daughters, Kate and Maggie, soon discovered that they could communicate with the spirit that was making these uncanny noises; he told them he had been a traveling peddler who had been murdered. This strange incident, and the ones that followed, generated a media frenzy beyond anything the Fox sisters could have imagined. Kate and Maggie, managed (or perhaps manipulated) by their elder sister Leah, became famous spirit mediums, giving public exhibitions, and advising other celebrities of their day.

But were the Fox sisters legitimate? In the years that followed their rise, the Civil War killed roughly 1 in 4 soldiers, increasing the demand for contacting the dead. However, media campaigns against the sisters gathered steam as well ...

This thrilling and mysterious true story from veteran author Barb Rosenstock (Caldecott Honor winner) will spark teens' interest in American history, encourage media literacy, and reveal insights into the Civil War era, fake news, and women's rights.

“The Fox sisters captivated their neighbors, friends, detractors, and all of America. This book will captivate readers-with great storytelling, rigorous research, the truth-and no trickery!”-Deborah Heiligman, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction for Vincent and Theo, author of Charles and Emma, Torpedoed, and other celebrated nonfiction

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

★ "A biography of the Fox sisters, mysterious 19th-century mediums whose spirit circles led to the foundation of a new, highly influential religion... Rosenstock effectively and objectively presents historical facts alongside primary sources—journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, photos—as she explores whether the Foxes truly experienced supernatural phenomena or whether it was a hoax all along. She also excels at integrating the larger social and historical context in which Spiritualism rose to prominence, drawing clear connections between the facts presented. A suspenseful, well-researched read filled with fascinating and evocative visuals." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A detailed and engaging account of the Fox sisters, who started the 19th-century Spiritualist movement. Pages turn quickly with short chapters and Rosenstock’s intriguing ghost story–writing style. Extensive documentation is provided, ­including source notes, bibliography, and index. A great choice for teens who enjoy ghost stories and those interested in con artists or history. Recommended for all libraries."—School Library Journal

“Rosenstock, known for her award-winning informational picture books, turns to an older audience as she examines how the Fox sisters drove the Spiritualism movement in the nineteenth century. In meticulous detail… Rosenstock frames their rise and fall with the state of the nation, from deadly diseases to political divisions over slavery. By the end of this intriguing account, which is supported by copious source notes, readers must decide if the Fox sisters were mediums or tricksters, famous or infamous—or a bit of both.”—Booklist

“When the mysterious knocking began in the Fox family’s rural New York cottage in 1847, no one could have predicted that the Fox daughters and their claims of speaking to the dead would inspire an entire movement, one that intrigued believers and cynics alike for decades... this nonfiction account seeks neither to prove nor disprove those claims, instead remaining tightly focused on the Fox sisters, from their hopeful beginnings to their tragic later years... the story is mostly recounted in newspaper headlines, direct quotes from notable believers and skeptics, detailed recordings of the seances, and photographs, underscoring a major theme of the book: 'Maggie and Kate were both at the center of the story—and left out of it.' Society was happy to listen to the girls when they were shiny and new, but once the novelty wore off, it was just as happy to leave them behind with only the dead for company.”—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (Recommended)

"Fascinating... will captivate, thrill and educate YA readers."—Brightly

"Rosenstock evenhandedly explores the flawed methods used to ascertain the truth as well as offering pertinent discussions of confirmation bias, media influence, and the limited options available to mid-nineteenth-century women... Meticulously researched."—The Horn Book

“Wondrous storytelling….well-researched and wonderfully readable….As she tells the sisters’ story, Barb Rosenstock provides some broader historical context and explores how reasonable people come to hold unlikely beliefs—a topic as relevant today as it was in 19th century America.”— Caroline Carlson, Literary Hub

“Gather around the table and dim the lights. Clap. Clap. Clap. Do you hear that? It’s the sound of young readers applauding Barb Rosenstock’s American Spirits, a compelling, dramatic, wonderfully strange, yet entirely true ghost story. Gullibility and fakery; obscurity and celebrity; religion, history and biography. It’s all here, and it’s utterly mesmerizing.” —Candace Fleming, Sibert Medalist, winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Young People’s Literature, author of Murder Among Friends and other award-winning nonfiction and fiction for all ages.

“The Fox sisters captivated their neighbors, friends, detractors, and all of America. This book will captivate readers—with great storytelling, rigorous research, the truth—and no trickery!” —Deborah Heiligman, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction for Vincent and Theo, author of Charles and Emma, Torpedoed, and other celebrated nonfiction.

