Ghosts on Film

Spiritualism can be blamed upon young Margaret Fox’s toes. She could crack them audibly, and, in 1848 the fourteen-year-old teamed up with her younger sister Kate to natural their parents into believing the house repercussion of sounded with the coded replies of departed minds Kate asked questions and Margaret’s joints provided what became known as “spirit rapping.” Rumours spread. Within days curious visitors besieged the little house in Hydesville, of recent origin York. The girls became famous and worn out the next several decades exhibiting their mediumistic powers to rapt audiences across the United States.

The public’s appetite for supernatural bewilderments soon collided with a grislier reality: the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War had produc a surfeit of departed spirits and the bereaved were eager to make contact. above the years the spiritualist motion came to include diverse theories about supernatural forces (and eventually influenced