Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism

A fascinating story of spirits and conjurors, skeptics and converts in the second half of nineteenth century America viewed through the lives of Kate and Maggie Fox, the sisters whose purported communication with the dead gave rise to the Spiritualism movement - and whose recanting forty years later is still shrouded in mystery.

In March of 1848, Kate and Maggie Fox - sisters aged 11 and 14 - anxiously reported to a neighbor that they had been hearing strange, unidentified sounds in th…