“Both a personal story of the three Fox sisters and a unique look at mid-nineteenth-century history, American Spirits has it all: rise to power, fame, greed, love, lost love, and fall from grace, all recounted blow by blow in the frenzied media coverage of the day.” —Elizabeth Partridge, National Book Award Finalist, 2023 Sibert Medalist for Seen and Unseen, and author of more than a dozen award-winning books for young people.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-03-08
A biography of the Fox sisters, mysterious 19th-century mediums whose spirit circles led to the foundation of a new, highly influential religion.

Kate was 14 and Maggie was only 11 when the Fox family heard mysterious rapping sounds in the cottage they’d just moved into in rural New York state in 1847. A neighbor believed the sounds were emanating from an “injured spirit.” Maggie and Kate, along with Leah, their much older, married sister, became known as the Rochester rappers, mediums who could speak to the dead by asking questions and translating their raps for clients. The sisters made an independent income by holding séances, creating the foundation for Modern Spiritualism. Against a backdrop of social upheaval—Christian revivals, cholera, abolitionism, the Civil War, and Reconstruction—the Fox sisters practiced their trade despite facing religious and personal criticism, skepticism from those who exposed frauds, financial crises, and alcoholism. The work highlights several famous believers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Todd Lincoln. In this meticulously researched work, Rosenstock effectively and objectively presents historical facts alongside primary sources—journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, photos—as she explores whether the Foxes truly experienced supernatural phenomena or whether it was a hoax all along. She also excels at integrating the larger social and historical context in which Spiritualism rose to prominence, drawing clear connections between the facts presented.

A suspenseful, well-researched read filled with fascinating and evocative visuals. (medium’s statement, author’s note, source notes, bibliography, image credits, index)(Nonfiction. 14-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193740148
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	04/15/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
FOOL’S EVE
Rap. Rap. Rap.
What was that sound?
Half an hour after the light had been snuffed out, Maggie and
Kate Fox snuggled under the covers. On early spring nights in rural
Hydesville, New York, the chill dampness from Mud Creek seeped into a person’s bones should a foot, or a finger, escape thick layers of homemade quilts. Maggie, fourteen, and Kate, who had just turned eleven,
peered into the shadows near their parent’s bed across the room. Sure enough, there was Mother padding about in the darkness. Father relit the candle and joined his wife in hunting for the cause of the odd noises.
Rap. Rap.
The family had just moved in a few months ago, in early December of 1847. The rented cottage had just four rooms—bedroom, front room,
kitchen, and buttery. Mother and Father crisscrossed the floorboards,
wiggled the front door latch, listened to the individual creak of each stair,
They searched from the slanted loft down to the dirt cellar. Like last night, and every night of the past week, they found nothing that might make a strange rapping sound. Maggie and Kate watched their parents give up and climb back into bed. Father blew out the candle.
Mother closed her eyes.
Rap. A mystery.
The unsettling sounds continued night after night until Mother felt
“almost sick.” The weather that spring of 1848 wouldn’t settle either.
After a few warmer days, on March 29 it turned so cold that around midnight an ice wedge stopped the constant crash of New York’s Niagara
Falls. Religious feeling had been whipped up by waves of Christian revivals throughout the western part of the state. In Niagara’s eerie silence, some of the newly faithful predicted miracles, others the world’s end.
Maggie and Kate’s much older brother, David, stopped by that
Friday, March 31. He tried to soothe Mother’s complaints about the house’s strange sounds. David reminded her that soon they’d be moving out of this tiny rental to a new home on his nearby peppermint farm.
The rappings were probably “the simplest things in the world.” Before he returned to his wife and children, David told Mother to ignore the nighttime noises and get a good night’s sleep.
The wind whistled across the marsh grasses that afternoon. Father stayed in the front room with his Bible. Maggie, Kate, and Mother went to bed before the sun set. As the bedroom darkened . . .
Rap.
Five minutes passed.
Rap. Rap.
Kate sat up and snapped her fingers.
“As fast as she made the noise with her hands or fingers, the sound was followed up in the room,” Mother would later explain.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Rap. Rap. Rap.
In the dim light, Maggie said, “Now do this just as I do. Count one,
two, three, four,” while clapping her hands.
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap.
Were the knocks responding? Mother ordered, “Count ten.”
Ten raps sounded like a drumbeat.
Kate touched two of her fingers together, lightly, without making a sound. Once, twice, three times.
Rap. Rap. Rap.
“Only look, mother! It can see as well as hear!” said Kate.
It? What was It? And what could It know about her family? Mother asked the night sounds to tell her the number of children she’d born.
Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap.
Seven. Everyone knew the Fox family had six children—Leah, Maria,
Elizabeth, and David, now grown; Maggie and Kate, still at home. Mr. and Mrs. Fox were lucky parents; about half of American babies born in the mid-1800s died before their fifth birthday. There was no protection from common childhood illness like tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, diphtheria, or whooping cough. But the Foxes hadn’t entirely escaped that all-too-common tragedy. They’d buried a stillborn baby years back. No one in Hydesville knew. Seven was the correct number.
Stunned, Mother asked the night air if the mysterious sounds were made by a human. The answer? Total silence.
Then Mother asked, “Is it a spirit?”
Rap!
Hearing his girls’ voices, Father entered the bedroom. He found his wife convinced that she was speaking to an invisible presence from beyond the grave. Mother Fox later insisted she was “not a believer in haunted houses or supernatural Appearances.” But a mystic strain ran through Mother’s extended family. Her sister had visions of her future headstone, and her mother was known to fall into a dreamlike state and predict neighbors’ funerals weeks before their deaths took place.
Maggie and Kate knew these family tales. Like most young people of their time, the sisters also grew up with popular ghost stories like author Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and
Methodist founder John Wesley’s family haunt, “Old Jeffrey.” Ghosts were everywhere in nineteenth-century America. Now, it seemed, the
Fox family had one of their very own.
Mother intended to find out what this particularly noisy spirit wanted.
By asking simple yes or no questions, listening for raps or silences,
Mother learned that their spirit was a man. He’d been fatally injured in the Fox family’s cottage. She asked how old he was when he died.
Thirty-one raps sounded, one right after the other.
Mother asked, “Will this noise continue if I call in my neighbors?”
A pause, and then . . .
Rap.
She sent her husband into the cold night to a nearby neighbor, Mrs.
Redfield.
Mrs. Mary Redfield hadn’t known the family long; but she’d run into the girls on the main road a few days back. Such friendly, pretty
girls! Maggie had brown hair, dark eyes; skin like a porcelain doll.
Raven-haired Kate’s best feature was her unusual gray-violet eyes. They were “smart girls, bright, full of life.” The girls had told Mrs. Redfield some wide-eyed tale about hearing strange sounds in the night.
Mary Redfield knew the parents, Peggy and John Fox, to be sensible folk. She hadn’t given Maggie and Kate’s silly story a second thought.
Yet, here was John Fox at her door, after dark, insisting that
Mrs. Redfield listen to these strange sounds immediately. Mary Redfield grabbed a wrap and followed her good neighbor out into the cold, spring night. She expected to endure a few minutes of foolishness with the Fox girls and be in bed before nine.
Instead, she found Maggie and Kate Fox in bed, clinging together,
“much frightened.” Their mother, Mrs. Peggy Fox, was sitting on the bed, her face unearthly pale. To comfort the woman, Mrs. Redfield sat beside her.
“Now count five,” she heard Peggy mumble.
Mary Redfield realized that Peggy Fox was talking to the night air.
The poor woman has lost her reason, Mary thought. Then, she heard a rhythm, like a beating heart.
Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap.
“Count fifteen,” said Peggy.
Fifteen raps shook the bedstead. Mary both heard the sounds and felt them jar her bones. What in this room could be making such a powerful
sound?
Peggy Fox asked the spirit to give Mary Redfield’s age.
Thirty-three raps sounded one right after the other. Correct. Mary ruffled through the possibilities. Who knew her exact age except her husband?
Mrs. Redfield took over the questioning, “If you are an injured spirit, manifest it by three raps.”
Rap. Rap. Rap.
She repeated several questions trying to prove that the raps sounded randomly. All were answered correctly, same as before. After an hour or so with the rappings, Mrs. Redfield agreed, a spirit had indeed entered the Fox family’s humble cottage.
Across the bedroom, Maggie and Kate trembled. Mrs. Redfield consoled them. She told the girls they would not be harmed. As a
Christian, Mary trusted that this spirit was from God. In one of the earliest accounts of that night’s events, Kate replied, “we are innocent—
how good it is to have a clear conscience.”
Mrs. Redfield didn’t ask Kate why her conscience was bothered.
Then again, it’s hard to think straight when talking to a dead man.
Mrs. Redfield fetched her husband. When they returned, loud raps again echoed about the Fox home. As the night went on, the Redfields brought their neighbors, who brought other neighbors. Question by question, guess after guess, the small group learned further details of the spirit’s story.
The spirit had been a traveling peddler.
The peddler had been murdered.
His throat was cut with a butcher knife! He’d been robbed of $500!
How many years ago? Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap.
Midnight brought a new day, Saturday, April 1. At least a dozen of the Fox family’s neighbors remained crammed in the house, asking questions and receiving rapped answers. Like Mary Redfield, they came anticipating a bit of nighttime fun, until the raps correctly answered personal questions about family members, living and dead. In the early morning hours, the rappings simply stopped. The rumors about the two girls who had first talked to the peddler’s spirit were just getting started.

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